{WASHINGTON, D.C.– Congressman John Conyers, Jr.,  issued the following statement today regarding his forum on diversity in sports at the CBC Legislative Conferece:

 “If ever there was an industry that would seem hospitable to Minorities and African Americans, it is the sports industry.   Minorities constitute 40% of Major League baseball players; while African Americans represent 65% of professional football players and 78% of professional basketball players.  African Americans also attend and view sports in numbers far beyond their share of the population.  That is why I am so frustrated that the same glass ceiling that exists on Main Street and Wall Street, appears to be alive and well in the American sports industry.

 How else can we explain the fact that on the 40th Anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the baseball color barrier, Al Campanis, the General Manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, when asked about why there were so few African Americans in management answered “I truly believe that they may not have some of the necessities to be ... a ... manager, or perhaps a general manager ... I don’t say all of them, but they certainly are short.  How many quarterbacks to you have?  How many pitchers do you have that are black?”

 How else can we explain the fact that the NFL has only 6% African American head coaches, and that in Division 1 football, only 4 out of 117 schools employed Black head coaches?  Or the fact that the 2003 Racial and Gender Report Card prepared by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports found that “People of Color lost ground in most of the top management positions in college and professional sports, including general managers, team vice presidents, and college athletic directors”?

 How else can we explain the fact that all too often the modest affirmative actions rules adopted by the professional sports are observed in the breach?  If you don’t believe me, ask the Detroit Lions, who blatantly violated NFL Rules by failing to even interview minority coaching candidates before they hired Steve Mariucci this summer.  The penalty was a paltry fine – no injunction; no lost draft choices.

 And finally, how else can we understand the plight of Maurice Clarett? Maurice is an African American from inner city Youngstown Ohio.  Like a lot of young kids, he’s made mistakes, but he has been the subject of an Orwellian procedure where a University acting to protect its own hide, acted as Maurice’s  prosecutor, judge and jury.  Now, like Curt Flood before him, Maurice is taking on a multibillion dollar sports league on antitrust grounds.  He is challenging a draft rule which the league tells us is designed to help kids, but really seem to institutionalize a farm system that reaps huge financial rewards for the colleges and the pros; and operates primarily at the expense of African American teenagers.

 Now I am the first to admit that positive steps have been taken.  Major League Baseball and the National Basketball League in particular have taken  actions that have delivered real results, at least at the head coaching level.  But much, much more remains to be done.”

                                                   ##JUD-108-09/25/03##