Coral Gables, Fla- Of the 65 coaches leading programs affilliated with the Bowl Championship Series, Miami’s Raindy Shannon is about to stand alone.

Soon he will be the only African American in the group.

After Sylvester Croom resigned recently from Mississippi State, along with the recent firing of Kanasa State’s Ron Prince and Washington’s Ty Willingham-Shannon is one of three black coaches left in major college football, and the only one at a BCS school.

The last time there were only three African American head coaches at Div 1-A level was 1993, and Shannon, who waited many years before getting his first legitimate chance at becoming a head coach, simply can’t understand the lack of progress in bridging the sideline race gap.

“It’s sad that we keep talking about the same things,” Shannon told AP recently. “Maybe Sylvester was tired. I know a year or two ago he had surgery on his hip or back. But after awhile, you say to yourself, how much longer can we keep going just talking about this? We can’t keep talking about the same issues every year.”

And yet, at this time every year, the issue keeps coming back.

Bowl season hasn’t even started, but already, some marquee jobs have come open and already filled. For instance Tennessee hired Lane Kiffin as head coach and Clemson could move to promote Dabo Sweeney to head coach soon.

One of the few black candidates believed to have legitimate interest from a BCS school that’s changing coaches is Illinois offensive coordinator Mike Locksley, who has been mentioned as a replacement for Greg Robinson at Syracuse. Buffalo’s Turner Gill who along with Shannon and Houston’s Kevin Sumlin, is one of three black coaches who have jobs of 2009 is also thought to be a Syracuse.

The only other prominant black assistant to be mentioned so far is Notre Dame offensive coordinator Mike Haywood, who reportedly was interviewed by Washington to replace Willingham.

Floyd Kieth, executive director of the Black Coaches and Administrators, has said many times he’d like to see the number of black college football coaches get to at least 10 but now the total is headed the other way, even though nearly half of the players at the level formerly known as Division 1-A are African American.

Gill told The Buffalo News for a recent story that he always heard the same thing when he interviewed for various jobs before moving to Western New York.

“Not the right fit,” Gill told the newspaper. “The words not the right fit can be looked at in several ways. Not to say that you were not qualified but maybe they want a guy who’s going to be there fo four or five years or has a different offensive or defensive philosophy. There’s so many different dynamics to the word “fit.”

According to a recent BCA hiring report card, only 12 of 199 vacancies between 1996 and 2006 went to African Americans.

But the need to label and track the number of minority coaches is still puzzling to Shannon.

“I think we all should be treated as coaches equally. But it’s just how society is. The minority deal is always going to be there.”