A diversity study showed Football Bowl Subdivision schools continue to underrepresent women and people of color in hiring for leadership positions at athletic departments of the sport’s highest level of competition.
The report card, issued Thursday from The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) indicated improvement from a year ago with an overall grade of D-plus, up from a D in 2021. Racial hiring also increased its grade to a B-minus from a C last hear.
However, gender hiring remained an F with the study finding women make up only 10 percent of athletic directors at the 130 schools in the FBS.
“You see over a 25-year period of time we’ve been forever without much movement, at these positions in particular,” Richard Lapchick, the head of the institute and lead author of the report, told The Associated Press.
The study examined positions that include university presidents or chancellors, athletics directors, faculty athletics representatives and conference commissioners, using data submitted by the NCAA.
There were improvements in other areas, the report found, with non-white athletic directors rising to 18.5%, “thus slightly reducing the dominance of white people in these positions,” Lapchick said.
Lapchick said change toward a more diverse staff starts at the top, another area of concern. The report found there were only 22 people of color holding positions of school president or chancellor, one fewer than a year earlier.
Overall, white people held 324 of the 395 campus leadership positions reported in this study, which was the same from last year,
The TIDES report card also tracked the racial makeup of FBS head coaches and athletes. It found less than one in five head coaches weren’t white while Black, Hispanic or Latino athletes comprised more than 51% of all FBS football players.
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