College football loves its pageantry. The marching bands, the hype videos, the sold-out stadiums drenched in school colors. Every Saturday, millions of fans tune in to watch a sport that calls itself the soul of American tradition and yet, in 2025, that tradition is still segregated by power.

Because in over 150 years of NCAA Division I football, no Black head coach has ever won a national championship. Not one. Not ever.

That’s not a coincidence. That’s a system working exactly as designed.

The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (JBHE) recently reminded us of that hard truth, a truth that gets buried under highlight reels and recruitment rankings. Black athletes have been the engine of college football for generations. We fill the rosters, dominate the draft boards, and keep the NCAA’s billion-dollar machine humming. But when it comes to who gets to lead, to call plays, to run the show? The sidelines are still overwhelmingly white.

And that silence on the sideline — that’s not just a personnel issue. That’s a legacy issue.

Look around. Out of 133 Division I FBS programs, barely 10 percent have Black head coaches. The numbers get even thinner when you zoom in on the powerhouses: Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio State, LSU. The same programs built on the backs, brilliance, and broken bodies of Black players still haven’t trusted a Black man to lead them to a title.

They’ll put us in their commercials, but not in their control rooms.

They’ll chant our names on Saturdays, but not sign our contracts on Mondays.

It’s the same plantation logic — new stadium, same structure.

You can’t call it a pipeline if it keeps dumping us out before the top.

We know how this game goes. When a white coach wins, he’s “a genius.” When a Black coach wins, he “motivates well.” When a white coach loses, he’s “rebuilding.” When a Black coach loses, he’s “not ready.”

The pattern is so predictable it’s practically policy.

Take Willie Taggart. Hired at Oregon in 2017. Winning record. Fired after one season. Kevin Sumlin? Turned Texas A&M into a national contender; dismissed and replaced without a second thought. Charlie Strong? Fired from Texas after three seasons despite inheriting a program already in shambles. Meanwhile, white coaches with mediocre résumés get recycled like plastic bottles; cushy jobs, endless second chances, glowing write-ups about their “leadership potential.”

Because potential, in this sport, is still color-coded.

Even Deion Sanders, Coach Prime himself, can’t escape the double standard. When he shakes up the system, they call it arrogance. When white coaches do it, it’s innovation. When he turns Colorado into a cultural phenomenon, the headlines call it a circus. Translation: how dare a confident Black man make college football look cooler than the men who built it?

They want our swagger, not our strategy. They’ll take our talent, not our authority.

That’s why this isn’t just a sports story. It’s a mirror of every corporate, creative, and political space in America where Black brilliance gets mined for profit but never promoted for power.

College football has always been a business that sells the illusion of meritocracy. “Work hard, play well, and the opportunities will come.” But the truth is, the ladder to leadership has been greased. Athletic directors, boosters, hiring committees — all of them overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male, and overwhelmingly risk-averse when it comes to trusting Black leadership.

They’ll tell you they’re just looking for “the right fit.” But “fit” is just code for “familiar.” And familiar almost always means white.

That’s how bias hides in plain sight — not in slurs, but in comfort zones. Not in hate, but in habit.

And let’s not forget how much money is at stake. College football is a $4 billion business, and those head coaching jobs come with multimillion-dollar salaries, endorsement deals, country-club access, and a level of influence that stretches far beyond the field. This is about economic power. About visibility. About who gets to represent authority in America’s favorite game.

So, yes, the players are Black, the fans are diverse, and the product is global. But the power structure? Still white, still closed, still pretending to be neutral.

And the media helps it along. Sports journalism, for all its supposed progressiveness, still tiptoes around race when it comes to coaching conversations. You’ll see endless think pieces about “offensive philosophies” and “program culture,” but almost nothing about how race defines opportunity in this sport. When Black coaches get fired, the coverage is clinical. When white coaches get fired, it’s tragic.

Black coaches are expected to overperform just to get a seat and then outperform just to keep it.

But maybe the most dangerous part of all this is the message it sends to the next generation of Black athletes. These young men are raised on slogans about leadership, teamwork, and perseverance, yet they rarely see someone who looks like them calling the shots. They’re taught to dream big, but not too big. To aim for greatness, but not governance.

That absence of representation doesn’t just limit careers; it limits imagination.

Because how do you picture yourself as a leader in a system that’s never let your people lead?

It’s not that Black coaches lack talent. It’s that the institutions lack courage. And as long as the gatekeepers refuse to change, the myth of fairness will keep covering up the math of exclusion.

This isn’t a merit problem, it’s a mirror problem. And the reflection is ugly.

The irony is that the very qualities white institutions claim to love about Black players — resilience, innovation, confidence are the same qualities they fear in Black coaches. Leadership from a Black man, especially one unafraid to challenge the status quo, still reads as “threat.” It’s why Deion Sanders’ sunglasses became a national debate, while Nick Saban’s temper is just called “passion.”

The bias isn’t subtle. It’s institutionalized swagger control.

And yet, every year, we show up. We build programs, mentor players, and redefine excellence with little credit and less security. The system runs on our energy while locking us out of its legacy.

But here’s the thing about ceilings: they crack. Always.

The generation coming up behind Deion, Locksley, and Franklin is sharper, bolder, louder. They’ve seen what’s possible when visibility meets disruption. They’re not asking for permission; they’re demanding a platform. They know the game, and they’re not afraid to rewrite the playbook.

Because history doesn’t belong to those who play it safe. It belongs to those who play to win, even when the field is tilted.

So the next time you hear a commentator wax poetic about “the great American game,” remember this: greatness doesn’t mean much if it only looks one way.

College football loves its heroes. But until it starts crowning Black head coaches the way it crowns Black quarterbacks, it’s not progress...it’s performance.

And when those trophies finally start changing hands, it won’t just be a win for a team. It’ll be a reckoning for a system.

Because when they coach the sidelines, we know who’s writing the history — and it’s long past time we rewrote it ourselves.