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

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 onfield 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 twostep 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.

False Start? An Analysis of NFL Penalties With and Without Crowds

“…In particular, penalties such as holding, interference, and unnecessary roughness, are far more likely to be called near midfield, but only near one team's side line. Other determinants shown to be important are warmer weather (Craig et al, 2016), off-the-field arrest records (Ge, 2019; Leal et al, 2017), the race of the player (Eiserloh et al, 2020), and even the race of the Head Coach (Davis et al, 2022).…”