Goff and Tollison (2009) conducted their research on the hiring of African American head coaches in the NFL from 1987 to 2007. They outline that head coaches are usually hired from their coordinator positions, which have the same trends as head coaching positions. In football, there is one offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator per team. Both are in positions of major decision making for the team. Goff and Tollison (2009) performance model focal point is about production among black and white coaches. There are some gaps in terms of statistics because unlike players, coaches are not the ones playing. They take responsibility for a specific unit or the team overall, which focuses on wins and losses (Goff and Tollison 2009).
Spaaij, Farquharson, and Marjoribanks (2015) explain that sports reinforce hierarchical structures and involve both exclusion and inclusion. The authors agree that gender is the most visible aspect of inequality in sports. In football, diversity among players is about split in half, but among coaches the numbers are much different. The authors mention positional segregation in different sports by explaining that non-white players do not get the same decision-making experiences and are overlooked for coaching and managerial positions once they finish playing (Spaaij, Farquharson, and Marjoribanks 2015).