The one area where the ‘Deion Sanders Effect’ made, predictably, zero impact

Since Deion Sanders gave up on tilting the power structure of college football towards HBCUs, the real hope was that his presence at Colorado would improve the fortune of Black football coaches who want to be a head coach.

On Wednesday, college programs announced their first signees for the 2024 season, which effectively ends the 2023 coaching cycle.

While college football changes don’t stop, this coaching cycle looks like the one in 2022. And 2021. And 2020. And 2019. And 2018. Probably 1978, too.

No one should blame Deion for this, but “The Deion Effect” on aspiring Black head coaches was non existent. Because Deion is Deion, and ultimately his impact will be limited to his program, and himself.

He is not changing college football; he’s just a fun, interesting part of it.

There were nine head coaching vacancies among the power conferences this coaching cycle; one went to a Black coach. Syracuse hired former Georgia assistant Fran Brown.

(Duke hired former Miami head coach Manny Diaz, who has Cuban heritage).

The one coach who appears to have benefited from the “Deion Effect” is someone you likely don’t know; Gary Harrell was a long time assistant for a handful of HBCU programs before Deion brought him from Jackson State to CU where Harrell currently has the title of “assistant head coach/running backs.”

For a man like Harrell, Deion has changed his life.

The hope was that by hiring Deion more college programs would consider Black candidates to be hired as a head coach.

For the uninitiated, the normal process of hiring a head coach at an FBS school is the athletic director contacts a search firm, which functions as a head hunter. The firm compiles a list of potential candidates, and the school’s athletic department goes from there.

There are the exceptions when the athletic director, or perhaps the chancellor or prominent board member, has a personal relationship with a potential candidate and phone calls are made without a third party.

The aspiring head coach needs to be in “the conservation” with a chance to get in the room in front of the decision makers.

The aspiring head coach likely needs to be a coordinator, and has some relationship, or exposure, with people in that structure. Unless you have a famous last name, or you are coordinator of a top program, like Alabama or Ohio State, this can all take forever.

Not to mention maddening.

NCAA football’s Division I and II level teams combined are comprised of about 50 percent Black student athletes. Among the power conference teams, that number goes to around 55 percent.

In the last 15 years, the on-field coaching staffs are more diverse, and are closer of a reflection to that ratio.

The top positions remain the issue; those include the head coaching jobs, or the defensive and offensive coordinator at the NCAA’s bigger programs. Those are all six and seven-figure salary positions.

There were 14 Black head coaches among the NCAA’s 133 FBS teams in 2023, or about 10.5 percent. That 10.5 percent will be the same in 2024.

That figure should be higher. Looking at the latest census figures, America’s Black population is 13.6 percent of all residents in the United States.

Despite people in positions of power and influence calling attention to this, there remains a lack of proper proportionality on this issue in college football. In college football’s most competitive conference, the SEC, there are 0 Black head coaches.

The NFL isn’t much better; there are four Black head coaches. Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel is biracial.

The challenge is the challenge, and Deion Sanders has impacted the University of Colorado, though zero fault of his own he has thus far had zero impact on other Black assistants who aspire to be a head coach.