The BV Insider: Keeping the Score on Blacks in the Sports Business
By Frank McCoy, Special to AOL BlackVoices
African-American and National Football League history was made twice recently, when the Minnesota Vikings chose Reggie Fowler to buy the team and become its CEO. Ten days before Fowler agreed to pay more than $600 million for the team, Fritz Pollard -- the NFL’s first black player and coach -- was posthumously selected to enter the sport’s hall of fame.
Pollard turned pro in 1919 and coached four NFL teams during the 1920s. Today black men and women not only want to play for, coach or manage teams but they also want to hold executive roles in the operation of collegiate and professional sports.
So who are today's top black sports executives and what is their clout? Robert Johnson, of course, leads the way as the majority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats and the Charlotte Sting with Ed Tapscott running the franchises as president. Then there are rappers Jay-Z and Nelly and other African-American businesspeople with smaller stakes in other professional teams.
If Fowler passes the NFL's financial vetting, he’ll share billing with Johnson. And like Johnson, Fowler may tap black execs such as Kevin Warren and Jim Stapleton, from the Detroit Lions and the Detroit Tigers, respectively, for top spots.
It's easy to point out which industry executives deliver. In football, Gene Upshaw, the executive director of the NFL Players Association, helps maintain a stable labor environment and parity that keeps football the nation’s top sport. But his NBA counterpart, Billy Hunter, ensures an average player salary of about $5 million, a lowly median when compared to the highest paid stars in the league.
It has been a painful season for the NBA, particularly as its hip-hop generation emerges and changes the decorum of the league. But basketball, the blackest of pro sports, has at least seven African-American front-office team execs at or above the vice-president level. Four team presidents control everything from the locker room to the boardroom. Although the fates of Terdema Ussery of the Dallas Mavericks, Billy King of the Philadelphia 76ers, Joe Dumars of the Detroit Pistons, Isiah Thomas of the New York Knicks and Ed Tapscott really takes place in the games not the corner offices.
If the shame of Division I football is that there are only three blacks among 117 coaches, the front offices of NFL teams should share the embarrassment. There is only one powerful black NFL team executive: Ozzie Newsome, general manager of the Baltimore Ravens. That means he can even hire or fire the coach The Detroit Lions’ Martin Mayhew, senior vice president (SVP) and assistant general manager is just a few steps below. Arizona Cardinal’s Rod Graves and the Jacksonville Jaguars’ James Harris have juice, but as VPs, their decisions have lesser import.
At the league level, an NFL duo stands out: Harold R. Henderson is executive vice president for Labor Relations and Art Shell is senior vice president of Football Operations and Development.
As for Major League Baseball, the sport remains a puzzle. While there are declining numbers of African-American players, two blacks work near the league’s summit. Jimmie Lee Solomon Jr. may not be West Indian, as the popular stereotype goes, but he juggles four jobs under the title of SVP of Baseball Operations. He enforces league rules, oversees the minor leagues, supports inner city baseball and runs MLB’s Scouting Bureau. Some supporters think such knowledge makes Solomon a strong candidate to become MLB commissioner someday. Everything Solomon does costs money and that's Jonathan Mariner’s problem. As MLB’s chief financial officer, he works with would-be team owners or current owners who want a loan.
Pro teams need players and most players have agents. Two of the highest profile agents in sports today are Aaron Goodwin, representing LeBron James and Bill Duffy who handles Carmelo Anthony and Yao Ming. They are probably two among the highest paid agents in all of American sports.
An agent's ability to attract stellar amateurs relies upon his connections to corporate executives who can initiate campaigns that transform players into icons. The black first-among-equals in that arena is Trevor Davis, corporate vice president of Global Management for Nike.
Among decision makers who affect collegiate players, two names stand out. There are seven black Division One athletic directors, but there is only one Mike Garrett. He hired Pete Carroll, who isn’t black, to mold the University of Southern California’s (USC) football team into a two-time national collegiate football champion. And last January, USC’s African-American host at the FedEx Orange Bowl was Keith Tribble, the CEO of the Orange Bowl Committee.
The color of the escalator for a sports executive's ascent is green -- not black or white. And at most colleges and universities, it is impossible to force change. Presidents and athletic directors bow to wealthy contributors. Most times, if those people want things to change; they will change.
In pro sports, things are different. Fans of every description fill the seats, watch the contests and buy the league products worldwide. And when a critical mass of black (current or retired) pros or fans are unhappy, sometimes change occurs -- not because a league or an owner desires it but because it makes business sense to do so.
Seventy years ago, Fritz Pollard had to be a smart individual to play and later coach in a virtually all-white NFL. Interestingly, Pollard’s given first and middle names are Frederick Douglass, the name of the 19th century firebrand who, of course, never heard of pro sports. His goal was to see black men and women treated as human beings,not paid entertainment.
But, the late political agitator’s credo, "If there is no struggle, there is no progress," still rings true and should inspire would-be and current African-American sports executives to never give up.
About the Author
Frank McCoy is a freelance business writer living in the Washington, D.C. area.
March 7, 2005