Not Just an Athlete: The Impact of High School Coaches on the Educational Pursuit of First-year African American College Football Players

Abstract

Elite high school football players face a barrage of pressures from their external environment that determine where they attend college as well as what factors, whether academic or athletic, they consider in a school. This study aims to analyze the relationship between African American high school football players, who go on to play intercollegiate football, and their high school football coaches. African American freshmen football players at a predominantly white institution in the Southwest United States were interviewed. The responses were compared and analyzed using two tenants of critical race theory (CRT): the centrality of experiential knowledge and the challenge to the dominant ideology. In an educational context, CRT utilizes storytelling and the experiences of people of color to highlight their experiences against the dominant culture in order to transform the educational environment for the benefit of marginalized people. After analyzing the interview transcriptions, the researchers found that these athletes were positively influenced by their high school coaches to perform well academically in high school, as well as to consider academics as a major point of emphasis in choosing to attend a university. Athletes developed positive relationships with their coaches, regardless of the sport in which they coached, that encouraged them to perform well academically and see college as a means to attain a degree as opposed to an avenue to professional athletics. This positive relationship contrasted some previous literature about college students that suggested that college coach–athlete relationship could be a major source of exploitation and stress for the athletes. Overall, the research found that these coaches were a source of positive influence on these student–athlete's lives athletically, personally, and academically.

Keywords:

• black
• males
• education
• sports
• football
• college
• African American
• athlete
• high school
• coaches

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kevin Hicks

Kevin Hicks is a second year doctoral student studying curriculum & instruction at The University of Wisconsin at Madison. His primary research interest is analyzing the intersection of sports participation and education for Black male students in secondary schools.

Louis Harrison

Dr. Louis Harrison, Jr. is a professor in the department of Curriculum & Instruction and Research Director of the African American Male Research Initiative (AAMRI) at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Harrison has focused his academic research on the influences of race and African American racial identity on sport and physical activity choices and performance.

Martin Smith

Dr. Martin P. Smith is currently the Senior Scholar-in-Residence at The University of Texas at Austin's Mesoamerica Center in Antigua, Guatemala, where he investigates the amalgamation of race, culture, education and athletics. He obtained his bachelor's degree and master's degree from the University of California at Berkeley. As a basketball student-athlete at the University of California Berkeley, he won the Jake Gimbell Award which identifies the student most committed to academic and athletic excellence. After completing his master's degree, he established Phil Smith Basketball Camps, taught geometry at Lincoln High School in San Diego, and taught adult education at San Diego Community College. He directed basketball clinics in China, the Philippines and Panama. Furthermore, he worked as the Lead Teacher's Assistant at the University of Cape Town, South Africa on behalf of a course examining the effects of South African apartheid and American segregation on contemporary Black urban and economic development. He completed his Ph.D. in Cultural Studies in Education at the University of Texas at Austin. His work has been published in the Journal of Urban Education and The Journal of Race, Gender and Class.