In his second year at VCU, Jeff Capel interviewed for two high-major jobs, one of which was offering him a lot of money. He had just taken the Rams to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 1996. His name was hot, and conventional wisdom was not the only advice suggesting it was time to pounce. When Capel got home from his interview, his father, Jeff II, was sitting in his driveway. “Son, you have to take this job,’’ he said. “We don’t get these kinds of opportunities.’’ By “we” he meant Black coaches. Four years later, George Raveling told Paul Hewitt the same thing about a Notre Dame opening that Hewitt didn’t really want to pursue.
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Their insistence, then, made sense. The wheels of progress inched slowly along, and men like Capel II and Raveling rarely were even given a chance. These days, the wheels appear to finally be rolling, nowhere more than in a league that hired its first Black coach only 37 years ago. In the ACC, nine of 15 men’s basketball teams are led by Black coaches, the most by both number and percentage of any power conference in the country. Five (Capel at Pitt, Hubert Davis at North Carolina, Adrian Autry at Syracuse, Micah Shrewsberry at Notre Dame and Kenny Payne at Louisville) are the first Black head coaches of their respective programs. Just one ACC school — Duke — has never had a Black coach.
Autry, Shrewsberry and Georgia Tech’s Damon Stoudamire were all hired during this spring’s coaching carousel. Payne is entering Year 2, while Davis and Boston College’s Earl Grant are going into Year 3.
Celebrating the diversifying statistics, though, is the easy part. Where it gets tricky is figuring out what to do next. There is a desperate and understandable urge to wish the numbers would no longer be newsworthy. “I’m looking forward to the day where the number of Black coaches in a league or not in a league is not an issue,’’ Florida State coach Leonard Hamilton says. “I’m hoping that we find a way where this is not necessarily a story because everyone is treated the same.’’
But there is also a recognition that the ACC’s current success not only doesn’t guarantee it will spread elsewhere; it doesn’t guarantee staying power within its own ranks. In 2005-06, seven of the then-12 ACC coaches were Black. By 2020-21, the number had dwindled to three — Kevin Keatts at NC State and Hamilton. “I think it becomes a non-story when race is no longer a story in America,’’ says Capel, who is now at Pitt. “And if history has shown us anything, I’m not sure that will ever be the case.’’
Leonard Hamilton chuckles when he is told that he is something of the conference’s wise old owl. He is, and he knows it. At 74, he is not only the oldest coach in the ACC; he is now, with the retirement of Jim Boeheim, the longest-tenured. Hamilton’s own life story could be used as a guidebook for young Black coaches. The first Black player at Tennessee-Martin, he also was the first Black assistant at Kentucky and now is an elder statesman backed by success, and not just merely tenure. In 21 years at Florida State, he’s had just two losing seasons.
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But Hamilton also has long been a lead-by-example man, raised to believe in the quiet dignity of perseverance. He’s reluctant to become something he’s not — a bellicose blowhard — simply because he’s been around so long. “That’s what’s happening in our society,’’ he says. “Everyone has an opinion. Not everyone has the facts.’’ The facts, he believes, are quite simple. There is history at play here, and it needs to be recognized.
What is happening in the ACC today in his opinion began with Dean Smith’s decision to sit alongside a black theology student at a segregated Chapel Hill restaurant, and later bring Charlie Scott to campus as the first Black athlete in the ACC. The same rules apply now as they did then. “Attention is given to things when it’s important to somebody who is important,’’ Hamilton says. “It was important to Dean Smith, and because he was so respected, change happened. Now people are making it important again.’’
There has been, no one argues, a concerted effort to reconsider — or perhaps more accurately properly consider — race in hiring practices since the social justice movement empowered by the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The outpouring of grief and anger from all walks of life, but in this case among athletes, offered a much-needed day of reckoning to understand how frustrated Black men and women felt about how they’ve been treated, mistreated and too often, ignored.
The outgrowth of some of that is alive and vibrant in the ACC. “I feel like in the last couple of years people really started to see the BS,’’ Capel says. “The people who are trying to divide, people don’t want to be a part of that anymore. I think that has something to do with what’s going on in our league.’’
Athletics has long been championed as the one place in the world where color lines were most easily blurred. Within the boundaries of the locker room, Black and White mixed together in pursuit of success. It was when playing careers ended that the lines were redrawn. “Good enough to play for you, to bring all the success to your university, but not good enough to coach your team,” Hewitt says.
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When programs made new hires and “stayed in the family,’’ that typically meant assistant coaches — most of them White — rather than the players themselves. “There was a lot of disappointment there for a long time,’’ Hewitt says. “That was a real sticking point, and justifiably so.’’
Yet among the changeovers in the ACC: Autry, the record-setting Syracuse point guard hired to replace the retiring Boeheim; Payne, who won a national championship at Louisville, now in charge of the Cardinals; and perhaps most notably, Final Four participant Davis the boss at North Carolina. No doubt some of that is following the trend. College basketball is nothing if not a follower, and the ACC is merely next in line behind Indiana with Mike Woodson, Michigan with Juwan Howard and Memphis with Penny Hardaway.
But the inherent message the hiring sends is important — not just to other former players, but the people in uniform right now. “You’re good enough,’’ Hewitt says. “We’re not just going to use you as a basketball player. We think you can do this job.’’
Now the tricky part: making it stick.
“In retrospect, it may have been an impossible situation for Bob.’’ That’s how former Maryland chancellor John Slaughter described the “opportunity” given to Bob Wade in 1986. A Black high school coach, Wade was hired the day before practice began after Lefty Driesell stepped down amid the fallout from Len Bias’ death from a cocaine overdose. Wade’s tenure lasted less than two years, done in no small part by his own doings — Wade was eventually accused of 18 NCAA violations — but also largely because he was set up to fail.
So, too, were so many Black coaches who followed him in the ACC. Often given the keys to a rebuild instead of handed the keys to the kingdom, they too frequently were afforded too little time to execute their plans. Hired to replace Seth Greenberg, Virginia Tech gave former assistant James Johnson just two years before chasing Buzz Williams.
In 2017, Keatts was handed a proud NC State program in need of some rehab and a year later, Capel was tasked with the same job at Pitt. Neither succeeded immediately. Yet faced with the normal outcry from angry fans and disenfranchised boosters, neither administration caved. The rewards for both finally came due this year, with the Wolfpack and the Panthers finally making it back to the NCAA Tournament.
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That is not necessarily a racial issue — “In today’s business, no matter what color you are, you only have a certain number of years to get good,’’ Keatts says — but a cycle that so rarely afforded Black coaches any top-tier jobs but was far more willing to spit them out quickly only added to the drop in diversity numbers.
Many of the ACC’s new Black coaches are in similar spots. Payne took over a Louisville team in near shambles, done in by years of NCAA investigations. Notre Dame has one winning ACC season in the last six years and Micah Shrewsberry takes over a team that went 3-17 in league play this past year. Syracuse has some NCAA appearances on its resume, but the Orange is not the same strong program it was certainly in Autry’s playing days. Stoudamire is in much the same situation at Georgia Tech. And the move to the ACC has been nothing short of a program killer at Boston College, where Earl Grant is in search of the Eagles’ first winning season since 2018, let alone their first NCAA bid since 2009.
“And then you look at Hubert,’’ Capel says. “It’s not like he has it easy because they’re good, either. All of these jobs come with their own challenges. You have to put your head down, surround yourself with good people and hope you’ve got good people in leadership positions who will actually support you, and not just hire you.’’
Here’s the reality: There are 76 “power” conference jobs in college basketball. Of the 24 Black head coaches holding those positions, 15 compete in two leagues, the ACC and the Big East. Progress elsewhere remains slow (three Black coaches in each of the Big 12, Big Ten and SEC) if not entirely stalled. The Pac-12 does not have a single Black coach. Basketball is significantly better than football — just 14 of the 133 FBS jobs belong to Black coaches. Of the 58 job changes in college basketball this year, 21 went to Black men.
But the sport — even the ACC — has been here before. “I’ve always wanted to look at myself as a coach — not a Black coach, just a coach,’’ Keatts says. “I wish we could get to the point where we stop looking at the color of a coach’s skin. I wish what the ACC has done wasn’t such a big deal but until it’s not, we have to keep talking about it.’’
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; Photos: Michael Hickey, Ryan Hunt, Grant Halverson / Getty Images)