USA TODAY October 3, 2007

The nation’s major college athletics directors are drawing up new guidelines they say should improve college football’s dismal minority hiring record – their answer to the NFL’s Rooney Rule.

“Every struggle for fairness has a turning-point moment, and this is that turning-point moment,” says Cyrus Mehri, aWashington, D.C. attorney who was one of the Rooney Rule architects and now is working with the Division I-A Athletic Directors Association.

Schools will be “encouraged” to adhere to what association executive director Dutch Baughman calls “specified, acceptable standards” that are likely to include the one-minority-candidate minimum.

           
“I’m confident it will be effective,” Baughman says.  “Nobody wants to be called out by his peers.”

           
Says Mehri: “When you change the process, you will change the outcome. …Will we see results in one to two years? No. But we will see results over a period of a few years.”

           
There are seven [minority head coaches] this season, less than 6% in a sport in which 54% of the players are black or other minorities.

           
College leaders, including NCAA President Myles Brand, have been outspoken on the issue but frustrated by the lack of progress. “What’s key is…Dutch and the I-A ADs are taking ownership of this issue,” Mehri says. “They’re driving it. They’re committed to solving it.”

           
The guidelines will apply to football initially, Mehri says, “and then over time will have a ripple effect” on other sports.