Roger Goodell is proposing a change to the Rooney Rule.
It’s painfully apparent that the NFL owners need to be bribed if the league wants fair hiring practices. Per NFL.com, the incentives would include:
- If a team hires a minority head coach, that team, in the draft preceding the coach’s second season, would move up six spots from where it is slotted to pick in the third round. A team would jump 10 spots under the same scenario for hiring a person of color as its primary football executive, a position more commonly known as general manager.
- If a team were to fill both positions with diverse candidates in the same year, that club could jump 16 spots — six for the coach, 10 for the GM — and potentially move from the top of the third round to the middle of the second round. Another incentive: a team’s fourth-round pick would climb five spots in the draft preceding the coach’s or GM’s third year if he is still with the team. That is considered significant because Steve Wilks and Vance Joseph, two of the four African-American head coaches hired since 2017, were fired after one and two seasons, respectively.
Lets not forget, the Rooney Rule wasn’t a hiring mandate. It was a rule that would allow minorities to be part of the hiring process. Though the intentions from the Commissioner might have been genuine, he doesn’t have power over the owners who look at their core consumer base before hiring. They know their loudest consumers, whether it’s the majority or not, don’t want to see a league that has minorities in leadership positions. Oh… they don’t mind “them” entertaining them but those dumb athletes need a certain type of leadership that looks a certain way.
The joke is on the minority coaches who work their way through the system just to be spurned for coaches that “look the part”.
Change will only come if ownership groups look different. There needs to be a significant minority voice from the ownership roost. Team Presidents, GM’s etc. also need to have more minority faces in positions of leadership.
But that won’t happen. The NFL owners are only interested in PR stunts that serve their base. It’s why the military is so prominent at games. It’s a PR stunt for the “Merica” clowns. The NFL has also signed up Breast Cancer month for their PR machine.
Minority hiring? Nah bro. That isn’t going to play well because “none of ‘them’ are qualified”.
The NFL isn’t the only one who is guilty of this. Just look at college athletics and how they need to hire someone that the boosters are comfortable with.
Guys like Eric Bienemy will have to continue to wait for a chance that he’s earned while watching the likes of Kliff Kingsbury are simply handed the job because he just looks like a coach.
NFL hiring practices are a joke but, hey, it keeps the money train running and their base happy. That’s priority number one to the NFL owners.
