Charlie Strong throws the race card (and it might be aimed at Oxford)
The BCS Championship media day in Miami produced this wire story on Charlie Strong’s bizarre inability to break through to the head coaching ranks. It’s not news among SEC fans that Strong has a white wife, although I’m guessing that most college fans up north and out west weren’t aware. Normally that’s the kind of leading-the-witness journalism I’d rally against, but I 100 percent completely believe that race has something to do with Strong’s inability to find a coaching job.
Also:
Strong, a 48-year-old black man, shook his head affirmatively when an Orlando Sentinel reporter asked him if his interracial marriage was a factor in getting passed over for jobs including one at a Southern school a few years ago. Strong, whose wife is white, said he heard that too many times for it to be rumor.
Logical suspects? Alabama during the Saban hire or possibly LSU during the Miles hire. But the smoking gun has to be Ole Miss during the 2004 firing of David Cutcliffe and hiring of Ed Orgeron.
To be fair, if you consider the mentally challenged or Cajuns a minority, then Ole Miss did in fact “diversify” twofold in its hire.
How about this one also – Mississippi State after the Sherrill debacle? Strong’s name surfaced in that search as well if I remember correctly.