Will more minority coaches be hired after Roger Goodell's recommendation?
A recent memo from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell about best practices in the hiring process for top coaching and front-office posts seems to be having the intended effect on the diverse list of candidates receiving interview requests.
The question is, will that translate to a change in the makeup of those who actually get jobs?
Following the NFL’s annual meeting last month with the Fritz Pollard Alliance, which promotes diversity and equality of job opportunity in the league, Goodell recommended to teams the consideration of multiple minority candidates for head coach and general manager openings, as well as informally applying the so-called “Rooney Rule” to coordinator jobs.
Five of the six teams with head coach vacancies – the Buffalo Bills, Jacksonville Jaguars, Los Angeles Rams, San Diego Chargers and San Francisco 49ers – already have complied in terms of multiple interview requests, and the 49ers have done the same with their GM opening. Five African-American coaches have received requests, with three on the alliance’s recommended list (Miami’s Vance Joseph, Buffalo’s Anthony Lynn and Arizona’s Harold Goodwin) receiving at least three each.
“The thing that we want to get away from is using the Rooney Rule to hinder the interview process,” John Wooten, chairman of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, told Paste BN Sports.
“In other words, the Rooney Rule says that you have to interview at least one minority, right? And that’s fine. However, in order to really know that I’m utilizing and I’m doing what the process should be in terms of making it a better place, then I’m going to interview more than just one minority. I’m going to look back over your body of work, and I’m going to interview two to three, if not four guys. … Otherwise, you’re just hiring who you want to hire.”
There was no formal change to the Rooney Rule, says Robert Gulliver, the NFL’s executive vice president and chief human resources officer – Goodell’s memo was strictly a recommendation on best practices and other points from the December meeting. The NFL’s career advisory panel also puts out a list of top candidates that “certainly includes diverse talent,” Gulliver said.
According to the NFL, there were six “diversity hires” for head coaching jobs and one for a GM job from 1990 to 2002, before the Rooney Rule was instituted in 2003. From 2003 through the 2016 season, there were 15 minority head coaches and seven minority GMs hired.
“The way the interview process is playing out (this year) is entirely consistent with the expectations of the Rooney Rule, and that is that diverse candidates should have an opportunity to represent their candidacy,” Gulliver said, adding that Wooten and the Fritz Pollard Alliance advocated for the best practices Goodell recommended.
What the volume of interviews means for hiring this year remains to be seen. There was just one minority hire in each of the past two cycles: Todd Bowles with the New York Jets after the 2014 season and Hue Jackson with the Cleveland Browns after last season. Bowles is the only minority given his first NFL head-coaching job in the past five cycles, compared to 21 white coaches.
In a league where the player population is roughly 70% African-American, just five of 32 head coaches (15.6%) are black. A sixth head coach, the Carolina Panthers’ Ron Rivera, is Hispanic. Six African-Americans can fairly be considered top football executives in their respective organizations.
Don Yee – a prominent agent who has represented minority coaches and extensively studied hiring patterns – believes the Rooney Rule has served its purpose of sensitizing owners to the issue, but now should be abolished to let each organization exercise its own discretion.
“Especially myself being a minority,” said Yee, who is Asian-American, “some might take the position that even categorizing a hire as a quote-unquote ‘diversity hire’ is stigmatizing.”
One key everyone agrees upon is making the sure the pipeline is being fed with candidates, which on the coaching side means promoting diversity not only in coordinator jobs, but other jobs that feed those positions, such as quarterback coaches. Gulliver said Wooten is also expected to submit a recommended list of coordinator candidates to the league soon, as he has in several recent cycles.
“I think the teams are doing a heck of a job of checking out a diverse slate of guys, and I think a lot of it has to do with what’s coming out of the league office,” Wooten said. “I think all of this combination is healthy.”
Follow Tom Pelissero on Twitter @TomPelissero.
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