12

Thursday, July 30, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
SPORTS

Barriers remain between Black athletes and college athletics

In 
the 
1880s 
with 
Moses 

Fleetwood 
Walker, 
Michigan 

baseball became one of the first 
colleges to have a Black baseball 
player. In 1890, George Jewett joined 
the Michigan football team as a 
halfback — the University and the 
Big Ten’s first Black football player. 

Forty years and Fielding Yost 

passed until Michigan had another 
Black football player with Willis 
Ward, and even then he faced racial 
discrimination after being barred 
from playing against Georgia Tech 
for the color of his skin. Just 12 Black 
players played for the University 
prior to 1941, and those athletes had 
to meet a criteria of excellence. For 
most, including William DeHart 
Hubbard, 
that 
meant 
Olympic 

champion 
performance. 
The 

basketball program championed its 
lacking diversity until 1951, when 
Ernie McCoy finally integrated 
with Don Eaddy and John Codwell 
— three years after Bill Garrett 
and Indiana broke the Big Ten’s 
gentleman’s agreement to keep Black 
players off the court. And in baseball 
— the first sport to have a Black 
athlete at Michigan — from 1880 to 
1972 just seven Black players lettered 
on varsity.

In 2019, 41.55 percent of Big Ten 

men’s basketball athletes were Black 
and 38.86 percent of football players 
were Black. Most other sports in the 
Big Ten are far from those inclusive 
representatives. If men’s and 

women’s track and field, men’s and 
women’s basketball, and football did 
not exist, the percentage of Black Big 
Ten athletes falls from 14.39 percent 
to 6.55 percent. The total number of 
Black athletes plummets from 1,628 
to 512.

The Big Ten’s history is fraught 

with racial pioneering and foot 
dragging, however, the lack of Black 
athletes in sports outside those five 
competitions isn’t a byproduct of a 
gentleman’s agreement or overtly 
racial policies. It runs much deeper 
and subtler. 

David Ogden’s Welcome Theory 

breaks down one reason why the 
number of Black players going into 
the MLB is decreasing — Black 
children don’t see people that look 
like them play the sport. When 
children see people that look like 
them in a sport or profession, they 
are more likely to have aspirations in 
that field. In basketball and football, 
Black children know they won’t be 
singled-out for the color of their skin 
as often. The same can’t be said for 
lacrosse. 

In baseball — a sport ripe with 

racial history — the breakthrough of 
Jackie Robinson saw a skyrocket in 
Black professional baseball players, 
reaching as high as 27 percent of 
the MLB in 1975. Now, that number 
is down to eight percent, with the 
college game looking even bleaker.

Just six percent of Division 1 

baseball student-athletes were Black 
in 2019. In the Big Ten, that number 
rests just under 5 percent. That’s 23 
Black players. Michigan had five, and 

only because of a concerted effort 
to recruit Black players. In 2013, 
Michigan coach Erik Bakich’s first 
season, Michigan had an all-white 
team and all of the Big Ten had nine 
Black players — just seven years ago. 

There aren’t a lot of Black athletes 

playing baseball in college anymore, 
there haven’t been a plethora of Black 
role models in the sport for years. 
While suburbs and small towns can 
fit plenty of baseball fields, cities — 
where a large portion of America’s 
Black population resides — don’t 
have that same luxury. 

Beyond the Welcome Theory, 

another reason for the lack of 
diversity is that there aren’t as many 
scholarships available for sports 
outside the big three (men’s and 
women’s basketball and football), 
so potential Black student-athletes 
who excel at sports like swimming 
or tennis, yet struggle economically, 
can’t afford to go to college and play 
those sports.

In college baseball, there just 

aren’t 
enough 
scholarships. 
A 

maximum of 11.7 go to the baseball 
team, which has a roster of 35 
players, and ends up only sparing 
athletes about 25 percent of the 
cost of tuition. And, until August 
2020, need-based or merit-awarded 
scholarships counted against that 
total, directly affecting poorer Black 
athletes.

Tangentially 
related 
to 

scholarships is that youth sports 
— lacrosse, hockey, field hockey 
— all cost money. These sports 
cost hundreds to thousands of 

dollars a year to sign up for leagues, 
tournaments, 
uniforms 
and 

equipment, a burden that hits most 
middle-class families hard. But 
when taken into account that the 
median Black family in the United 
States earns $28,000 less than the 
median white family, those pay-to-
play sports become nearly impossible 
to afford and thus, these children are 
never exposed to high levels of them. 

Travel ball, which is a must for 

any player hoping to compete in or 
beyond college baseball, can cost 
upwards of $5,000 a year from 
tournament fees, uniforms, hotels, 
equipment and so much more. 

“There are so many outstanding 

players of color often hidden in poor 
communities who just aren’t able 
to play on those expensive travel 
teams or make their rounds on the 
summer circuit,” Bakich told The 
Daily in 2019. “So when you can find 
those guys and target those guys and 
have kids from all backgrounds and 
socioeconomic statuses. … I think 
it’s a win not only for them and their 
families but also for our program and 
for everyone on our team, which is 
why we recruit the way we do.”

Not all coaches can be as proactive 

as Bakich, not every coach in the 
nation can look four hours West and 
see a hotbed of under-appreciated 
talent. There aren’t programs which 
subsidize tournaments or scouting 
camps for every sport like Chicago 
White Sox ACE does for baseball 
or Nike and Adidas do for AAU 
basketball. 

To get a field hockey equipment 

grant from The Hockey Foundation, 
the program you play for has to 
fill out an application. To play in 
MLS’s DC United youth academy, 
the highest domestic level of youth 
competition, you have to pay $1,500, 
with scholarships you need to apply 
for. 

It’s an issue that’s persisted since 

the 70s, when G. Anderson White, 
the first Black diver for Michigan, 
said in a 1972 interview with John 
Behee, “How many Black kids can 
afford to go to Florida and shell out 
the $80-100 a week costs? … The lack 
of opportunity to learn from talented 
coaches, coupled with a lack of pools 
and pool facilities for competition, 
therein lies the explanation for so 
few Black swimmers.”

And still, even with the ACE 

program and a proactive mentality, 
Michigan baseball played its 2020 
season with just five Black players 
on its roster. The men’s basketball 
program — with a roster less than 
half the size of baseball’s — had 
seven. 

Today, the reason for lack of 

diversity isn’t nearly as explicit as it 
was during the first half of the 20th 
century. No coach can deny a player 
a place on their team solely because 
of the color of their skin, or say that 
the problems their skin color brings 
outweigh their talent. Instead, like 
the broader issue of inequality, 
it’s an institutional issue rooted in 
economic and demographic barriers 
that prohibit Black children from 
exposure to high levels of sport that 
White children take for granted.

THE DAILY ARCHIVES/Daily

Halfback Willis Ward became the first Black football player in 40 years when he joined Michigan in 1932.

KENT SCHWARTZ

Summer Managing Sports Editor

THE DAILY ARCHIVES/ Daily

Sprinter William DeHart Hubbard won a gold medal in the 1924 Olympics.

