Former Professional Football Player Billy McBride on Race, Diversity, and Inclusion

billym.pngPhoto of McBride coaching by Masslive.com.

Syracuse-native and former professional football player Billy McBride returned home to share his remarkable personal story and speak on race, diversity, and inclusion at the Firebarn on Sunday, April 17th, 2016 at 2 pm.

McBride is a 1974 graduate of Central Tech High School (today’s Institute of Technology) in Syracuse, N.Y., where he was named First Team All-City in football and basketball, and All-Upstate in football. Additionally, he received the Omar Spencer, Outstanding High School Athletic Award and in 1972, was named YMCA Youth of the Year.

billyPhoto of McBride from his Central Tech days provided by Billy McBride.

A 1979 graduate of Tennessee State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in recreation, McBride was a two-sport athlete in basketball and football. He was a member of Tennessee State’s 1975 NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four team and was drafted into the NFL by the San Francisco 49ers shortly after graduation. He spent the majority of his professional football career in the CFL before retiring. He received his master’s degree in exercise sciences and sports studies from Smith College in 2006.

Today, McBride serves as the Assistant Athletic Director-Diversity and Inclusion, Director of Club Sports and Senior Coach at one of America’s premier liberal arts institutions, Amherst College in Amherst, MA. Throughout his tenure at Amherst College, McBride has held several assistant coaching positions and was the head coach for women’s basketball for fifteen years. He was named the NESCAC and Northeast Region District 1 Division III Russell Athletic WBCA Coach of the Year in 2000–2001. McBride has also served as the Nike Girls Basketball Camp Director at Amherst College for more than twenty years and in 2004, he started the first Father & Daughter Basketball Camp in the country through U.S. Sports Camps out of San Francisco, Calif.

McBride has been very active in the Western Massachusetts area. He has been a guest motivational speaker at many colleges, elementary and high schools, and consulting firms discussing how athletes can use sports to combat discrimination and other social injustices as well as higher education, and diversity and inclusion issues. In 2012 and 2010, he served as a guest speaker at the Institute for Training & Development in Amherst and SportsUnited; a division of the Bureau for Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State. During his 2012 appearance, he spoke about building bridges through sports in the Republic of Kosovo. In 2010, he spoke on combating racism through sports in the U.S. and in France.

McBride was also a guest speaker in Atlanta, Georgia in 2014, during which he spoke about “Leadership” on the NCAA Division III Administrators Advancement for Professional Development panel. He has worked with numerous youth groups promoting higher education, as well as with the elderly on maintain fitness and cognitive thinking throughout life. He was Director of the City of New Haven Connecticut’s Girls Basketball Camp for College Coaches, and in 2010, he received The Black Men of Greater Springfield Community Services Award for his work with the W.E. B. Du Bois Academy.

McBride is also an accomplished art critic  and author having lectured, written, and produced a podcast on the work of George Bellows in conjunction with the Amherst College Mead Art Museum. In return, the Museum renamed Amalia Amaki’s “Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue #15” in honor of McBride. The painting locates black history, culture, and experience as an integral part of the social fabric of “Americanness.”

Biography by Amherst College.

16824765279_9d38666b9b_z      Photo of McBride lecturing on the work of George Bellows by Rob Mattson/Amherst College.

 

More information about Billy McBride can be found here: