STrib: With all-white leadership, Gophers athletic department under fresh scrutiny to improve diversity; Coyle has hired 11 white head coaches

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BarnBurner said:
"The more research on Gates I am doing however is starting to bring him in the same level."
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Go listen to the Chris Oliver podcast with Gates. I liked Smith the most, but have been following him since he was at USD. I just have more information on him. I had none on Gates until this season. I am relegated to listening and judging coaches on podcasts/interviews/articles and watching them on TV. I don't get to sit in the interview room and I don't get to talk to other coaching counterparts to hear the whole story. Gates is really well put together when you listen to him talk about vision, solution focused thinking, and teaching.
 

Seeing how Gates' wife works at BC currently, my hopes for him here are being lit aflame.

Dude isn't going to pass up working at the same place as his wife in the ACC, to uproot his whole family.
 

Otis said:
Seeing how Gates' wife works at BC currently, my hopes for him here are being lit aflame.

Dude isn't going to pass up working at the same place as his wife in the ACC, to uproot his whole family.
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That would make sense but we don't know the dynamics of the family and work situation. We can be pretty sure that the increase in Gates' compensation by coming here would very likely more than make up for the combined compensation of both spouses now. We also don't know how she feels about her current location and job. Maybe she would like a change.

I also wonder if the Tubby optics would have any influence. This was a black coach with a fairly decent record who was fired after six years while the white coaches who preceded and followed him were given 8 years with significantly poorer records.
 

Otis said:
Seeing how Gates' wife works at BC currently, my hopes for him here are being lit aflame.

Dude isn't going to pass up working at the same place as his wife in the ACC, to uproot his whole family.
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If all the steam is true about which schools are looking at Gates as a potential hire it appears he will have his pick of jobs.

If Gates does have his pick of jobs based on personal factors it probably does make the Gopher job less attractive. If he is the guy Coyle wants he needs to make an offer that is too hard to turn down.
 
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Otis said:
Let's try not to group ourselves with those colleges shall we.

Minneapolis is an incredibly diverse town and if you are like me and have walked through the city, has a "Black Lives Matter" sign in front of about 2 out of every 3 houses.

Here, where I live in Maryland, our house and another are the only houses in our 350 house development with that sign.

Minnesota, I assume, looks at coaches with racial blinders on. they will hire the best coach period!

Just because at this point in time there are no people of color coaching at the U, by no means does it mean the university excludes any races from consideration.
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I'm not sure how supporting a marxist organization plays into this hire.
 


Otis said:
Seeing how Gates' wife works at BC currently, my hopes for him here are being lit aflame.

Dude isn't going to pass up working at the same place as his wife in the ACC, to uproot his whole family.
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We'll find out who’s wearing the pants in that family.
 

Moonlight said:
stalled out at a certain level due to lack of opportunity. The standard aren't being relaxed, they're being shifte
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MennoSota said:
I'm not sure how supporting a marxist organization plays into this hire.
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Man I can't anymore. People with those signs are supporting the message not the organization
 






GopherPlaya said:
Man I can't anymore. People with those signs are supporting the message not the organization
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Thank you Playa. My son got that sign at Chicago and 48th. Nothing but love for the families of those that were wronged there.
 

cjbfbp said:
That would make sense but we don't know the dynamics of the family and work situation. We can be pretty sure that the increase in Gates' compensation by coming here would very likely more than make up for the combined compensation of both spouses now. We also don't know how she feels about her current location and job. Maybe she would like a change.

I also wonder if the Tubby optics would have any influence. This was a black coach with a fairly decent record who was fired after six years while the white coaches who preceded and followed him were given 8 years with significantly poorer records.
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Tubby should have been fired when he did. He was phoning it in at the end. He had a decent run, but he deserved to be let go. Pitino should have been fired years ago. He was bailed out last year due to Covid, which gave him an extra year. The situations are extremely different, and to boil it down to race alone is disingenuous at best and harmful at worst. I don't agree with Coyle holding onto Pitino as long as he did, but I do have faith that he can make a good hire. I'm pretty sure Coyle wasn't sitting there thinking, "man, I want to let Pitino go, but he's white, so he should probably give him more latitude than my predecessor gave the previous black coach".

If Gates or another POC is the best man for the job, then hire him. But you can be guaranteed that the first rumblings will be if he's ultimately fired is "the U is evil because they're firing a black person because of race". It's not fair to the school, nor the coach. Sports are great because more so than a lot of other industries, you are judged mostly because of your RESULTS. Opportunities may not be the same, but once you get your opportunity, you are almost always judged on your merits.
 





GopherPlaya said:
IF that is true then we wouldn't be having this discussion because there would be a lot more black people hired and the data doesn't back that up
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Do you work in corporate America? I work in a very white male dominated industry. The number of women and POC graduating from school in this field is low. In regards to POC specifically, there are so few available around here, my firm has taken to hiring interns from southern HBCU schools while they're in school in hopes that we could convince one of them to move up here for a job when they're done. We also let them work remotely, which we didn't allow anybody else in the firm to do, prior to COVID. They have never done anything like that for anybody else. We hire locally (don't advertise or market outside the 5 state area), as it's way cheaper and easier, and way more likely the person hangs around. If you're pulling people nationally, the likelihood they ultimately leave your organization and go back home is high. We did have one black male who went to school here but was from Maryland. He left us to go back home. Our industry is starved for POC, and I'm willing to bet if you're a POC you could probably go into any firm in the state and be hired almost immediately. The issue is way deeper than the professional level. It's down at the middle school/high school/undergrad/grad school level.
 

scools12 said:
If all the steam is true about which schools are looking at Gates as a potential hire it appears he will have his pick of jobs.

If Gates does have his pick of jobs based on personal factors it probably does make the Gopher job less attractive. If he is the guy Coyle wants he needs to make an offer that is too hard to turn down.
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He now works in Cleveland and she is in Boston. She was in boston while he was in Tallahassee. Minneapolis and Tallahassee are same distance to Boston. They will have plenty of options to look at. She has always been on the East Coast so that may be a factor. She's from Delaware. $$ talks however.
 

forever a gopher said:
Do you work in corporate America? I work in a very white male dominated industry. The number of women and POC graduating from school in this field is low. In regards to POC specifically, there are so few available around here, my firm has taken to hiring interns from southern HBCU schools while they're in school in hopes that we could convince one of them to move up here for a job when they're done. We also let them work remotely, which we didn't allow anybody else in the firm to do, prior to COVID. They have never done anything like that for anybody else. We hire locally (don't advertise or market outside the 5 state area), as it's way cheaper and easier, and way more likely the person hangs around. If you're pulling people nationally, the likelihood they ultimately leave your organization and go back home is high. We did have one black male who went to school here but was from Maryland. He left us to go back home. Our industry is starved for POC, and I'm willing to bet if you're a POC you could probably go into any firm in the state and be hired almost immediately. The issue is way deeper than the professional level. It's down at the middle school/high school/undergrad/grad school level.
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I have worked at Cargill and Best Buy and I am a person of color and there have been work to increase the amount of people of color in the workplace but plenty of it has to do with people pointing out POC not being hired in some of these industries. My point is to say people are just hiring people because they are black isn't true when I know friends with business degrees working jobs that they are overqualified for
 

forever a gopher said:
Tubby should have been fired when he did. He was phoning it in at the end. He had a decent run, but he deserved to be let go. Pitino should have been fired years ago. He was bailed out last year due to Covid, which gave him an extra year. The situations are extremely different, and to boil it down to race alone is disingenuous at best and harmful at worst. I don't agree with Coyle holding onto Pitino as long as he did, but I do have faith that he can make a good hire. I'm pretty sure Coyle wasn't sitting there thinking, "man, I want to let Pitino go, but he's white, so he should probably give him more latitude than my predecessor gave the previous black coach".

If Gates or another POC is the best man for the job, then hire him. But you can be guaranteed that the first rumblings will be if he's ultimately fired is "the U is evil because they're firing a black person because of race". It's not fair to the school, nor the coach. Sports are great because more so than a lot of other industries, you are judged mostly because of your RESULTS. Opportunities may not be the same, but once you get your opportunity, you are almost always judged on your merits.
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Why are you rehashing the history and arguing with me here? I understand what went down. I said optics, not my view. Optics by nature are always superficial. We lived through this but others didn't.

I didn't say such a perception would be fair. And, of course, there are always situational dynamics at work. Nevertheless, the observable fact is that a black coach was fired in a shorter period of time and with a significantly better record than the white coaches who preceded and followed him. Many might dig deeper for underlying explanations but others won't.
 

GopherPlaya said:
I have worked at Cargill and Best Buy and I am a person of color and there have been work to increase the amount of people of color in the workplace but plenty of it has to do with people pointing out POC not being hired in some of these industries. My point is to say people are just hiring people because they are black isn't true when I know friends with business degrees working jobs that they are overqualified for
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Try to keep something in mind. This is a Minnesota sports fan site. As such, it predominately attracts white middle aged men (and some older) and most of those are from outside of the core cities. Whenever you have that mix, you're going to get a fair share of rednecks, including those who have an unshakable belief that the white race is under siege. Nothing you say is really going to change their minds.
 

GopherPlaya said:
I have worked at Cargill and Best Buy and I am a person of color and there have been work to increase the amount of people of color in the workplace but plenty of it has to do with people pointing out POC not being hired in some of these industries. My point is to say people are just hiring people because they are black isn't true when I know friends with business degrees working jobs that they are overqualified for
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Business degrees are a dime a dozen. It's almost like getting a degree in philosophy...🤫😏
 

GopherPlaya said:
I have worked at Cargill and Best Buy and I am a person of color and there have been work to increase the amount of people of color in the workplace but plenty of it has to do with people pointing out POC not being hired in some of these industries. My point is to say people are just hiring people because they are black isn't true when I know friends with business degrees working jobs that they are overqualified for
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I have 2 friends both graduated med school together. One is clearly the more brilliant and has had fewer opportunities. Supervisors have grilled on their own CV during staff meetings... referred for 'coaching' cause too uppity... institutional racism is exhausting and a health hazard. And, as we can see, opaque to many.
 

Moonlight said:
I have 2 friends both graduated med school together. One is clearly the more brilliant and has had fewer opportunities. Supervisors have grilled on their own CV during staff meetings... referred for 'coaching' cause too uppity... institutional racism is exhausting and a health hazard. And, as we can see, opaque to many.
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It's no different than agism or sexism in its opaqueness. Ultimately our world operates under cronyism as it's main component for hiring. All employers function that way, regardless of whether the company is run by a black person, white person or any ethnicity you wish to name. At least the US actually has laws that make it harder for cronyism to function, but the opaqueness is still there. It will never be eradicated in any culture.
Do you think Mark Coyle is living in that opaque world?
 

MennoSota said:
It's no different than agism or sexism in its opaqueness. Ultimately our world operates under cronyism as it's main component for hiring. All employers function that way, regardless of whether the company is run by a black person, white person or any ethnicity you wish to name. At least the US actually has laws that make it harder for cronyism to function, but the opaqueness is still there. It will never be eradicated in any culture.
Do you think Mark Coyle is living in that opaque world?
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Well, that's exactly why companies are trying to get more diverse. Increasing diversity in the workplace isn't only about race.
 

GopherPlaya said:
Well, that's exactly why companies are trying to get more diverse. Increasing diversity in the workplace isn't only about race.
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I don't follow you. Cronyism is exactly why companies are getting more diverse???
 


cjbfbp said:
Try to keep something in mind. This is a Minnesota sports fan site. As such, it predominately attracts white middle aged men (and some older) and most of those are from outside of the core cities. Whenever you have that mix, you're going to get a fair share of rednecks, including those who have an unshakable belief that the white race is under siege. Nothing you say is really going to change their minds.
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The white race is under siege? I can only speak for my own situation. I know that workplaces are trying to become more diverse, as there are obvious benefits to it. In my firm of around 150, we currently have 3 non-white minorities. As I said earlier, I am in a very white dominated field. One of those is black, and he is an admin (non-professional), which is a much easier position to fill. One is from India, and we "sponsored" (or whatever the term/process is) her based on a now-retired employee (also from India) recommendation for her to get her work visa so she could move here. The third is a man from Indonesia whom we worked with on a project and liked, so we did the same thing, and he moved here and is now a US citizen.

There's an interesting book, that I would offer as a corollary. It's titled, "Why Men Earn More", and was written by a former board member of the National Organization for Women. Basically, it details WHY the wage gap exists, and thus, details HOW if you are a woman to take advantage of it and make more than men. You could use the same logic for minorities. Find a field that has few, and have your pick of where you want to work. I have friends at competing firms, and basically everybody is in the same boat- all competing for the very few minorities in our field.
 

forever a gopher said:
There's an interesting book, that I would offer as a corollary. It's titled, "Why Men Earn More", and was written by a former board member of the National Organization for Women. Basically, it details WHY the wage gap exists, and thus, details HOW if you are a woman to take advantage of it and make more than men. You could use the same logic for minorities. Find a field that has few, and have your pick of where you want to work. I have friends at competing firms, and basically everybody is in the same boat- all competing for the very few minorities in our field.
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That's always good advice for anyone of course but especially for members of underrepresented groups.
 




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