Minorities Hope Race Not Future Question
By Brian Murphy, Telegraph Staff Writer
 
Having been asked every conceivable question about his race and its impact on his new job as director of athletics at Georgia, Damon Evans is hopeful.
 
Hopeful that in the future, the not-too-distant future, another black will be tabbed to lead an athletic program or a football program, and he won't be forced to answer the same questions.
 
Hopeful, that it happens soon.
 
"Hopefully, at some point, when a minority is hired there won't even be a mention that he or she is a minority," Evans said. "They'll just say, 'That's Damon Evans, the new athletic director at the University of Georgia. Or, that's Sylvester Croom, the new football coach at Mississippi State.'"
 
That point is not now.
 
Evans, who assumes his post on Thursday, will be heralded as the first black director of athletics in the history of the Southeastern Conference. No mention of Evans will be without that qualifier.
 
Just as Croom, who will guide Mississippi State's football program in the fall as the first black head football coach in the SEC, will not escape that qualifier for the rest of his career.
 
"The fact that I'm black is always going to be an issue in this conference and in the nation because there are so few black coaches still," Croom said.
 
There are even fewer heading athletics departments. According to a 2001-02 report from the NCAA, just eight blacks, all males, were directors of athletics at 276 Division I schools (historically black institutions excluded.)
 
But Evans and Croom can point to basketball, where today the sight of a black head coach is not enough to produce a story on its own. Blacks head programs at several Atlantic Coast Conference and SEC schools.
 
Georgia (Dennis Felton) and Georgia Tech (Paul Hewitt) have black coaches. Hewitt guided the Yellow Jackets to the Final Four in April.
 
"I'm well aware that if it wasn't for John Thompson, John Chaney, George Raveling, Nolan Richardson, I wouldn't have this opportunity," Hewitt said at the Final Four. "You look around the South now, you have an African-American head coach at Florida State, Georgia, Clemson, Georgia Tech. I mean, 15 years ago, that was unheard of."
 
Fifteen years ago it also was unheard of for a black to be athletic director at Georgia. But Evans, who was playing wide receiver for the Bulldogs in 1989, never thought of it that way.
 
"When I was first offered the job, people asked me if I wanted to be the first African-American AD in the SEC," Evans said. "My goal was never to be the first. My goal was to be an AD.
"But I really understand the magnitude of being the first African-American athletics director (in the SEC)."
 
And the doors that it might open.