Taking Advantage of an Untapped Pool: Assessing the Success of African American Head Coaches in the National Football League

Abstract

Noting that only five African American coaches had been hired to lead National Football League (NFL) teams from 1989–2002, Madden (J of Sports Econ, 5(1):6–19 2004) found that teams coached by African Americans in the NFL outperformed their counterparts in the regular season but were significantly below average in the playoffs. This analysis, with data that includes nine African American coaches and extends through 2007, reconfirms Madden's finding that African American head coaches outperform their rivals in the regular season, but also finds that African American coaches no longer suffer from poor playoff performance. Using fixed effects pooled cross section time series models, this analysis confirms that teams with African American head coaches can expect more wins in the regular season than their peers, other things equal. However, there is some evidence that as the pool of African American coaching talent diminishes from additional hires their extraordinary performance may be slightly regressing. The playoff analysis shows that that when controlling for seeding, organizational strength and regular season wins, African American coaches perform at the same level as their counterparts.