Impact of race and performance on major college football coach retention

Black head coaches in major college football are consistently
underrepresented compared to the number of Black players. One factor that
contributes to this underrepresentation is systemic racism. The retention of Black
head coaches is impeded by this racism as evidenced by comparing the
performance of Black head coaches with their non-Black counterparts. In this
study, a longitudinal data set featuring the tenures of nearly 250 coaches is used
to evaluate differences in major college football head coach retention based on
race, while controlling for performance, between 1959 and 2021. Results indicate
that Black coaches were more than 50% less likely to be retained when compared to their non-Black counterparts. Beyond this investigation of systemic racism in the sport industry, the findings offer insights for sport administrators as it relates to the student-athlete experience as well as fiscal management, particularly given increased costs for contractual buyouts of underperforming coaches.