Quotable Quote of the Month

What does it take for Republicans to take off the flag pin and say, 'I am just too embarrassed to be on this team'?".- Bill Maher

Monday, December 14, 2009

Turner Gill Breaks Through the NCAA Football Glass Ceiling

On December 13, the University of Kansas announced that it had hired Turner Gill as the head coach of their football team. The 47 year old Gill replaces Mark Mangino, whose controversial run as the Kansas head coach came to an end when he resigned on December 3rd.

Gill's impressive coaching résumé includes:
  • Serving as the quarterback coach at the University of Nebraska from 1992-2003 and their wide receivers coach in 2004. During his tenure as the QB coach, he helped Eric Crouch earn the Heisman Trophy in 2001 and Nebraska win 3 national championships (1994, 1995, and 1997)
  • MAC Coach of the Year in 2007 and 2008 at the University of Buffalo
  • 2008 MAC Championship
In addition to his coaching career, Gill was highly successful as a player. During his 3-year stint as the starting QB for Nebraska, Gill had a 28-2 record (including a 20-0 record in conference play and 3 straight Big Eight championships).

For those who follow college football, you probably know that the NCAA's track record of hiring qualified minority head football coaches is awful. With Gill's hiring, that increases the number of black head coaches to 11 (with 13 minority coaches overall) among the 120 Division I-A schools.

If you'd like to read an excellent post on this topic, please visit the following link:

Lack of Minority Coaches In NCAA Football

4 comments:

Jay said...

I was really happy to see Gill get the Kansas job. Especially after what happened to him last year at Auburn. That was just shameful the way they acted down there.

I'm also surprised that Kansas landed such a good coach. I've seen some KU fans claim that they thought they would get a bigger name. They're delusional. KU ain't Michigan or Florida or somebody like that.

Malcolm said...

Jay: Thanks for stopping by. I had forgotten about the way things went down with Turner Gill and Auburn. That was wrong. You are right about some of the KU fans... beggars shouldn't be choosers.

achoiceofweapons said...

Well alright! I don't follow College football much but I am Happy to see him get a real shot!
Jaycee

Malcolm said...

Mista Jaycee: Thanks for stopping by. I hope that Turner Gill gets a solid opportunity to have a successful run as head coach at Kansas. If he is successful, it will be interesting to see if the proverbial glass ceiling in collegiate coaching gets shattered.