By Norman Chad

America remains a complex work-in-progress, full of amazement and contradiction.

Item 1: There is only one person who can be president of these United States at any given time, and as of Jan. 20, 2009, that one person will be black.

Item 2: There are 119 head coaches in division I-A college football at any given time, and as of this moment, only three of them are black.

Those are two equally improbable feats.

The nation’s voters recently told Barack Obama: Yes, You Can.

The nation’s colleges always tell black coaches: No, You Can’t.

Geez. If a person of color can run the entire country, you’ve got to figure a person of color can also run the West Coast offense.

There were eight black head coaches — an all-time high — in 1997. Now — after the November firings of Ty Willingham at Washington and Ron Prince at Kansas State and the resignation of Sylvester Croom at Mississippi State — there are three in 2008. This projects to two black coaches in 2013 and none by 2020, at which time all 119 major college programs will be headed by either Bowden progeny or Joe Paterno.

To some people, this is a tired issue. But here’s the tired reality — somehow, in a game filled with black faces, only white ones call the shots.

This simply could be an offshoot of what is commonly referred to as the “good ol’ boy network,” where you only do business with your own kind, which, you know, pretty much excludes the other kind.

Indeed, we tend to surround ourselves with those that have a similar background. This isn’t necessarily racism, it’s just a comfort level.

(For instance, if I were starting a company, I would be predisposed to hiring odd-looking fellows with a 1970s-style mustache, eyeglasses, a big nose and large ears who attended the University of Maryland and complain about it to this day.)

Meanwhile, I heard a talk radio host suggest recently that maybe there aren’t that many black coaching candidates or blacks who want to coach. In football? Most of the players are black — what, after they’re done playing, all of them go into aluminum siding? We’re not talking the National Hockey League or the John Birch Society, where you don’t expect to find a lot of African Americans in upper management.

Here is the truest statement I will utter all year:

Over the course of most of our history, good things happen to white guys.

Example A: When Lane Kiffin was 31, he became the youngest head coach in NFL annals with the Oakland Raiders, even though he had no NFL experience. He was fired in September with a 5-15 record. Now, at 33, he is about to become the youngest active head coach in division I-A, with Tennessee, even though he has no college head-coaching experience.

Example B: In 2003, Karl Dorrell, who is black, took over at UCLA. He cleaned up the program, adhered to the school’s newly rigorous academic standards for recruits, went to a bowl game all five years — and was fired. He was replaced by a white man, mercurial pied piper Rick Neuheisel, who seems more suited to infomercials than institutions of higher learning. Neuheisel is 4-7, but he has a great smile.

So, how do we break this racial cycle?

Ah, I stumbled upon a solution the other morning, while enjoying PBR in a can:

Why don’t we elect our college coaches? By the will of the people, a black man just broke through centuries-old social barriers and made it to the White House. By the will of the people, maybe a black man can make it to Ann Arbor or Tuscaloosa.

—————————————————