{"id":10979,"date":"2011-10-27T15:18:51","date_gmt":"2011-10-27T19:18:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=10979"},"modified":"2011-10-27T13:38:15","modified_gmt":"2011-10-27T17:38:15","slug":"for-black-coaches-in-the-nfl-still-a-steep-road-to-the-top","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=10979","title":{"rendered":"For Black Coaches  In The NFL, Still A Steep Road To The Top"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When <strong>Al Davis<\/strong> hired <strong>Art Shell<\/strong> as the head coach of the Los Angeles Raiders in 1989,<strong> Clarence Shelmon<\/strong> was a 37-year-old running backs coach at the University of Southern California.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Shell<\/strong> became the first African-American head coach in the modern NFL. For <strong>Shelmon<\/strong>, now the offensive coordinator for the San Diego Chargers, <strong>Shell&#8217;s<\/strong> hiring opened up possibilities he had dreamed of but never seriously imagined while growing up in Bossier City, La., in the 1950s.<\/p>\n<p>For many aspiring African-American coaches, becoming a head coach in the NFL seemed an insurmountable mountain.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When you&#8217;re young, you think anything is possible, but you also look at what history had unfolded before,&#8221; <strong>Shelmon<\/strong> said in a phone interview last week. &#8220;Back then, there were not a lot of men of color in coordinators&#8217; positions and head coaches, so while you knew it was a possibility, you didn&#8217;t see anyone in those positions. In the back of your mind, you&#8217;re wondering if you&#8217;ll ever have an opportunity.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Al Davis hired Art Shell as the head coach of the Los Angeles Raiders in 1989, Clarence Shelmon was a 37-year-old running backs coach at the University of Southern California. Shell became the first African-American head coach in the modern NFL. For Shelmon, now the offensive coordinator for the San Diego Chargers, Shell&#8217;s hiring [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}