My view on the NFL owners new incentives on hiring minorities and women

The NFL owners will vote on Tuesday on a new proposal to incentivize teams to hire non-white coaches and general managers (per the New York Times). These incentives include raising a team’s draft position if the team hires a non-white coach or general manager. This incentive is what caught headlines for many reasons and here’s why.

Assessing this from all angles, I first point out the idea that this effectively puts a price on the head of non-white coaches and general managers. While this might seem like harsh language, when you assess value to an individual on what you can get for them you are pricing their worth. This is what it seems like optically and therefore has raised an uproar. To say that an individual’s credentials and track record is not enough to warrant an opportunity discredits and devalues their experience in comparison to their coaching counterparts. The need to “sweeten” the deal speaks to a much deeper issue that is more difficulty addressed.

This issue is the privilege and bias that is present in the hiring process in the National Football League. Now, the NFL is not the only organization that possesses this issue and it won't be the last. This issue has come to the forefront in recent years because of how the coaching decisions have transpired over the past three seasons in connection to the Rooney Rule. The Rooney Rule was instituted in 2003 and requires that a minority candidate must be interviewed for an open head coaching position. This rule was expanded in 2009 to also include all general manager positions required at least one minority interview as well.

While this rule has seen success in its early days in recent years the NFL has returned to its lowest levels of minority coaches since the rules creation. The peak was in 2014 when there were eight non-white head coaches. Just as recently as the 2017 season, there were six non-white coaches, Anthony Lynn, Marvin Lewis, Steve Wilks, Todd Bowles, Mike Tomlin, Ron Rivera. Since then, the number has dwindled down to just four Tomlin, Flores, Lynn and Rivera. Over the past three years seasons there have been more than 20 HC vacancies and just three were filled by non-white Coaches. These include Steve Wilks who was fired after just one season in Arizona, Brian Flores who just completed his first season last year, and Ron Rivera who was fired this offseason by the Carolina Panthers but rehired by Washington. Expanding to the peak, there have been 38 HC openings since the peak in 2014, seven hires, four firings and one re hire. The momentum has stopped and this is why the NFL is attempting to try something new.

What is the solution? Jason Reid, Lead NFL Writer for the Undefeated, noted in his 2016 discussing the Rooney Rule that the league should require teams to provide transcripts of interviews discussing why hiring decisions were made. This has been echoed by other analysts recently and would actually require teams to disclose why they did or did not chose a certain candidate. While this has not seen very much traction and the league and could also be by passed by owners, general managers, or certain front office personnel using blanket statements, it would be the first step in addressing the underlying problem which is privilege and bias. Rather than valuing non-white coaches and general managers as draft capital, the public and the league would be able to have real conversations on why certain coaches are picked and others were not.

Outside of this solution, I do not know at this time what the NFL can do to help enhance minority hiring. To those who say a critique without a solution is a complaint, I counter by saying you can discuss something that is wrong if you have points to prove. What is right should not just be compared to a participation trophy, but what is actually right. Therefore critiquing something when it has holes is not a complaint, but actually helps one to arrive at real solution in the end. Right now the NFL has started the conversation on the expansion of the Rooney rule, this however is a crucial misstep.