IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/socsci/v103y2022i2p259-273.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A shame of inches: Are teams with black head coaches more heavily penalized in Division 1 college football?

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew P. Davis
  • Tom R. Leppard
  • Alexander B. Kinney

Abstract

Background A popular line of media discourse has sought to provide explanations for college football's lack of diversity in the coaching ranks. A related effort has recently sought to explain why black coaches are faced with institutional barriers to success in athletic fields. While research on race and the sociology of sport has frequently focused on racial characteristics and expectations of players for on‐field penalization, this literature neglected to examine racialized leadership positions such as coaching. Further, the vast majority of this line of literature that has examined racial leadership has explored the effects of race on hiring and promotion decisions off the field rather than on‐field dynamics. Objective This article fills this gap by exploring the relationship between the race of college football coaches and the level of on‐field penalization their teams incur. Are teams coached by black coaches more heavily penalized than those coaches by non‐black coaches? Methods Using data from a merged unique data set and a two‐step approach comprising two statistical procedures, we explore this question empirically. We first examine the mean levels of penalties at the game level using a comparison of means, followed by a panel analysis of penalties at the yearly‐school level. Results In our comparison of means across all games played between white and black coaches in the 2019/2020 college football season, we find that black coaches are more heavily penalized than white coaches in terms of both penalties per game as well as penalty yardage. Findings of our longitudinal analysis covering all Division 1 college football teams from the college football playoff era (2014/2015 season until the 2019/2020 season) reveal that teams coached by black coaches receive more penalties per game than do teams coached by non‐black coaches. Conclusion To conclude, we discuss implications for these findings and suggest ameliorative prescriptions to combat bias in college sports. We contextualize our findings within the context of racialized organizational processes in college sports.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew P. Davis & Tom R. Leppard & Alexander B. Kinney, 2022. "A shame of inches: Are teams with black head coaches more heavily penalized in Division 1 college football?," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 103(2), pages 259-273, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:socsci:v:103:y:2022:i:2:p:259-273
    DOI: 10.1111/ssqu.13117
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.13117
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ssqu.13117?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul Holmes, 2011. "Win or Go Home: Why College Football Coaches Get Fired," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 12(2), pages 157-178, April.
    2. Raj Chetty & Nathaniel Hendren & Maggie R Jones & Sonya R Porter, 2020. "Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: an Intergenerational Perspective [“Intergenerational Mobility of Immigrants in the US Over Two Centuries,”]," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(2), pages 711-783.
    3. Janice Fanning Madden & Matthew Ruther, 2009. "Reply to: Differences in the Success of NFL Coaches by Race," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 10(5), pages 543-550, October.
    4. Keith D. Malone & Jim F. Couch & J. Douglas Barrett, 2008. "Differences in the Success of NFL Coaches by Race," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 9(6), pages 663-670, December.
    5. Janice Fanning Madden & Matthew Ruther, 2011. "Has the NFL’s Rooney Rule Efforts ‘‘Leveled the Field’’ for African American Head Coach Candidates?," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 12(2), pages 127-142, April.
    6. Jeffrey M Wooldridge, 2010. "Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 2, volume 1, number 0262232588, December.
    7. Devah Pager, 2003. "The mark of a criminal record," Natural Field Experiments 00319, The Field Experiments Website.
    8. Janice Fanning Madden, 2004. "Differences in the Success of NFL Coaches by Race, 1990-2002," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 5(1), pages 6-19, February.
    9. Joshua Pitts & Daniel Yost, 2013. "Racial Position Segregation in Intercollegiate Football: Do Players become more Racially Segregated as they Transition from High School to College?," The Review of Black Political Economy, Springer;National Economic Association, vol. 40(2), pages 207-230, June.
    10. Harry Edwards, 1979. "Sport Within the Veil: The Triumphs, Tragedies and Challenges of Afro-American Involvement," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 445(1), pages 116-127, September.
    11. Tony Caporale & Trevor Collier, 2015. "To Three or Not to Three?," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 36(1), pages 1-8, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mikaela J. Dufur & Tom R. Leppard & Jonathan A. Jarvis & Kevin M. Shafer, 2024. "Do Status Characteristic-Based Stereotypes Influence Opportunities in Monoracial Settings? The Case of the National Hockey League," SAGE Open, , vol. 14(3), pages 21582440241, August.
    2. Alex Farnell, 2023. "False Start? An Analysis of NFL Penalties With and Without Crowds," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 24(6), pages 695-716, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Salaga, Steven & Juravich, Matthew, 2020. "National Football League head coach race, performance, retention, and dismissal," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(5), pages 978-991.
    2. Nolan Kopkin, 2014. "You’re Fired!: The Impact of Race on the Firing of Black Head Coaches in Major College Football," The Review of Black Political Economy, Springer;National Economic Association, vol. 41(4), pages 373-392, December.
    3. Andrew Garin & Dmitri Koustas & Carl McPherson & Samuel Norris & Matthew Pecenco & Evan K. Rose & Yotam Shem‐Tov & Jeffrey Weaver, 2025. "The Impact of Incarceration on Employment, Earnings, and Tax Filing," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 93(2), pages 503-538, March.
    4. Jeremy J. Foreman & Brian P. Soebbing & Chad S. Seifried, 2019. "The impact of deviance on head coach dismissals and implications of a personal conduct policy," Sport Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(4), pages 491-501, October.
    5. Veronika V. Eberharter, 2018. "Capability Deprivation, and the Intergenerational Transmission of Social Disadvantages—Empirical Evidence from Selected Countries," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 7(12), pages 1-22, December.
    6. Anke Ramakers, 2022. "Secrecy as best policy? Stigma management and employment outcomes after release from prison," The British Journal of Criminology, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, vol. 62(2), pages 501-518.
    7. Brian Volz, 2013. "Race and the Likelihood of Managing in Major League Baseball," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 34(1), pages 30-51, March.
    8. Tomás Cano & Pablo Gracia, 2022. "The Gendered Effects of Divorce on Mothers’ and Fathers’ Time with Children and Children’s Developmental Activities: A Longitudinal Study," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 38(5), pages 1277-1313, December.
    9. Janice Fanning Madden & Matthew Ruther, 2011. "Has the NFL’s Rooney Rule Efforts ‘‘Leveled the Field’’ for African American Head Coach Candidates?," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 12(2), pages 127-142, April.
    10. Mikaela J. Dufur & Tom R. Leppard & Jonathan A. Jarvis & Kevin M. Shafer, 2024. "Do Status Characteristic-Based Stereotypes Influence Opportunities in Monoracial Settings? The Case of the National Hockey League," SAGE Open, , vol. 14(3), pages 21582440241, August.
    11. Mengyuan Zhou, 2022. "Does the Source of Inheritance Matter in Bequest Attitudes? Evidence from Japan," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 43(4), pages 867-887, December.
    12. Campbell, Randall C. & Nagel, Gregory L., 2016. "Private information and limitations of Heckman's estimator in banking and corporate finance research," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 186-195.
    13. Christopher Dick-Sagoe & Ernest Ngeh Tingum & Peter Asare-Nuamah & Denis N. Yuni & Nicholas Baidoo, 2025. "Central transfers and incentives to collect local revenue among the Central Region of Ghana’s local government officials: analysing the flypaper effect," Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 12(1), pages 1-12, December.
    14. Giuliani, Elisa & Martinelli, Arianna & Rabellotti, Roberta, 2016. "Is Co-Invention Expediting Technological Catch Up? A Study of Collaboration between Emerging Country Firms and EU Inventors," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 192-205.
    15. Ilona Babenko & Benjamin Bennett & John M Bizjak & Jeffrey L Coles & Jason J Sandvik, 2023. "Clawback Provisions and Firm Risk," The Review of Corporate Finance Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(2), pages 191-239.
    16. Şahan, Duygu & Tuna, Okan, 2018. "Environmental innovation of transportation sector in OECD countries," Chapters from the Proceedings of the Hamburg International Conference of Logistics (HICL), in: Kersten, Wolfgang & Blecker, Thorsten & Ringle, Christian M. (ed.), The Road to a Digitalized Supply Chain Management: Smart and Digital Solutions for Supply Chain Management. Proceedings of the Hamburg International C, volume 25, pages 157-170, Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH), Institute of Business Logistics and General Management.
    17. Eric Fesselmeyer & Kiat Ying Seah, 2018. "Individual Payoffs and the Effect of Homeownership on Social Capital Investment," Journal of Housing Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(1), pages 59-78, January.
    18. Ruomeng Cui & Dennis J. Zhang & Achal Bassamboo, 2019. "Learning from Inventory Availability Information: Evidence from Field Experiments on Amazon," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(3), pages 1216-1235, March.
    19. Allison Dwyer Emory, 2019. "Unintended Consequences: Protective State Policies and the Employment of Fathers with Criminal Records," Working Papers wp19-04-ff, Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing..
    20. Randall Akee & Maggie R. Jones & Emilia Simeonova, 2025. "Place Based Economic Development and Tribal Casinos," Working Papers 25-24, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:socsci:v:103:y:2022:i:2:p:259-273. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0038-4941 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.