By the end of this week, the NCAA may start the process of joining the rest of the country in making history. Nearly a year after American voters elected the nation's first black president, the association that runs college sports may be poised to select the first black man to run one of the country's major sports organizations.
The NCAA's Executive Committee is slated to meet this Thursday at the organization's headquarters in Indianapolis, and is expected to choose a firm to help in its search to find a successor to Myles Brand, the former president, who died last month.
Among the contenders is Dr. Bernard Franklin, a former president of four schools, most notably Virginia Union. Franklin, who was hired for the NCAA by Brand, currently serves as the organization's executive vice president for membership and student-athlete affairs.
Franklin's ascendance would not only zoom the NCAA past the NFL, Major League Baseball and the NBA in terms of moving an African-American into a chief executive post, but would send a powerful message to university and college presidents, who could desperately use it. (It bears noting that African-American James Frank, of Lincoln University, previously served as the NCAA's president. However, that title was given to elected officials from individual schools, while the post of executive director went to the full-time chief executive officer.)
You have a much better chance of finding subtlety in a Tyler Perry movie than you do of spotting an African-American football coach or athletic director - often two of the most powerful positions on a college campus - at the nation's biggest colleges.
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