Rethinking the Rooney Rule

[FirebreathingMonkey]

Rethinking the Rooney Rule
How to make the NFL more diverse at the top

Full article in the link

Rethinking the Rooney Rule

But the league did provide a blueprint for corporate America to improve its poor hiring record when it comes to diversity. Facebook, Pinterest, Intel, Xerox and Amazon are among the major companies that have instituted their own version of the rule. Even the Pentagon has explored using some form of the rule to diversify its officer corps.

In the 12 seasons before the rule was instituted, the NFL had only six non-white head coaches. In 12 seasons under the rule, the league has added 14 head coaches of color. From the NFL’s standpoint, there were other encouraging numbers last season regarding diversity. The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports at the University of Central Florida found that:

• At the start of last season, there were six head coaches of color, one more than in 2014. In 2011, the NFL had an all-time high of eight head coaches of color.
• There were seven African-American general managers in 2015 and for the ninth consecutive year, there were at least five general managers of color.
• Eight of the last 18 Super Bowl teams have had either an African-American head coach or general manager.

Clearly, minorities have made modest strides in filling leadership positions. The problem is, there are 32 NFL teams. Even at its highest point, minority representation among coaches was a meager 25 percent. Almost 68 percent of the NFL’s players are African-American, but there are no African-American team presidents, and only one team president of color.

And that's my problem, why does the NFL have to have 32 Black head coaches. Maybe there are some whites who are good coaches??


One of the biggest criticisms of the rule is that it hasn’t effected change fast enough. For the rule to have been in place so long, some African-American commentators have argued, the NFL should have many more minorities in the highest-ranking positions. “It’s extremely difficult to eradicate a long-standing problem quickly,” Duru said. “The Emancipation Proclamation itself isn’t going to be a panacea. But it creates a culture where there’s no longer lawful slavery, and where we start to see progress, slowly but surely.


The commissioner’s office requested that teams send two representatives, including at least one person of color, who aspire to be general managers and head coaches, to a three-day program at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

 

[Duffman]

Rich old white people don't like the coloreds that much, that's a hard mindset to change.

 

[ATL96Steeler]

I think many people misunderstand the Rooney Rule...much like corporate America...the upper crust of society is mostly white and mostly male...if you really want diversity you have to seek diversity...IBM and a lot of these larges companies started showing up at historically black colleges and setting up camp for career day, etc. Women and people of color started getting opportunities and guys like Ken Chenualt worked their way up and earned the positions they have today...but it started by getting an opportunity.

The Rooney Rule is not about hiring anybody, it's all about opportunity...exposing black players, FO execs, to the HC/GM hiring process...the best and brightest should take over from there...getting hired simply because of what you look like is a sure setup for failure. Saying there's only 6 black HCs of the 32 teams, and it having some type of negative connotation imo is missing the target.

Yeah, some NFL owners probably do have issues with having a black man as the face of their franchise or in a GM role or whatever, but we'd like to think they are a dying breed.

 

[NinerSickness]

Rich old white people don't like the coloreds that much, that's a hard mindset to change.

Looks like you're an example of how hard it is for people to stop being racist.

 

[NinerSickness]

Anyone who thinks it's a "problem" that there aren't enough black people coaching NFL teams has missed the entire point of competition in the first place. It's not racist that there are hardly any white running backs or receivers; the best ones got the jobs. Same with coaches.

The Rooney Rule is the 2nd stupidest rule in the history of mankind (only to the carpool lane). Waste a token black guy's time by bringing him in for an interview even though you have no intention of hiring him.

 

[Cave_Johnson]

"Clearly, minorities have made modest strides in filling leadership positions. The problem is, there are 32 NFL teams. Even at its highest point, minority representation among coaches was a meager 25 percent. Almost 68 percent of the NFL’s players are African-American, but there are no African-American team presidents, and only one team president of color."

Do the people who write these types of articles have any understanding of reality or what the word "minority" means? First of all, when they say minority they mean black people. That's all they really care about. Guys like Norm Chow and Ron Rivera are also minorities but they rarely come up in these conversations.

Minority representation was a "meager" 25%? Well, guess what? They're called minorities for a reason. It's because they're in the MINORITY of the population. 25% seems about right since 77% percent of the people in the US are white. Technically minorities are OVER represented in the pool of NFL coaches.

But the counter argument to this is always "but...but...most players are black so there should be more black coaches and shit". Okay, that might be a good argument if more than 19% of NFL head coaches had experience playing in the NFL. I would imagine that the stats are similar for all coaching positions in general. The fact is that a lot of people who get into coaching are the guys who loved the game but just weren't talented enough physically to play at a high level. This group is more representative of the overall population demographics of the country than the group who are athletic enough to make it to the NFL.

That is, probably 77%ish of the coaches are still white because 77% of the people in the country are white. It's not like the vast majority of the people applying for coaching positions are black and these owners are only giving interviews to white guys.

And by the way, if you're an NFL owner/GM and you don't hire the best guy for the job because of the color of their skin, then you're an idiot. And those types of dumb decisions will eventually lead to your organisation sucking and you getting fired. I suppose you can't get fired if you're the owner, but you'll still be stuck with a shit team and you'll lose money.

 

[Cave_Johnson]

Oh, and I get a real kick out of people who use the phrase "person of color". You're still calling them a colored person. You're just phrasing it differently. It's like if somebody told me that calling someone a porch monkey was rude so I just called them a "monkey who resides on a porch".

 

[NinerSickness]

Oh, and I get a real kick out of people who use the phrase "person of color". You're still calling them a colored person. You're just phrasing it differently. It's like if somebody told me that calling someone a porch monkey was rude so I just called them a "monkey who resides on a porch".

People who get butt hurt over the term "coloured people" are looking for a reason to be offended. Sure, it's archaic, but it's not derogatory.

 

[Cave_Johnson]

People who get butt hurt over the term "coloured people" are looking for a reason to be offended. Sure, it's archaic, but it's not derogatory.

White light contains all colors so technically white people are the most colored people on the planet.

 

[SonnyCID]

I've seen some compelling arguments against the Rooney rule.

This is not one of them.