Division I-A tackles minority hiring

0 Comments | USA TODAY, October, 2007 | by Steve Wieberg

Responding to years of criticism, the nation's major college athletics directors are drawing up new guidelines they say should improve college football's dismal minority hiring record -- their answer to the NFL's Rooney Rule.

"Every struggle for fairness has a turning-point moment, and this is that turning-point moment," says Cyrus Mehri, a Washington, D.C., attorney who was one of the Rooney Rule architects and now is working with the Division I-A Athletic Directors Association.

The organization, representing the nation's 119 biggest football-playing schools, met last week in Grapevine, Texas. It expects to have the standards in place by the time football hits its annual firing-and-hiring cycle in November and December.

Unlike the 5-year-old Rooney...