NFL Has A Long Way To Go With Minority Coaching Hires

In a recent New York Times article, Ken Belson says the NFL still has a problem with regards to the number of Black head coaches, despite the Rooney Rule.

The Rooney Rule was established in 2003 and requires all NFL teams to interview ethnic minority candidates for head coaching and senior football operation jobs that become available.

Despite this rule, in 2019 only 3 of the league’s 32 head coaches (Mike Tomlin of the Steelers, Anthony Lynn with the Chargers and Brian Flores with the Dolphins) are Black.  

That number is down from a record high of 8 during the 2018 season. The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, issued its annual report on the hiring of women and minorities in the NFL and gave the league its lowest grade since the institute began tracking this data in 2004.

Part of the problem, the article posits, is the way teams identify and hire head coaches. Over the past several seasons, offensive “gurus” have been the soup du jour. 

If an offensive coordinator or quarterback’s coach had a particularly good season, or was on the staff of a head coach whose offensive scheme had a lot of success, that individual was an immediate candidate for a vacant head coaching position. 

Unfortunately, the majority of offensive coordinators and quarterbacks coaches are white. 

For decades Black coaches have​ ​had an “easier” time being hired for defensive jobs​. The same racist stereotypes for why Black people don’t make good quarterbacks or offensive linemen are the very impediments that barred qualified Black applicants for head coach, coordinator and quarterback coach positions.

At the NFL organized Quarterback Summit in June, several of the sport’s most prominent minority coaches and executives gathered at Morehouse College in Atlanta to talk about this issue. 

The summit “was birthed out of looking at the last few hiring cycles, and the appetite for offensive coaches,” said Troy Vincent, the NFL’s executive vice president of football operations. “When you look at the demographics, it’s embarrassing.”

“We’re celebrating the 100th anniversary of the N.F.L., yet we have only three head coaches of color,” said Rod Graves, a former NFL general manager and league executive who now runs the Fritz Pollard Alliance, which promotes diversity in football. “For all the hoopla that football has become in this country, that kind of progress, or lack of, is shameful.”

Shameful indeed.