NFL and The Rooney Rule: Racism in the Owners' Box?

Racism is, unfortunately, a very large chapter in the history of the United States, and one that we all know well. Inter-racial violence, segregation and elitism were all present throughout the last century as the divided country struggled with issues of racial equality in a very unequal society.

The National Football League was no exception to this. Racism reared its ugly head in this sport as in every other sport in the States. In 1961, the New England Patriots were once forced to stay in separate hotels during a road game in New Orleans, as Louisiana segregation laws at the time did not permit the black and white players to stay together. Houston Antwine, the Patriots star defensive end and an African-American, told Mike Felger in a book surrounding the Patriots what he thought about the matter: “That was a big letdown for me…it just didn’t feel right. I don’t know why it happened, but it did.”

Stories like this were all too common in the 1960s and 70s. Thankfully, for the most part, they have been confined to the history books. With perhaps the exception of the occasional isolated outburst, racial prejudice does not really exist anymore on the gridiron or on the streets on America, and it is certainly not accepted.

However, that might not be true of the average NFL owner’s box. A lot of people (fans, players and coaches alike) have taken exception to the number of white coaches hired in the NFL in proportion to other racial minorities. After all, there have only ever been 20 non-white head coaches in the 100 years of professional football in America. For some, there is a “whites only” sign hanging over the owners’ door that has never been taken down.

The NFL hasn’t let this go unattended, of course. Indicating a commitment to diversity, the league introduced a rule in 2003 that requires NFL teams to interview at least one minority candidate for vacant head coaching and senior football operations positions (like General Manager). It was called the Rooney Rule.

The Rooney Rule

The rule was established in 2003 to ensure that minority coaches, and especially African Americans, were being considered for high-level coaching positions. The rule is named for Dan Rooney, the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and indirectly the Rooney family in general. The Steelers have a long history of giving African Americans opportunities to serve in team leadership roles, opportunities that were unprecedented at their time.

Steelers President Dan Rooney, the Chairman of the NFL Competition Committee.

The rule had been quite popular in its youth. Minorities obviously liked it as it was specifically designed to help them. The NFL executives love it to this day, because it exists as a nice political tool for the league to point to and say “look, we’re a diverse organisation”.

At its inception in 2003, minority coaches made up only 6% of the NFL, while in 2006 that number had swollen to 22%. In the league’s existence before the rule came into being, there had been only 7 minority head coaches in Pro Football dating all the way back to 1921; less than one per decade. In contrast, there have been 13 minority head coaches hired in the last decade alone since the rule was implemented. The experiment appeared to be working. In fact, in 2008, the NFL was given a B+ in an annual diversity study. A lot of that progress was credited to the Rooney Rule.

2012 Controversy

Unfortunately, that optimism was short lived. In the last few months, diversity in the NFL has been brought to the forefront of league discussion once again. There were 8 head coaching vacancies and 7 general manager vacancies following the 2012 campaign, after a wave of firings that included Lovie Smith and Romeo Crennel, two African-American coaches. Overall, there were 15 high profile jobs up for grabs, and every single one of them was given to a white candidate. Cue panic among league officials.

NFL Executive Vice president of Human Resources Robert Gulliver quickly came out and said this:

“While there has been full compliance with the interview requirements of the Rooney Rule and we wish the new head coaches and general managers much success, the hiring results this year have been unexpected and reflect a disappointing lack of diversity.”

Now, the NFL is a very image conscious league, and very political. So I can understand that the commissioner, Roger Goodell, needs to be seen to be doing something about potential prejudice or racism in America’s most popular sport. To fail to respond to statistics like that or to say “we’re not that concerned about it” would be tantamount to political suicide. The press would have a field day branding the league as an organisation that is comfortable with racial prejudice.

So a movement towards change was predictable, and has come in the form of discussions about potentially expanding the Rooney Rule. The powers that be want to apply the rule to co-ordinators as well as head coaches. Unsurprisingly, the league wants to be doing whatever is possible to increase the number of minority coaches in its ranks.

Minority Coaches in the NFL – Crunching the Numbers

Currently, only 4 NFL head-coaches are of an ethinc minority. That’s 12.5%. The percentage of persons of an ethnic minority living in the United States is around 22%. There would need to be 7 minority head coaches if the NFL wishes to match the national percentage. Three of those minority coaches are African-Americans. One more African-American head coach would put their number in the NFL at 12.5%. The percentage of African-Americans living in the United States stands at about 12.4% of the total population (all population percentages taken from here).

In practice, therefore, the league is only one or two minority head coaches away from projecting a microcosm of American society.

A picture of all 32 head coaches in the National Football League, taken at this year’s Annual Owner’s Meeting in March. Marvin Lewis (front row, orange shirt), Mike Tomlin (standing, back row-right side, blue blazer), Leslie Frazier (standing, middle, black blazer) and Ron Rivera (seated, far left, white shirt) are the only head coaches of a minority ethnicity.

However, it is understandable that the league wishes to go further than this. After all, around 60% of all NFL players in any given season are African-American or of another minority or mixed race. While white men dominate the sidelines and the owners’ boxes, African-American men dominate the field. The NFL doesn’t want the league to be a microcosm of society, but a microcosm of the NFL Players Association. So to them, 12.4% is nowhere near an acceptable figure. And that is perhaps fair.

But is the Rooney Rule the correct instrument to initiate change? The way the rule operates provides a minority candidate an opportunity at a vacancy based on his race rather than his credentials. A lot of people have a problem with that. An even more serious effect of the rule is that it is quintessentially an accusation that NFL owners are inherently racist, and need to be forced to consider a black candidate. Is this actually the case? Are the lopsided diversity figures directly related to racism in the hierarchy of the league’s 32 franchises?

The Jim Caldwell Situation

In promoting changes after the 2012 debacle, analysts have pointed to Jim Caldwell’s situation as an example of racial prejudice in full view. Jim Caldwell is an African-American football coach, and one of the better offensive minds in the NFL. In 2012, he took over the offensive co-ordinator position in Baltimore after the mid-season firing of Cam Cameron, and helped the underdog Ravens win the Superbowl.

Eyebrows were raised when Caldwell, despite playing his part in the Ravens superbowl success, did not receive a single interview for one of the 8 vacant head coaching positions. Caldwell was expected by many to be a prominent candidate on teams’ lists. He had the best season of any rookie head coach ever when he took over the Indianapolis Colts in 2009, leading them to a 14-2 record and an appearance in Superbowl XLIV (which they subsequently lost 31-17 to the New Orleans Saints). He then led the team to a 10-6 season the year after, winning the AFC South once again but losing in the first round of the playoffs.

But despite all that, I’m not surprised that Caldwell didn’t get any interviews. Not because the team owners are racist, but because Caldwell isn’t actually a particularly good head coaching candidate.

In his successful 2009 and 2010 campaigns in Indianapolis, Caldwell had Peyton Manning at quarterback. Manning is one of the greatest players to ever play in the NFL and will be going to the Hall of Fame as soon as he retires. Winning games with him at quarterback is still impressive, but it isn’t a true test of a coach’s ability.

The true test came in 2011 when, due to a neck injury, Caldwell didn’t have Manning all season. That year the Colts went from a 10-6 team the year before to a 2-14 team, the worst record in the National Football League. When the going got tough, Caldwell didn’t know what to do, and that speaks so much more about his ability to lead a team than the previous two seasons had. Compare that disastrous 2-11 season to the Patriots’ 2008 campaign when Tom Brady was lost for the entire season. Bill Belichick mustered 11 wins out of that team when Brady went down. That is the mark of a truly gifted head coach.

Jim Caldwell struggled to a 2-14 season with the Colts in 2011. He was fired soon after.

So before everybody just plays the race card and cries foul, why don’t we actually look for other reasons why some coaches don’t get hired? Reasons that have nothing to do with the colour of a man’s skin at all? Jim Caldwell didn’t get another shot at a head coaching position because he wasn’t a very good head coach. He is a great offensive co-ordinator but he doesn’t have the motivational skills to be the top dog in an organisation, nor the presence required to command the respect of both his players and the media. Why can’t it be as simple as that?

For NFL owners, it is that simple. If you own a football franchise it’s because you either love the team or see it as a prudent investment. Either way, an owner only ever cares about two things; winning and money.

Those two things are what an owner is thinking about when he selects a new head coach or general manager. Discrimination has nothing to do with it. Imagine if Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin or Ravens GM Ozzie Newsome suddenly left their respective positions. They wouldn’t have any trouble finding an interview, because they are two of the best at what they do. That is what owners look for in their coaches; not the colour of their skin but the content of their character, as a great man once put it. Talent trumps race every time in this elite league.

The search for a Head Coach

So where do you find your talented head coach? Well, they aren’t created overnight. They pay their dues like everyone else in the world, and take whatever opportunities are given to them to build on their experience. Seattle head coach Pete Carroll began as a graduate assistant at University of the Pacific. Superbowl winning coach John Harbaugh began his coaching career as a lowly assistant at Western Michigan.

Superbowl winning coach John Harbaugh coaching with his Father, Jack Harbaugh, at Western Michigan University. Most NFL Head Coaches began their careers in the college ranks

In fact, of the 32 current NFL head coaches, only 7 began their coaching careers in the NFL; 25 actually began their careers as college coaches, most as lowly assistant positional coaches and scouts. Further, of the 7 fired head coaches from last season, 5 began coaching in the college ranks before joining the NFL. That is where aspiring head coaches are usually discovered; learning their trade in the NCAA.

It is therefore in the NCAA, not the NFL, that change needs to be initiated. Out of the current crop of NFL head coaches, 78% began their careers in college. Approximately 94% of coaches in college football are white, and that is the talent pool that the NFL owners are fishing in to get their guys. When only 6% of all NCAA coaches are African-American, of course most of the NFL hires are of white ethnicity. It’s a 94% probability!

What needs to happen?

Moving forward, it is important to make sure that young minority coaches get the same exposure to football that the current crop of white coaches were receiving in the NCAA in the 1980s and 90s. Clearly, the statistics show that the best way for a coach to bolster his résumé and become worthy of NFL recognition is by cutting his teeth at the high school and collegiate levels and improving his coaching skills with hands on experience.

If the NFL truly wants to invoke change, the fight must be fought in the film and equipment rooms of collegiate campuses all over the country, promoting assistant coaching positions to young minority candidates. If minority coaches are given their opportunities to flourish here, where the next crop of NFL head coaches are bred, that will directly correlate into better diversity figures for the NFL in the years to come.

The Rooney Rule is ineffective as a tool to promote diversity in the NFL. Because the problem is not in the NFL. The owners’ boxes don’t have the “Whites Only” signs hanging on their door anymore, if they ever did. Portraying the rich white owners as archaic bigots is an outdated notion, and in desperate need of revising. Owners in the modern day will bring anybody into their organisation if it means they have a better chance of winning; in that way I believe that the NFL is a true meritocracy.

NFL owners,like the Dallas Cowboys’ Jerry Jones (pictured with the Cowboys three Superbowl trophies) are only interested in one thing: Winning.

The Rooney Rule does nothing more than force teams to pay lip service to a single minority candidate in order to satisfy a quota. It will not affect change in the diversity of the NFL because the owners will always pick the best coaches regardless of their skin colour.

Minority coaches hired in the NFL in recent years have proved that. Coaches such as Romeo Crennel and Lovie Smith earned their jobs on their credentials and not their race. Crennel won three superbowls as defensive co-ordinator in New England before moving to Cleveland as head coach. Smith was a brain child of the brilliant Tampa 2 defence along with Tony Dungy, and coached in superbowl XXXVI as defensive co-ordinator of the St Louis Rams.

The focus needs to be on promoting minority coaches at lower levels of the football ladder. That is quite obviously the best way to ensure that there are a greater number of talented minority coaches rising through the college ranks to the NFL.

The NFL, however, continues to ignore this. Instead, the commissioner and his staff have reacted to a potential political embarrassment by choosing to lean on and promote limp legislation like the Rooney Rule. If the NFL wants to use the rule as a PR device to show the world that they care about diversity, that’s just fine. It does no harm and it doesn’t need to be repealed.

But it isn’t enough. Action needs to be taken at the collegiate level, and if the league continues only to shake its fist at the NFL owners then they will continue to see very few talented minority coaches getting hired to key positions.