“I think the first thing you have to establish is the credibility as an organization to where people know and understand who you are, what the goal, what the mission is,” Locksley said. “And I think we did a really good job of branding ourselves as an entity that has the ability to be a resource for hiring and diversity in hiring.”

NCMFC executive director Raj Kudchadkar, a civil rights attorney with extensive experience promoting diversity in businesses and schools, said the coalition wants to make sure the best candidates are selected, but noted it exists “because we want to diversify those applicant pools,”

“We always hear there’s not enough qualified minority coaches out there. And quite honestly, there are,” Kudchadkar said.

An NCAA report released in March showed that when it comes to the hiring of minority coaches at the highest levels of college football there has been some progress over the last decade among coordinators and assistants.

At the Power Five conference level, the percentage of minority head football coaches rose from 12% in 2011-12 to 21% in 2019-20. The percentage of minority head coaches in non-Power Five FBS conferences dropped from 21% to 9% over that same span.

There was a total of 20 minority head coaches in FBS during the 2019 season, 13 of them Black, according to the NCAA. Heading into this season, there are 21 minority head coaches, 13 of them Black, among 130 FBS schools.

Meanwhile, the percentage of minority players in FBS has grown from about 60% to more than 65% over the nine years covered by the NCAA’s report.

Locksley said he hopes the coalition can break through a structure where media hype, booster influence and pre-existing relationships often determine who ends up being hired.

To that end, the first of what the coalition hopes will be numerous data-driven studies it has commissioned is expected to be released in coming weeks. Kudchadkar declined to share details of the first report, but did say it will be goal oriented.

“It’s not going to be a 30,000-foot view that says, ‘Hey, we have an issue here.′ We already know that there’s an issue,” Kudchadkar said. “This is going to be a report that says: ‘This is the trajectory that we’re on. We need to change that trajectory and these are things that we need to look at.’”

Annual dues to join the coalition ranges from $50 to $250 for NFL coaches and membership has grown to more than 700. Illinois defensive coordinator Ryan Walters said it’s been money well spent.