Virginia Tech athletics director Whit Babcock has been named to the Coalition Academy, a first-of-its-kind mentorship program pairing influential athletic directors with minority football coaches, as announced by The National Coalition of Minority Football Coaches (NCMFC) on Thursday.
The Coalition Academy furthers the NCMFC’s mission of preparing, promoting, and producing minority coaches at all levels of competition given the well-documented inequities minority coaches experience.
Spearheaded by NCMFC Board Member Desiree Reed-Francois and supported by Founder Michael Locksley, this year-long program ties together mentorship, networking, and leadership training to help prepare the next generation of minority head coaches.
“As part of our efforts to provide comprehensive educational opportunities and networking to minority coaches, the academy allows our participants to build upon their on-field experiences with the off-field information necessary as they advance,” Reed-Francois said. “In the end, as in many professions, relationships and advocacy matter. The academy will hopefully foster lifelong relationships between coaches and decision-makers. It will provide minority coaches with one more tool in their belt as they seek to advance their careers, and we are grateful to the mentors and to the coaches for their willingness to move college athletics forward.”
The goal of this program is twofold: to counteract the narrative that says there is a lack of qualified minority coaches to fill available positions and to help bring parity to the hiring process in college football.
