Jeff Capel recalls vividly the obligation his father shouldered as Old Dominion’s basketball coach during the 1990s — not only as the program’s leader, but as a Black man in a profession where few of his peers looked like him.
The reigning ACC Coach of the Year after guiding Pitt to its first NCAA tournament since 2016, the younger Capel carries the same responsibility.
“It is talked about among Black coaches,” he said, “about the opportunities we’re afforded and the feeling that you have to have success so you can help the next person, so you can help someone else get an opportunity.”
During the last two-plus years, ACC athletics administrators and university presidents have presented those chances to Black men’s basketball head coaches in record numbers for the conference, demonstrating their commitment to the more diverse workplace that all of college sports needs.
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Given the random timing of job vacancies, snapshots of a group’s racial composition often vary. But the ACC’s current numbers — nine Blacks among 15 head coaches, 60% and triple the amount of 2021 — are too striking to be ignored.
“I think it’s a testament to athletic directors in this league,” Capel said. “I think it’s a testament to college presidents, people on the boards, and it’s something that’s very significant. ... It’s something everyone should be proud of, not just Black coaches, that you have this league that looks at people on their merit.”
In March 2021, the ACC’s head-coaching ranks were old, entrenched and white. Capel, Florida State’s venerable Leonard Hamilton and N.C. State’s Kevin Keatts, 20% of the group, were the lone Blacks, leaving the conference below the Division I average of 24.8% for men’s basketball, as calculated by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) for its 2022 Racial and Gender Report Card.
Plus, an unprecedented handful were at least 70 years old — Hamilton, Miami’s Jim Larranaga, North Carolina’s Roy Williams, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski and Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim.
Williams, Krzyzewski and Boeheim retired. Also in the last two-plus years, Boston College, Georgia Tech and Louisville fired Jim Christian, Josh Pastner and Chris Mack, respectively, and Mike Brey resigned at Notre Dame.
That’s seven coaches, all of them white, exiting. Six were replaced by Blacks, the lone exception at Duke, where Jon Scheyer, an All-ACC guard for the Blue Devils’ 2010 national champions, succeeded Krzyzewski and guided the program to a conference tournament title as a rookie big whistle.
ACC basketball’s six newest African American coaches are North Carolina’s Hubert Davis, Boston College’s Earl Grant, Louisville’s Kenny Payne, Notre Dame’s Micah Shrewsberry, Syracuse’s Adrian Autry and Georgia Tech’s Damon Stoudamire.
Each was hired by a school with a white athletic director.
Further context: The ACC’s current nine Black head coaches comprise nearly 50% of the conference’s all-time total of 19 — Maryland’s Bob Wade in 1986 was the first.
A comparably diverse pool of ACC coaches emerged from the 2005-06 season through 2008-09, when seven of 12 were Black with Hamilton, Boston College’s Al Skinner, Clemson’s Oliver Purnell, Georgia Tech’s Paul Hewitt, Miami’s Frank Haith, N.C. State’s Sidney Lowe and Virginia’s Dave Leitao.
“There’s not a conference meeting where we don’t discuss the topic in some way,” ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said of diversity, equity and inclusion.
To expand leadership opportunities, he said league officials included an extra minority administrator from each school at their fall gathering and will again this month at their spring meetings.
But this recent makeover was not choreographed by the conference office. Rather, it’s the aggregate of individual searches, several of which unfolded similarly.
For example, Duke, North Carolina and Syracuse replaced their Hall of Fame coaches with in-house assistants who were also all-conference players. Louisville also hired family, bringing home Kenny Payne, a freshman reserve on the Cardinals’ 1986 NCAA champs, from the ranks of NBA assistants.
Conversely, Boston College, Georgia Tech and Notre Dame opted for previous head-coaching experience.
Stoudamire was a consensus first-team All American for Arizona in 1995, played 13 NBA seasons and in 2019-20 steered Pacific to its best record (23-10) in 14 years. That was his lone winning season in five years there and, after a 9-9 finish in 2020-21, he returned to the NBA as a Boston Celtics assistant.
A former Clemson assistant to Brad Brownell, Grant compiled a 127-89 record in seven years at Charleston, winning the 2018 Colonial Athletic Association tournament. In his second year as a head coach, Shrewsberry led Penn State to the 2023 NCAA tournament, the Nittany Lions’ first in a decade.
“It’s big-time progress and hopefully something that continues and spreads across the country,” Capel said. “We still have one Power Five conference (the Pacific 12) that doesn’t have any” Black men’s basketball head coaches.
Craig Littlepage, a senior consultant for the search firm Collegiate Sports Associates and a former Virginia athletic director, believes the advancements will continue.
“I think all of the search firms, and major search firms in particular, and all of the institutions, their awareness is heightened in terms of diversifying the (candidate) pool,” said Littlepage, the ACC’s first Black AD. “We have definitely seen that in the searches we have done, administrative as well as on the coaching sides of things. It’s intentional. I think institutions as well as search firms have to be very deliberate and intentional that they’re casting the net a little more broadly than in other times.”
“Where you really see significant progress is when you have a chance to fail and still maintain your job or get another job,” Capel said. “For me, that’s where I’m so grateful to the University of Pittsburgh, the way things ended at Oklahoma and the cloud, I was (still) able to get this job.”
Oklahoma fired Capel in 2011, after which he spent seven seasons assisting Krzyzewski, for whom he played from 1993-97. During his time back at Duke, Capel sought the counsel of then-Blue Devils AD Kevin White, who encouraged him to interact with search firms outside of the coaching carousel season.
Citing the “relationship-driven” nature of hiring in all industries, Littlepage also endorses that approach.
“If you wait until you get the call (to interview),” he said, “in many cases it’s too late. A lot of things can be done before you start interviewing.”
In theory, more diverse candidate pools will produce more diversity. Still, the ranks of Black head coaches in Bowl Subdivision football remain depressingly thin (14 of 133, or 10.5%). Two of the 14 work in the ACC — Virginia’s Tony Elliott and Syracuse’s Dino Babers.
Like Capel, Phillips applauded member schools and acknowledged the need for additional progress. He also reminded that three of the five female athletic directors working in the Power Five — UVa’s Carla Williams, Pitt’s Heather Lyke and Duke’s Nina King — call the ACC home.
ACC schools “don’t just talk about (diversity),” Phillips said. “They execute on it.”