'Purposeful' approach is only way NFL will see true improvement on diversity hiring | Opinion
After meeting for the better part of two days earlier this week to discuss the ongoing problem on the minority head-coach hiring front, the members of the NFL’s workplace diversity committee hope to make a renewed push to steer owners toward improvement.
The lack of diversity in the head coaching ranks will command a chunk of time during the annual league meetings which take place late this month in Palm Beach, Florida, and committee members hope those discussions among the owners of the NFL’s 32 teams lead to action in the next hiring cycle rather than continued lip service.
Despite the lengthy and healthy discussions on Monday and Tuesday, committee members didn’t unearth some dramatic solution that will make the Rooney Rule a more effective tool for creating true advancement opportunities for coaches of color. In recent years, the NFL has expanded the Rooney Rule and created incentive initiatives to reward teams for developing head coaches and general managers of color.
However, fixing the problem – which has seen the NFL’s minority coaching numbers dwindle to the point where a league with a player membership that is more than 70% Black has just two Black head coaches and just three other minority coaches – will take an earnest effort and commitment on the parts of the owners. That’s the stance of committee member Javier Loya, a minority owner of the Houston Texans.
“There’s no silver bullet,” said Loya, who has served on the diversity committee since 2002, around the same time that he became the first Hispanic man to hold an ownership stake in an NFL team.
Loya, who played linebacker at Columbia University in the early 1990s and credits football for making it possible for him to get a college education, went on to explain, “The Rooney Rule has served a purpose, and we’ve had additions to it. It was designed with the initial goal of widening search pool, and it has done that. But we have to be more purposeful. If our end goal is to have more coaches of color, we have to be more purposeful.
"Unfortunately, it just doesn’t happen every hiring cycle. But I know we’re trending in the right direction and I know it’s important to ownership.”
Many NFL coaches of color and critics of the league would contest Loya’s claim that the majority of team owners genuinely care about ensuring more people of color rise to top leadership positions within organizations. Otherwise, the number of Black coaches wouldn’t have steadily declined from seven in 2018 to just two in 2022. Otherwise, Brian Flores wouldn’t have felt compelled to sue the NFL, New York Giants, Miami Dolphins and Denver Broncos, alleging discriminatory hiring practices after Miami fired him this past season and the Giants invited him for what Flores called a sham interview intended only to satisfy the Rooney Rule. Otherwise, Black coordinators of some of the NFL’s most successful teams the last several seasons -- including the Kansas City Chiefs' Eric Bieniemy, Tampa Bay Buccaneers' Byron Leftwich and Todd Bowles, Buffalo Bills' Leslie Frazier and Los Angeles Rams’ Raheem Morris -- wouldn’t have gotten passed over for jobs eventually filled by less-qualified white coaches.
Loya understands and shares those frustrations but does believe he sees a shift taking place.
“We obviously are not satisfied with where we are, but we have had a lot of success that people might not be aware of,” Loya said. “We have 17 defensive coordinators and we’ve got three of the four assistant general manager positions that were filled (this offseason) by minorities. We’ve got seven general managers, which is the most we’ve ever had. So we’ve made progress, and we’ve had some wins, but the reality is, it hasn’t gotten to the head coaching position, and that’s a problem. But we’re collaborative about it and we’re taking ideas from third parties, from stakeholders and we’re really committed to addressing this issue. But part of it is, this takes time. … But I think we’ve got some good initiatives going and some good concepts.”
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Loya believes that one key to improving the diversity of NFL head coaches involves a more authentic commitment to strengthening the offensive coaching pipeline.
“We have to start identifying the offensive play-callers in college football and introduce them into our ranks and have them in our systems,” he said. “We have to recruit more quarterback coaches and offensive coordinators that are people of color, and I think being purposeful like that, we’ll eventually get to that tipping point of more head coaches."
While such opportunities are welcomed by NFL assistant coaches of color, talk of the need for an improved pipeline does spark mixed feelings. The number of minority offensive coordinators and quarterbacks coaches are limited, but current and former coaches point to a long line of highly qualified assistants who have been denied opportunity for advancement.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the supply side of the chain. It’s the demand side that will fix it,” Hall of Fame coach Tony Dungy told Paste BN Sports, pointing out that teams have hired less-accomplished white candidates instead of Black offensive coordinators Bieniemy and Leftwitch, who each helped direct their teams to Super Bowl victories. He also noted the lack of consideration Houston Texans now-offensive coordinator Pep Hamilton has received despite success with Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert in 2020 and the Texans' Davis Mills last fall.
“It’s hard to watch people get bypassed and then to hear people say they don’t have the pipeline,” Dungy said.
He does agree with Loya that a more purposeful approach on the parts of owners and team presidents is the only thing that will truly fix the league’s hiring problem.
“I don’t think it’s going to be done with incentives and sanctions. I think, some way, we have to get these decision-makers to understand it can make their product better,” said Dungy, who recently met with commissioner Roger Goodell and the workplace diversity committee members in hopes of helping remedy the issue. “Everybody says, ‘Nobody is going to try intentionally to not win. Everybody is going to hire the best person.' But there was a time that they didn’t think that African-Americans would make the product better. And when that got proven to them, OK, it changed.
“And then there was a time when they didn’t think the African-American quarterback could make the game better," continues Dungy, himself a former college quarterback who was forced to switch to defensive back in the NFL. "They thought they had the best game possible. Then they realized, ‘Yes, we would be losing out on a lot of quality if we don’t diversify there.’ So, I think that’s where it is now. They have to really know, ‘If I look and really broaden my scope, then it’s really going to help.’”
When asked for his insight, Dungy made two recommendations to Goodell and the diversity committee members.
Cognizant that team owners rarely know what they actually want in a coach and tend to pursue the flavor of the month, Dungy suggests owners take time to develop criteria and then publish the job description of what they desire in a head coach.
“Just like corporations do, put out, ‘I’ve got an opening. This is what I’m looking for,’ and then there will be some processes that can help them search, and they have to be diligent and want to search, and I think that’s part of the problem with the Rooney Rule now. People are following the letter of the law, ‘OK, I’ll interview a minority candidate. I’ll interview two minority candidates.’ But are they really interviewing a person who has the qualities I’m looking for? Spelling out that job description: ‘Hey, I want an offensive coach. I need to fix my quarterback.’ Then say it. If it’s ‘I want a young guy like Mike Tomlin that will be here for 20 years and will take us into the future,’ … spell out what you want. Then, secondly, we have to slow the process down. The way we’re doing it now is absolutely wrong in a lot of ways.”
Dungy believes many teams are in such a rush to land a coach that they don’t put themselves or candidates in the best position.Typically the hiring process coincides with the playoffs, when many of the top candidates are trying to prepare their teams and carve out time to prepare for job interviews.
Dungy also believes delaying the interview and hiring window for all teams until after the Super Bowl would afford owners more time to carefully select their list of candidates. Coaches would be granted a better opportunity to focus entirely on playoff performances before turning to their potential job opportunities.
Loya agrees that more time would lead to more thorough interview processes, but he said that there’s a fear among teams that delaying that official window will lead to a corruption of the process by way of back-channel negotiations between organizations and agents or third parties.
Other changes to the timeline, including opening the window for general manager hires sooner, could be coming, however, Loya said.
When they meet late this month to discuss a variety of matters, the owners will kick around additional ideas on the minority head-coaching hiring front. Regardless of whatever new initiatives or modifications to the Rooney Rule others propose, Loya and Dungy are correct. True improvement, both in this crucial area of diversity and in the quality of football, will come only from the decision-makers’ willingness to broaden their searches and truly consider a diverse roster of qualified candidates rather than merely going through the motions before settling on the traditional good-ol'-boy hires.
Follow Paste BN Sports' Mike Jones on Twitter @ByMikeJones.