In 1965, during my sophomore year at Yale, football coach John Pont abruptly resigned to take a more prestigious job at a Big Ten school. Instead of tapping another WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant), the school replaced him with an Italian American, assistant coach Carmen Cozza.

I still remember how outraged the alumni were. Yale had always had WASP coaches, and furious letters denouncing the hiring of a coach whose name ends in a vowel poured into the athletic office.