By Cort Street | @cort_street
Sports Capital Journalism Program
DANIA BEACH, Fla. – In a college football season that has become synonymous with uncertainty and change, the College Football Playoff Semifinal at the Capital One Orange Bowl has provided a matchup that is rooted in history. The Penn State Nittany Lions and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, two giants that have defined the tradition and framework of college football as it is known today, will play a pivotal role in writing yet another chapter in the sport’s history.
The head coach that prevails – whether it be Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman or Penn State’s James Franklin – will be the first Black head coach to ever compete in the national championship game.
“It’s a great honor to be mentioned in this position,” said Freeman Wednesday morning. “It’s a great reminder that you are a representation for so many others that look like you and I don’t take that for granted. …The guys in our program and even my own kids can realize, ‘Don’t put a ceiling on what you can be, and what you can do.’”
The two coaches’ momentous position highlights a more concerning exclusion of Black head coaches in college football that has permeated the sport for over a century. Black men hold just seven of the 69 major conference head coaching jobs in college football and only sixteen of the 134 head coaching positions available at the FBS level despite the fact that 48% of all football players at Division I schools are Black athletes, according to the website NCAA.org.
The sport has seen some improvements in opportunities for Black head coaches in recent years, though, and Franklin recalled 2007 as a pivotal year for creating change in how Black head coaches were viewed in football as a whole.
“I remember being the offensive coordinator at Kansas State in 2007 and working for an African American football head coach in Ron Prince,” Franklin said. “I remember that year, the Super Bowl between Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith, there was just a lot of talk within the profession with two African American coaches coaching in the Super Bowl and that was a big moment, we felt like that was gonna have an opportunity to maybe create some change or create some opportunities for guys that had earned the right to sit in those types of rooms.”
Franklin believes that like the 2007 Super Bowl – which also took place in Miami – his matchup against Freeman has the ability to create change in the opportunities that are available for Black head coaches.
“At that time, there were only six [Black] coaches in 127 Division I schools,” Franklin said, “and now there’s sixteen coaches of color in these positions. I do think [the 2007 Super Bowl] had an impact, and I do hope a game like ours can have an impact, and really just looking for an opportunity for guys to get in front of search firms and athletic directors and get opportunities that they earned. I don’t take it lightly, I really don’t.”
Floyd Keith, a former head coach at Howard University and the University of Rhode Island, has been a key advocate of advancement opportunities for coaches of color as former executive director of Black Coaches and Administrators. Keith believes it is significant that Freeman and Franklin have managed to not just have success but to achieve greatness at such historic, elevated programs.
“You’ve got to be at a program today that allows for your ability to compete,” Keith said, highlighting the increased challenges presented by Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals and the transfer portal. “The opportunity to compete is really somewhat controlled by the amount of money and impact you have to fulfill your program needs. It’s nice to be named head coach, but to be national champion, you have to have an investment. It’s refreshing to see black head coaches get opportunities at programs like Notre Dame and Penn State….
“If you took a picture of [Freeman and Franklin] this week, you had better print it out and frame it, because this is historic.”
Freeman’s excitement for the opportunity was clear as well, but he believed any conversation about the historic undertaking should come second to an acknowledgement of the people who gave him a chance to be in this position.
“You don’t want to take away from how we got to this point, I’m talking about your team and everyone that put the work in to get your program to this point and those that have come before you,” he said. “There’s a lot of people in this coaching profession that have come way before me that have given me this opportunity. But the other person that I think deserves a lot of credit is our former Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick. He’s the one – with our President John Jenkins at the time – that made the decision to hire a guy that was 35 years old and had never been a head coach. And so [they] deserve a lot of the credit for having courage and for making the decision to hire me at that time.”
Franklin and Freeman have taken drastically different paths to the prestigious opportunity they are now faced with at the Orange Bowl. Franklin’s career has represented a long, difficult path to the top – a rigorous course that took him sixteen years from the time he entered the coaching landscape in 1995 to being given his first head coaching opportunity at Vanderbilt in 2011. The 52-year-old head coach has been criticized for a 1-14 record at Penn State against top-five opponents, but the university has continued to believe in him as the leader of its program – a belief he has fulfilled in an already historic 2024 season.
Freeman’s road to the top was rigorous in its own right, but as Freeman points out, the belief that he was given when he was handed the reins of the Notre Dame program was nearly unprecedented. While Franklin was forced to prove himself as a head coach before becoming the head coach of Penn State, Freeman was hired at Notre Dame with no previous head coaching experience, a testament to the impact of Franklin and other Black head coach’s success in creating opportunities for the future generation.
“Coaches of color that happen to have success impact the opportunity for others, you open doors because of your success,” Keith said. “It will always be a winning formula that makes the way for opportunity, because people are going to try to duplicate it.”
Keith referred to the impact made by Deion Sanders of the University of Colorado. “I don’t think you see that many head coaches with his background at that level,” Keith said, “and now he’s paved the way for Michael Vick at Norfolk State.”
Despite their differences, Freeman and Franklin were ultimately united in their stance that putting their team first was their main focus despite the historic nature of their accomplishments.
“It’s not about me,” Freeman said. “It’s not about the head coach, it’s about us. More than anything, I want an opportunity to achieve team glory with this program, that’s what’s important. I’m just obsessed and so focused on doing whatever it takes to help us achieve team glory. It’s not about recognition, it’s not about being the first to do something, it’s about [having] a chance to achieve team glory here in the Orange Bowl, and we’re gonna focus on the preparation that it takes to do that.”
It will be Martin Luther King Jr. Day when the National Championship kicks off in Atlanta on January 20, a pointed ode to a man who spent his life creating opportunities for future generations of African Americans. No matter the outcome of the championship game, history will be made, and both Freeman and Franklin know that their presence there will have a chance to usher in a new era of opportunity for deserving Black coaches all over the country.
