Whither the Rooney Rule?
I've written before about the Rooney Rule, the innovative
method the NFL adopted to try and encourage NFL teams to hire more people of
color as coaches and general managers. The Rule, to put it succinctly,
requires teams to at least interview one minority candidate for any opening in
the organization at the management level. It did not mandate that
minority candidates be hired, only that they be given an interview.
The Rule was surprisingly (to some) effective when it was
adopted, and the number of minority hires increased. The reason for this
was that the pool of head coach talent was exceedingly shallow and requiring
teams to interview minority candidates deepened to pool by adding qualified
minorities who would otherwise be overlooked. It was a brilliant example
of how to encourage minority employment without adopting hiring quotas or
mandates.
However, the coaching carousel has spun around in 2020 and
the Rooney Rule no longer seems effective. Except for the hiring of
Hispanic coach “Riverboat” Ron Rivera by the Washington [insert racist team
name here], all of the coaching hires have been Caucasian men. Has the
Rooney Rule become obsolete?
I believe the problem is not some rise in the number of
racist owners in the NFL, or an overt desire to thwart the goals of the Rooney
Rule. I believe the process by which teams evaluate head coaching
candidates has significantly changed since the Rule was implemented.
As I said, the purpose of the Rule was to deepen the pool of
candidates that teams might evaluate by added minority candidates. But
the process was hierarchical; ex-players became assistants, then specialist
coaches like offensive line coach, then more important position coaches like
quarterback coach, then ultimately an offensive or defensive coordinator.
Next stop, head coach. The roster of NFL OCs and DCs is littered with
those who had a shot at head coach, failed, and then went back to managing one
side of the ball.
The process is less hierarchical now. One of the
recent hires was the New York Giants hiring Joe Judge, who previously had been
wide receiver and special team coach with the Patriots. First of all, it
may be news that the Patriots even HAD a receivers coach, given how poor their
passing attack was by the end of the season. Secondly, how can a lowly
specialty coach leapfrog all the way up to head coach with being an OC or at
least a QB coach first?
The answer is that it is all about coaching trees now.
Judge had spent eight years working under Bill Bellichick, arguably the
greatest NFL coach of all time (someone once referred to Ricky Henderson as
arguably the greatest leadoff hitter of all time and Bill James replied, “What
do you mean “arguably”?). He had previously worked at Alabama under Nick
Saban, one of the greatest college coaches of all time. Just being in the
vicinity of these two great coaches given him the pedigree to become a head
coach in the NFL.
GMs now look for coaches who rubbed shoulders with other
successful coaches, and after the LA Rams’ success hiring 30-year-old Sean
McVay (who had worked under both Jon and Jay Gruden, as well as Mike Shanahan)
GMs want coaches who are young. This means ones that haven’t worked their
way up the coaching hierarchy but are working as specialist coaches instead of
OCs or DCs.
The problem is that since most successful coaches are white,
most of their protégés tend to be white. I’m not saying their racist;
it’s just that people, all people, are generally more comfortable around people
who are like themselves. So African American coaches who have worked
their way up under less prestigious coaches are now being bypassed by younger
white coaches who lucked into a job with a more prominent coach.
Of course, one reason for all the current openings is that
these coaches, sometimes referred to “quarterback whisperers,” aren’t having
the immediate success Sean McVay had in LA. Actually, McVay isn’t having
the success he had last year, but that’s another story. But because what
is seen as “head coach qualifications” is more mercurial and less hierarchical,
an approach to increasing minority representation that tries to improve “the
pipeline” will have less of an impact.
The fact that there are only four minority coaches in the
NFL is pathetic. Even worse is the fact that there have only been 19
African American coaches ever in Division I college football,
where African American coaches would be valuable role models for hundreds of
young men. While the Rooney Rule shouldn’t be abandoned, the time has
come to try and develop new strategies for addressing the lack of African
Americans at the highest levels of football coaching.
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