Why pro sports have never had a Black commissioner

It’s been a heavy Black history month for professional sports.

Fired Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores sued the National Football League, alleging racist hiring practices. Rapper Eminem took a knee during the Super Bowl halftime show in support of Colin Kapernick, the quarterback who was blacklisted for kneeling during the national anthem as his way of protesting racial injustice.

Those stories have been all over the headlines. So has Washington officially renaming its football team the Commanders, more than a year after ditching their previous name, which was long considered a racist slur against Native Americans.

But there’s a another conversation involving race and sports. And it’s one that nobody is having, not in public anyway.

Across all U.S. major pro sports leagues, there has never been a Black chief executive, also known as a commissioner. Not in 102 NFL seasons, 75 seasons of the National Basketball Association or nearly 150 years of Major League Baseball. Add in the National Hockey League, Major League Soccer and the WNBA, and that’s at least 28 pro sports league commissioners, of which none are Black.

“We can’t even get Colin Kaepernick on a team,” said Michael Eric Dyson, professor of African American studies at Vanderbilt University and a renowned scholar on race and culture. “So talking about a Black commissioner seems to be a leap of faith that is far ‘beyond the ken of mortal man’ — as they said on Andy Griffith Show.”

Following the social unrest in 2020, several private companies and organizations made commitments to improve their diversity. Goldman Sachs said it wouldn’t take companies public without at least one “diverse” board member or candidate. And even the NFL and NBA touted their pledges to “drive economic empowerment” and combat racial injustices among Black people with more than $500 million committed.

But it remains to be seen if push for diversity and economic improvement will spread throughout the leagues, including pro sports C-suite positions like CEO.

Ferguson Jr. was one of the few Black CEOs of a Fortune 500 company. In fact, he was one of just five Black CEOs to lead a top company when he led financial services company TIAA. Before his retirement in 2021, he steered the company through the global financial crisis and is credited with adding 1 million customers and increasing TIAA’s…