By: Billy Beerslugger
There has been pressure recently on professional sports teams, by their leagues and other organizations, to hire more minority coaches. “The Rooney Rule” in the NFL focuses on the requirement of interviewing a minority candidate for any vacant head coaching position unless the position was already promised to an assistant head coach in their contract.
The “Rooney Rule” was one of the contributing factors to having African American head coaches in the NFL jump from 6% in 2005 to 22% in 2006. The Detroit Lions were fined $200,000 in 2003 for not interviewing minority candidates for the team’s vacant head coaching job. The Eagles current O-Coordinator, Marty Mornhinweg was fired and Steve Mariucci was hired without interviewing any other candidate (although the Lions dispute this).
I guess my problem with the “Rooney Rule” and how it is enforced is that it seems only African America candidates have to be interviewed. When the NFL uses the term “diversity” or “minority” does it really mean “black” or “African-American”? It seems to me that if you were going to institute a form of affirmative action it should apply to all minorities and not just one. I’d like to see how many Latino or Asian candidates were interviewed since the inception of the rule. As far as I can tell the NFL has no Latino or Asian head coaches. And what about Women? Women are a minority. Why do they not get an equal share in the “Rooney Rule” (if you want to get technical).
The NFL players are comprised of 70% African American and nearly 30% white with a small percentage of Hispanic and negligible quantities of other races. So in this scenario maybe it does make sense that you would consider hiring more African American coaches. However, don’t call yourself being diverse when you only deal in black and white.
Dealing in sheer population, Latino’s (14.8%) out-number African Americans(13.4%) in the United States, and that’s not even dealing with bi-racial people, a large number of which happen to share Latino descent. While Hispanic’s do not make up a great deal of the NFL players they do make up a greater portion of the general population than African Americans. Shouldn’t that count for something?
The Rooney Rule is now talked about being instituted into NCAA football and possibly other sports. Did the NFL get this correct enough to warrant it being discussed in other leagues? Will they move to include more types of minorities in the hiring process? Should this the Rooney Rule even exist? I guess that’s for you to decide. I know I wouldn’t be a big fan of being made to interview people (regardless of race/religion/sexual preference) that I didn’t consider a serious contender for the position. I would just want the best person available.