Pro Day: Turn the College Athletics Bus Around

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The wheels on the athletic director bus go ‘round and ‘round, with a spate of hirings at Minnesota, Boston College and Nebraska headlining the new academic year. But rather than making forward progress in terms of increasing the ranks of female administrators, the proverbial bus continued its static loop. While chancellors and presidents overseeing each of these institutions paid lip service to the need for more diversity in leadership roles, their choices reflected the white masculinity that pervades the sport industry’s upper echelons.

This issue is a perennial subject, but with recent and forecasted departures of female athletic directors at Arizona State and Nevada, current Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) ranks in particular will thin to three individuals by the end of the 2012-13 academic year. According to the 2001 Race and Gender Report Card published by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida, there were just five female athletic directors with oversight of both men’s and women’s athletics. In over a decade little has changed.

Numerous reasons have been posited for the paucity of female athletic directors at all levels of intercollegiate athletics. Some say women lack the skills and knowledge of the game to successfully manage the finances and egos associated with a big time football program. The University of Texas-San Antonio’s Lynn Hickey and Georgia State’s Cheryl Levick offer striking counterexamples to this argument, overseeing the development of completely new squads and the transition to FBS conferences during their respective tenures. Or how about the belief that female leaders self-limit themselves, feeling satisfied to reach the senior woman administrator position. In attendance at the 2012 Women’s Leadership Symposium in Boston six weeks ago, I witnessed a roomful of eager young professionals raise their hands in the affirmative when asked if they aspired to become athletic directors.

Perhaps the truest explanation lies in the simple fact that managers tend to promote persons with characteristics and appearances most similar to their own, a theory organizational behaviorists term homologous reproduction. Given that 81.7 percent of university presidents, 95.8 percent of FBS athletic directors and 100 percent of conference commissioners are men according to the latest TIDES data from 2010-11, it makes sense that even the most enlightened leaders in college athletics (and there are plenty!) select similar hires. It is our natural tendency to surround ourselves with like peers, yet when translated into an office or athletic department, the effects of homologous reproduction can hamper change.

To be sure, the NCAA and partners such as the National Association of Collegiate Women Athletics Administrators (NACWAA) and the Alliance of Women Coaches provide laudable support for growing the pipeline of future leaders through mentoring and institutes. Yet homologous reproduction theory would dictate that change must also be imposed from above, otherwise the landscape of intercollegiate athletics will simply be replicated continuously into the future. Rather than limiting hiring committees to commissioners, presidents and key boosters – demographics that are all overrepresented by white males – why not include a cross-section of faculty and student-athletes? These cohorts include higher proportions of female and ethnic minorities than the current leadership in college athletics. The NCAA and its member institutions tout the importance of the “student-athlete voice.” If athletic directors truly advocate for all stakeholders in the department – and not simply revenue-sport coaches or wealthy donors – it would only make sense for that individual to be selected by a representative and diverse group. Think of these reconstituted hiring committees as another “bus” driving college athletics forward to a more diverse future. To paraphrase management guru Jim Collins, you’ve got to get the right people on the bus for any meaningful change to occur. 

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