For the most part, I've tried to stay away from the discussions about the social significance of Willingham's hire at N.D. Part of the reason is that it runs the risk of seeming to elevate college football into something more than it is and part of it has been that the history of the coaching search makes it difficult to credit N.D. as fully as it might otherwise be credited for Willingham's hire.

But N.D. certainly deserves credit for having found a masterful coach who happens to be African-American. And part of the reason that N.D. deserves some credit is that this is the first time that an African-American has had a chance to coach at a school with a realistic prospect of winning the national championship at some point in his tenure. With all deference to our friends at Stanford (Green and Willingham, before N.D.) and Michigan St. (Williams), the stars would have to align almost perfectly for those programs to have a shot at it, the Rose Bowl is the more realistic top end at either place. Perhaps one could say that Blake's hiring at Oklahoma might've been such a chance, but OU was, I think, a much worse mess then than N.D. was on New Year's Day 2002. Bob Simmons at Oklahoma St. (now on N.D.'s staff, of course) actually had a fairly similar trajectory to Jimmy Johnson's at the same school, but Simmons couldn't land an offer from one of the really top programs and then when he had a couple of tough years at OSU actually wound up out of coaching for a year.

In any event, this is surely the first time that an African-American coach has stood at the head of a major undefeated team with a ranking as high as #6 (or #3 if you prefer the B.C.S. calculation). And this brings me to the Alabama-U.S.C. game in 1970.

That year, a private school (U.S.C.) took a team that was a model of racial diversity down to play an all-white or nearly all-white team at Alabama, then the seat of power of southern public university college football. And U.S.C. killed them 42-21 behind the power running of Sam Cunningham. No event probably did as much to integrate college football rosters as that game, because it became clear that limiting your team to one race would forever put you at a serious competitive disadvantage.

Willingham is proving that limiting important coaching positions to members of just one race will put you at a competitive disadvantage. And now he takes the coaching staff that is a model of diversity down to face the school that is the seat of football power of southern public universities (though perhaps it has shared this role with Tennessee, Florida and others). Now, Florida State does have African-Americans on its coaching staff, but like a lot of programs, they occupy neither the head coaching nor the coordinator positions. In fact, while it's well known that only 4 of the Division I-A head coaches are African-Americans, it's less well known that there are only 14 African-American coordinators. And when a guy like Charlie Strong -- who as Holtz's defensive coordinator at South Carolina has helped to completely rebuild that program -- can't get a serious look for a head job, well, it makes you wonder a little.

Now, I'm not suggesting that N.D. needs to win the game to strike a blow for racial justice; N.D. could lose the game and the point would probably still be made. But it would help show, as U.S.C. did in 1970, that cutting yourself off from a large pool of talent will cause you harm in the long run.

One of the exciting things about Willingham -- and indeed about all persons of character -- is that he's interested in developing the whole person of those around him. I was a little sad reading Lorenzo Booker's comments about not wanting to go to N.D. because -- apparently among other things -- he didn't want Willingham insisting that he improve his oral communication skills or (one suspects) much else. But someone like Willingham can develop people who will not only be football players, they will -- without regard to race -- be coaches and business persons and doctors and lawyers. I really hope football works out for Lorenzo Booker, because it doesn't seem like anyone's going to try to make him into anything else.

College football needs persons of character, whether they are named Willingham or Holtz or Simmons or Stoops. And if everyone is fairly considered, there will be a fair racial balance, and that's a good thing.