COLLEGE FOOTBALL REPORT: Strong: Wife’s race blocks top job offers

Florida defensive coordinator Charlie Strong believes race was a reason he hasn’t been offered a head coaching job during his 25 years in college football, the Orlando Sentinel reported Tuesday.

Strong, a 48-year-old black man, shook his head affirmatively when a Sentinel reporter asked him if his interracial marriage was a factor in getting passed over for jobs, including one at a Southern school a few years ago. Strong said he heard that too many times for it to be rumor.

“Everybody always said I didn’t get that job because my wife is white,” Strong said. “If you think about it, a coach is standing up there representing the university. If you’re not strong enough to look through that [interracial marriage], then you have an issue.”

There are seven black coaches at the nation’s 119 major football schools after four were hired in December.

NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley said last month when he said “race was the No. 1 factor” why Auburn chose Iowa State coach Gene Chizik over Buffalo coach Turner Gill. Gill, a black man, also is married to a white woman, and ESPN later reported that two SEC coaches said Gill got passed over for the job partly because of his interracial marriage.

Strong had a message for those who hold his wife’s skin color against him. “She makes no calls and she plays no defense,” Strong said.

> BOSTON COLLEGE: Jeff Jagodzinski met with New York Jets officials Tuesday to discuss their head coaching vacancy —- an interview that was expected to cost him his job with the Eagles. Jagodzinski, who became BC’s coach in 2007, was told by athletics director Gene DeFilippo that he would be fired if he met with the NFL team. “It’s just a matter of putting two and two together,” Chris Cameron, BC’s associate director for media relations, said Tuesday night. “He was told by Gene on Saturday that if he went on the interview he’d be fired.”

> UTAH: Utah’s attorney general is investigating the Bowl Championship Series for a possible violation of federal antitrust laws after an undefeated Utes team was left out of the national title game for the second time in five years. Attorney General Mark Shurtleff contends the BCS unfairly puts schools like Utah, which is a member of a conference without an automatic bid to the lucrative bowl games, at a competitive and financial disadvantage.

> AUBURN: Defensive back Jerraud Powers has decided to forgo his senior season at Auburn and enter the NFL draft.