In the words of Maryland coach Mike Locksley, “Coaches are no longer selected; they are elected”—a salient point about the current state of the coaching market. Taking the helm at the college level increasingly has less to do with a coach’s specific acumen as a whistle-around-the-neck ball coach and more to do with the various other responsibilities on a person’s plate: managing players, coaches and staff as the head of a complete organization. But it does continually move the target on what is the best example of a coach and how do you go about gauging whether someone is ready for that role.
Being a coordinator certainly helps, but as coaches like Dabo Swinney and Urban Meyer have shown, you can have championship-level success in this era without coordinator experience. Sam Pittman and Shane Beamer are recent examples of coaches who have been able to turn programs around without it, as well. For Black coaches, though, there are still so few of them at the coordinator ranks that expanding the common avenues to get to the head position can benefit them as long as decision-makers are actually willing to give them a look.
Here is a list of Black head coaches, coordinators and assistants who are on industry sources’ radars moving forward. For the assistants, not all of them may be ready to be head coaches this cycle, but some may soon get their shot at the big time as they develop and become more known in the election process.
