Gill joins small group
AMHERST, N.Y. – Turner Gill would rather not talk about race. The first-year football coach at Buffalo would like to be considered “just another guy.”
In a perfect world, Gill could devote all his time to the challenge of reviving a program among the nation’s worst – 10-69 since entering Division I-A in 1999.
But he understands that’s not reality.
The University at Buffalo has emerged as the nation’s athletic model for racial diversity: the first Division I-A program to have blacks holding three high-profile posts. Gill joins athletic director, Warde Manuel, the former Michigan athletic administrator who was hired a year ago, and Reggie Witherspoon, who has turned around a struggling men’s basketball program since being named coach in 1999.
Hired in December, the former star Nebraska quarterback and Heisman Trophy finalist is under the microscope at the Mid-American Conference program.
“I’m in a situation here where I know people are watching me,” Gill said. “And I understand the standpoint – the angle of a reporter, how you want to push it. Because you can push the story how you want.”
Gill joins a select group – led by Tyrone Willingham at Washington — of just five black head coaches among 119 Division I-A programs.
But it’s not just the media taking interest – and Gill understands that, too. The Black Coaches Association and the NCAA also are touting Buffalo’s story.
“The lack of racial diversity in the ranks of Division I head-football coaching is an abysmal failure,” said Charlotte Westerhaus, NCAA vice president for diversity inclusion.
It won’t change until school presidents insist on opening their interview processes to minorities, she said. It also falls on current coaches to hire qualified blacks as coordinators, then tutor and promote them into head-coaching positions. Those are among the recommendations expected to be included in an upcoming NCAA diversity committee report.
In the late 1990s, there was an all-time high of eight black head football coaches. The number dropped to three last season before Gill and Norries Wilson, at Columbia, were hired.
“It will take not only the will to do it, but more emphasis on the way,” Westerhaus said. “And there are athletic directors such as Warde Manuel and presidents who have done it and know the way.”
Gill, 43, long ago learned the importance of racial diversity. He remembers his parents’ advice when, entering fourth grade, he was bused to an integrated school in Fort Worth, Texas.
“Don’t look at this as a negative,” Gill was told. “It’s something for you to now have an opportunity to grow, to meet people and prepare yourself for the future by being involved with people of another race.”
It’s why race isn’t a dominant issue for Gill.
“This is who I am. I’m African American,” he said when asked if there will come a day when he’s not identified as a black coach. “But you have to make that decision to stop saying that, ‘He’s a black coach or he’s this,’ not me.”
Gill, though, does know what his hiring represents.
“What happens here in the future, none of us know,” Gill said. “But I think at this point in time, it gives people hope. And that’s the way I look at it, period. It’s hope.”