Honoring NBA during Super Bowl week is red alert for NFL on diversity | Opinion
LOS ANGELES – It’s the perfect time for yet another statement. With the issue of equal opportunity for Black coaches in the NFL on center stage (again) as Super Bowl 56 looms and the typical loop of messaging from commissioner Roger Goodell rebooted, what gives?
Well, here’s something: The Fritz Pollard Alliance (FPA), the organization established to promote and monitor minority hiring for coaches and executives in the NFL, will hold its annual Super Bowl awards luncheon on Thursday. As usual, the FPA will hand out the Paul Tagliabue Award, its highest honor that hails what it deems to be the best efforts for diversity and inclusion.
Yet here’s a twist: The Tagliabue award, named after the former NFL commissioner, will be given to the NBA. That’s right. In the middle of Super Bowl week, the NFL’s signature event, an organization that partners with the NFL will honor the competing league that plays on the hardwood.
Talk about a statement.
“The award is an industry award,” Rod Graves, the FPA’s executive director, told Paste BN Sports. “When you look at the progress of all the leagues, it’s in my mind that the NBA has done a better job than all of the other leagues.”
Including, of course, the NFL, which has quite a new mess on its hands with the proposed class action discrimination lawsuit recently filed against the league and three of its teams – the New York Giants, Miami Dolphins and Denver Broncos – by former Dolphins coach Brian Flores.
Call me a skeptic, but I doubt that shaming the NFL with this hat tip to the NBA will suddenly jolt the NFL into doing right by the numerous qualified Black candidates – including Flores, Jim Caldwell, Eric Bieniemy, Todd Bowles, Leslie Frazier, Byron Leftwich – who have been passed over repeatedly for white candidates with less-established resumes. I mean, the optics have been bad for awhile for a league with a race problem while roughly 75% of the players are Black.
Then again, it doesn’t hurt.
Ironically, Graves pointed out, when the FPA last had an in-person luncheon during Super Bowl week in 2020, the Tagliabue Award was presented to … the Dolphins. And now they are under scrutiny for the handling of Flores’ situation (he was fired after producing a winning season), which includes allegations that team owner Stephen Ross offered his coach bonuses for losing games – an effort to tank in order to bolster the team’s draft position.
After the NFL originally quickly dismissed Flores’ lawsuit as having no merit, Goodell has moonwalked to contend that the NFL will investigate the matter and put out the message that reiterates the league’s “values” for fair opportunity.
You’d think teams would have gotten that message long before now, given that the Rooney Rule has been in existence for nearly two decades, and controversies about opportunities for Black coaches have been in the public domain for so many years.
In any event, cheers to the NBA – which looks like a great model for the NFL, the most popular and financially robust league of them all, to follow.
“When you look at the diversity in leadership roles across the NBA, it is clear that there is an embracement of diversity at the top,” Graves said. “They recognize the importance of diversity with respect to their brand and the game.”
The NFL, meanwhile, just added its second current Black coach this week when the Houston Texans hired Lovie Smith to replace David Culley, a Black coach who was fired after just one season. Smith joins Mike Tomlin, the longtime Pittsburgh Steelers coach, as the only Black head coaches in the league. Including new Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel, who is biracial, Washington Commanders coach Ron Rivera and New York Jets coach Robert Saleh, there are five minority head coaches in the NFL. The league also counts seven Black general managers.
Asked whether he is optimistic about the state of the NFL on the equal opportunity front, Graves responded, “It doesn’t lead a very bright light moving to that area.”
It’s fair to wonder how Graves and other proponents of equality will approach these issues moving forward, while some continue to question the viability of the Rooney Rule, which adds context to the Flores lawsuit as the former coach illuminates the issue of “sham” interviews.
But it's stunning to hear Graves contend that while he supports Flores, he hasn’t read the entire 58-page legal complaint filed last week. Shouldn’t that be required, ASAP reading? Graves expects he could have more to say beyond the statement put out last week by the FPA, after reviewing the case with legal experts.
Earlier this week, a group of civil rights leaders, including Al Sharpton and Mark Morial, president of the National Urban League, conducted a virtual meeting with Goodell and called for replacing the Rooney Rule while urging that there are “meaningful consequences” for teams that don’t operate with a spirit of fairness in the hiring process.
Sure, that’s a nice message. But we’ve heard it before. Repeatedly. And the optics are still rather pitiful for the NFL.
The FPA seems positioned for impact. For years, the organization that helped formulate the Rooney Rule has promoted many candidates of color. But there are limits. Graves talks of reviewing all elements of the NFL’s hiring process and how the FPA will keep working through diversity issues as a “partner” with the NFL.
Yet amid all the statements, mixed messages, Goodell’s questionable enforcement efforts and the brainstorming that keeps leading back to similar results, the best outcome may be a watchdog with some serious teeth.