"Does it blow me away?" Doug Williams said, repeating the question asked him two months ago by telephone from his office in Louisiana. All these years, all this purported progress and the Southeastern Conference still hasn't had an African-American football coach. Grambling's coach was constructing a résumé to make him the clear-cut candidate to break this barrier -- son of the South to Super Bowl MVP, I-A assistant to championship coach -- and Williams was asked: Does it blow you away that the SEC still hasn't done it?

"Well, it's not surprising," Williams said. "I think if you look at the demographics of the SEC -- the two Alabama schools, Starkville, Oxford, LSU in Baton Rouge ... Those demographics have a lot to do with it -- the people who pull the purse strings.

	Grambling's Doug Williams interviewed for the Kentucky opening last December, but did not get the job.

"Who are your donors? Who do they want to support? Who will they support? ... They keep saying racial harmony is getting better, but look at Division I football. Where is it getting better? Look at the administrations, the coaches -- where is it getting better?"

Maybe the University of Kentucky, maybe now. After everyone else has turned him down, withdrawn his name and refused to even listen, Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart did Friday in Cincinnati what he should've done to start his search: He met with Doug Williams. He should've been Kentucky's top choice, the way Ty Willingham should've been Notre Dame's.

If Williams is the perfect choice to be the first African-American coach in the history of the SEC, Kentucky is the perfect program to hire him. The burden on an African-American coach in the SEC promises to be immense, but the Wildcats are the true oddity within the league. They're a basketball school. Right school, right coach, right time. After beating Alabama A&M for the black national championship three weeks ago at Legion Field in Birmingham, Ala., Williams made a declaration in his news conference that left the room laughing out loud.

"I'll probably talk to (Alabama A.D.) Mal Moore sometime (Sunday)," Williams said. "You know the chances of that, don't you?"

He broke up the room laughing, when they should've been crying. Think an African-American coach could've gone 1-15 in the NFL like Mike Riley did, and still been offered the Alabama job? Please. Think Mike Price can get the welcome into recruit's homes in the South that Williams could?

"What Doug Williams can do is go into anybody's home, whether they live on the hill or down in the valley," Williams said. It doesn't work this way. Not yet, anyway. There are just places in the SEC where you'll believe they'll have an African-American football coach when, well, they have an African-American football coach.

Williams isn't just the historic choice for Kentucky, but the right one. This was his finest season as Grambling coach, one expected to be rebuilding with 17 starters gone off his black college national championship team from a year ago. So, Grambling delivered an 11-2 season, a third straight SWAC and a second straight national title. After cleaning up the mess legend Eddie Robinson left five years ago, Williams has gone 43-15 on the job.

This season, the Tigers were No. 1 in I-AA passing offense, No. 2 in total offense. Thirty-seven of his players had grade point averages 3.0 or higher this year. What else do you want out of a coach? Williams has an immense name, wins championships and educates his players.

For a football program that needs an identity, like Kentucky does, Williams has the persona that can sell it. Most of all, he can coach it. All of a sudden, there were going to be chances for Doug Williams. There were going to be chances for South Carolina defensive coordinator Charlie Strong. Except, all Strong earned in the SEC was another coordinator's job, leaving Lou Holtz for the University of Florida.

Everyone wanted to believe Willingham winning at Notre Dame would induce the hiring of qualified African-American coaches, but it had nothing to do with Kentucky talking to Grambling's coach. Desperation did. Barnhart has no one else. Kentucky's A.D. needs Doug Williams, more than Doug Williams needs Kentucky.

"Everywhere I went after last season, people were asking me, 'When are they going to give you a chance to be a Division I coach?'" Williams said. "After last year, people thought I would've been gone. But I'm a realist. I've been dealing with this my whole career. When I was in the USFL, one NFL team called me about me coming to play and that was the Redskins. Hey, that's OK. I've got thick skin."

If he leaves Grambling for the SEC, God knows he'll need it. For a basketball school living in a football conference, this Saturday belongs to Kentucky-Louisville. Kentucky wouldn't dare hire a football coach and overshadow Tubby Smith and Rick Pitino in the biggest game of the year. Yet when the weekend is over, there should be a Monday news conference in Lexington, Ky., and Doug Williams should come walking into the room as the first African-American football coach in SEC history.

Right man, right time, right job. Grambling's coach doesn't deserve one more telephone call asking if it blows him away that the SEC still hasn't hired an African-American football coach. This search has gone too long and it needs to end now. Doug Williams isn't just the historic choice for the University of Kentucky, he's the right one.

Adrian Wojnarowski is a columnist for The Record (N.J.) and a regular contributor to ESPN.com. He can be reached at ESPNWoj@aol.com.