Group Decision Making in Hiring Collegiate Coaches Scholars and advocates have documented the relative scarcity of women (of all races and ethnicities) and of minority men and women in coaching positions in both collegiate and professional sport (Lapchick, 2016; LaVoi, 2017). Data reported by Lapchick (2016) showed that nearly 90 percent of coaches at the Division I level were white and only about 8 percent were African American. In this context, imagine that you are an athletic director involved in the search for a new head football coach at a Division I FBS school. On one hand, you are seeking to increase the diversity of your coaching staff, which means that you will focus on recruiting and interviewing a representatively diverse mix of potential candidates. At the same time, you understand that the process of selecting a new football coach does not come down to an individual decision that you can make on your own. Instead, it will be made by a search committee that includes senior leaders in the athletic department, the faculty athletics representative (typically a professor on campus), and senior leaders in the university's overall administration. Based on your understanding of the group decision-making process, you want to avoid the challenges of group decision making while retaining the benefits asso-ciated with group-based decisions. You also want to avoid making errors based on confirmation bias. As you prepare for the search committee's first meetingat which the group will discuss the process for recruiting, interviewing, and selecting the new coachyou provide the members with specific guidelines for reaching an optimal decision. Case Study Questions 1. Explain the potential biases that might occur when making a group decision in this situation. 2. Describe why it is best to use a search committee to make the decision rather than having the athletic director make it alone. 3. How might you reduce groupthink when the search committee reviews resumes from the top candidates? 4. What process would you use to maximize the benefits of group decision making when selecting candidates for interviews? When deciding which candidate to hire