Sylvester Croom: An End and, Maybe, a Beginning?

On Saturday, just as fans tuned in to watch a murderer’s row of college football rivalry games, a breaking story drew viewers’ attention away from the action on the gridiron. Sylvester Croom, head coach at Mississippi State University, had resigned in the wake of a 45-0 loss to Ole Miss in the Egg Bowl. Of course, November ‘tis the season for football coach firings and resignations across the nation, but this one marked the end of an historic tenure. When he took over at MSU in 2004, Croom became the first African American head coach in the Southeastern Conference.

His was a distinguished pedigree. A preacher’s kid from Tuscaloosa, Croom became an All-American center and team captain at the University of Alabama while playing for the legendary Paul “Bear” Bryant. After a single year with the New Orleans Saints he returned to Bama as one of Bryant’s assistants, staying at his alma mater for 11 seasons and coaching on two national championship teams. Seventeen seasons in the NFL built on his college experience. When Alabama sought a successor to Mike Dubose in 2003, Croom was a finalist, but his resume and being one of Bear’s boys was not enough. Bama hired Mike Shula and fired him four years later. Mississippi State gave Croom an opportunity in 2004 as it sought a leader for a program in shambles after Jackie Sherrill’s antics led to NCAA sanctions. A generation ago, such a move would have been unheard of at a school in the football-crazed South. Croom’s undergraduate degree is in history, but he consistently downplayed his role in breaking down the racial barriers in SEC coaching ranks. He told an interviewer just after he took the MSU job, "I'm just a guy trying to do the best job he can. It just happens that the timing of my hiring puts me in that position. I don't see myself that way. If other people perceive that, so be it. I'm just trying to do the best I can here." Despite his reluctance to be labeled a pioneer, Croom was forced into that role. His teams drew attention not just for playing in the nation’s toughest conference, but also for being the first led by a man who was both a product of the civil rights movement and who bore the burden of being first. Their success or failure was judged in light of both who their coach was and what their coach was.

But coaching football is about winning, and a 21-38 record won’t cut it at a big time program, or at Mississippi State. Conference coach of the year honors and a victory in the Liberty Bowl in 2007 are dim memories for fans and administrators whose demands grow increasingly unrealistic.

By all accounts Croom is a class act, and the wall of silence which follows an incident like this means we may never know if Croom was forced out, or if he decided that he had done all he could do in Starkville to turn the Bulldogs into a competitive team in the meat grinder that is SEC football. Croom may get another chance to coach big time college football, and he should. But what about other African American coaches? Croom’s resignation means that there are only three African American head coaches in the NCAA’s Bowl Subdivision. A friend of mine and I have often pondered why such highly successful African American assistant coaches such as Florida’s Charlie Strong seem to be passed over for opportunities for which they seem so well suited. ESPN Analyst Mark May had a good point when he said that African American coaches, with the exception of Tyrone Willingham, are getting jobs but not the type of jobs that set them up for success. The biggest question left by Croom’s departure is will his time at MSU be viewed as a failed experiment? Or will it be seen, as I hope it will be, as the beginning of an era where coaches are judged less by the color of their skin and more by their abilities? Croom and MSU took an important first step. Let's see how long it takes before the head coaching ranks look more like the teams they coach.