Coaching While Black
This occasional series will highlight Black coaches at all level of sports.
This week: Bethune-Cookman MBB Coach and Athletic Director Reggie Theus
I am often asked why I spend so much time, print, and online space on Black coaches, which I have done for almost my entire almost five-decades stint at Minnesota’s oldest Black newspaper. The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) annual racial and gender report cards have backed me up on my unabashed reporting. Barely 25% of Division I non-HBCU head men’s basketball coaches are Black. The all-time high is 25.2% in 2021-22. For non-HBCU women’s head basketball coaches, the numbers are 5.2% Black men and 18.5% Black women.
Reggie Theus on Dec. 1 will be the fourth visiting Black HC this season when his Bethune-Cookman men’s squad invades The Barn to play the host Gophers. We talked to him during the SWAC preseason media day in October.
“We’ve got a lot of depth, and we have age and experience,” Theus pointed out on this year’s team that has 11 new players, including four grad transfers. “One of the biggest differences in our team is that we have great size now, where last year we were pretty small.”
This is the second consecutive year Theus and Minnesota’s Ben Johnson will coach against each other. Last season the Gophers defeated visiting B-C 80-60.
Whenever a Black HC, or assistants for that matter, comes to town, we sadly are the only media who request post-game interviews with them. Personally, it gives us exclusivity. Almost always my leading oft-asked question is how important it is to have Black head coaches.
“When you think about the growth in the upper echelon of the country when it comes to colleges having Black head coaches, it’s important,” reaffirmed Theus.
Since his hiring in July 2021, Theus became the only individual in Division I athletics to hold both the role of athletic director and head men’s basketball coach. Under his watch, Theus has raised nearly $3.3 million in support of the Wildcats while he builds a championship culture at Bethune-Cookman.
“I think everything I’ve done in my life as a leader on the basketball court, having different careers really set me up to be where I am today,” continued Theus, a former college star (UNLV), a 13-year NBA veteran, a former NBA head coach and assistant coach now in his third college HC opportunity. He even dabbled in acting as a high school basketball coach in a Saturday morning sitcom from 1995-97.
“As an athlete director, it’s given me the tools to really do a good job,” said Theus. “I obviously have a great staff that comes along with me, but it has been a pleasure to grow and to have that opportunity to really build something for our athletic department.”
Theus understands and truly appreciates the upcoming matchup against another Black head coach — and not at an HBCU.
“It’s competition,” he concluded. “I think that gives room and sheds light on the significance.”
Charles Hallman welcomes reader comments to challman@spokesman-recorder.com.