Breaking down the TIDES Reports with Dr. Richard Lapchick
The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport has highlighted diversity in the sports world for over 20 years. TIDES’ annual racial and gender report card has shed light on the organizations and leagues that are giving those in marginalized communities the opportunity to make their name in the industry.
Who’s the man behind it? That is Dr. Richard Lapchick. Outside of being an award-winning humanitarian and philanthropist, Lapchick has grown the University of Central Florida’s DeVos Sport Business Management Program to one of the country's best. In the midst of that, the TIDES report was developed to “show long-term trends over a decade and highlights organizations that are notable for diversity in coaching and management staffs,” according to the report’s website.
There have been other dissections of race and gender that TIDES reviews as well, including a report card based on sports media members, Super Bowl ad studies, as well as reports on the graduation rates of specific NCAA student-athletes (e.g.: men’s and women’s basketball tournament competitors, bowl-bound football players, etc.).
Even with the intentionality in hiring since the social justice renaissance of 2020, Lapchick wants to see more areas improve. One, in particular, is the ownership category. Just look at the latest reports for 2022 with MLB and the NBA, as both leagues have a combined five majority owners of color, and three majority owners that are women representing the NBA.
Lapchick knows that will be a tough trend to buck overnight, but he expects to see movement on that front once diverse athletes and entertainers begin to get involved in ownership groups.
“That’s who can buy teams now. You need, literally, a billion dollars to buy a team now,” said Lapchick in an interview with TeamWork Online’s Founder Buffy Filippell and TeamWork staff. “ … We have several athletes who are billionaires now who are in position to do that. And I think they probably will, it’s a great investment. The value of franchises is insane and how fast it’s [been] multiplying.”
Thankfully those numbers are improved by minority-stake owners — 37 of color in the NBA, 12 more who are women — which also includes Earvin “Magic” Johnson, LeBron James, Maverick Carter, Marla Tanenbaum, Billie Jean King, Linda Alvarado, Laura Ricketts, and Ilana Kloss for MLB. The numbers are improving and show that leagues can adapt to the times.
“So we started grading owners two years ago. This year, we switched, we had been doing a modified 2010 census as the basis of how we gave grades,” Lapchick said. “This year, we switched to the 2020 census, where 42.5% of the population are people of color. That raised the standard significantly, but we also realized that in the wake of racial reckoning that the leagues are really trying to do some significant things. So we started to give bonus points for milestone hires and for significant social justice initiatives.”
Some of those landmark hires include President of League Operations Byron Spurell and NBA G-League President Shareef Abdur Rahim both being the only set of Presidents of color working within a league office throughout major sports. For MLB, that includes the growing list of women working in senior-level roles throughout the league, including New York Yankees Assistant General Manager Jean Afterman and Baltimore Orioles Director of Player Development Eve Rosenbaum. This would also go for the recent hire of Mike Grier as GM with the NHL’s San Jose Sharks.
MLB has made strides with social justice initiatives like its Owner’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee. The committee is comprised of members that include Billy Bean (who is a member of the LGBTQ+ community), and BIPOC executives April Brown (Vice President of Social Responsibility in the Commissioner’s office) and Michael Hill (Senior Vice President of On-Field Operations in the Commissioner’s office). Another one in the NBA has been the Women’s Leadership Initiative, which is designed to “strengthen recruitment, development, and retention of league and team women” and connect with the league’s fanbase of women.
Seeing this development for the NBA is a positive one. One that is not always a trend that Lapchick has seen.
“Where the racial hiring practices have improved, there almost always [geared towards] men,” Lapchick said. “So we created a separate category, starting this year, of women of color. Because we realized that was such an underrepresented category that we wanted to highlight the need there.”
There are new clients coming along for TIDES as well. One of which is the NCAA’s West Coast Conference. They have taken steps forward in recent years following Commissioner Gloria Nevarez’s implementation of a diverse hiring practice mandate similar to the NFL’s Rooney Rule called the Russell Rule, named in honor of the late Boston Celtics and the University of San Francisco great Bill Russell, who was also one of sports’ greatest civil rights activists.
“They had 84 positions open up in the conference [from August 2020 to July 2021]. … And 44, more than half of the positions, were filled by women or people of color,” Lapchick said. “And I don’t have any doubt that that was a result of the rule.”
TeamWork Online has seen a shift in the summer of 2022 alone. Although historically the split between men and women applying to work in sports and entertainment was 60–40, those numbers have been creeping towards 55–45. As for racially diverse applications in comparison to candidates who identify as white, those numbers are as close to a 50–50 split as the organization has ever seen.
One thing that Buffy Filippell noted in the discussion with Dr. Lapchick is that this could be happening because of the addition of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion roles across all of sports. A great example is Kevin Clayton, as he serves as the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Senior Vice President of Head of Social Impact and Equity. Ownership groups in sports may not be diversified just yet, but these new roles and DEI-based departments are drawing in diverse candidates.
Lapchick wants to see the growth in this area continue. But he wants to make sure it’s also coming from the top down.
“That’s really important. And the job has to be at a senior level,” Lapchick said. “It can’t be a director level.”
Conclusion:
The world of sports in the United States has had a unique way of reflecting the country when it comes to race. Often times the people who may not be of color are running organizations, while their subordinates (whether as executives or as players under coaching staffs) are overwhelmingly those of color.
The same can be said for women in the industry in terms of being subordinates or being stuck in entry-level positions. But that is why Dr. Lapchick has dedicated so much to TIDES and its reports, so that people on the outside understand just how disproportionate the numbers have been when it comes to diversity and inclusion.
Considering the changes since 2020, however, sports are becoming more diverse than one could ever imagine. While the job is not yet finished, the changes in recent years show that executives in the industry are taking note of what they need to do to make a change.
It’d be a shame to see these leagues getting F’s on their report cards.
Want to read more about the racial and gender hiring practices in sports? Check out the TIDES Report here and stay tuned for the next reports to come. Also, be on the lookout for more TIDES Report pieces on The Breakdown!
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