
The NFL managed to get through an entire offseason while only hiring one person of color, which is crazy given the league’s make up. The original Rooney Rule was meant to prevent exactly this, and to encourage the league’s predominantly rich, white ownership to actually interview black head coaches.
And for a while it worked, in the way that things like affirmative action work for a while, before the people in control find a way to rig it so they can get back to hiring white people. Rather than actually looking at qualified candidates (or rather, instead of giving qualified candidates a fair shake), teams simply interviewed a black person of the departing coaching staff, fulfilling their requirement before they shot off like a rocket to chase whatever white savior they actually wanted. Once teams figured there way around the particular loophole, there was no turning back.
So, in attempt to unfuck the thing they fucked up, the NFL has turned to the only thing most of the NFL’s corrupt owners can understand; good ol’ fashioned bribery.
The NFL owners, who literally can not be trusted to just actually give minority candidates a chance, will potentially be rewarded with draft picks and better draft position for hiring minority head coaches and coordinators, according to NFL.com’s Jim Trotter. And not only that; just so they can work the system, there are incentives for keeping a minority head coach or front office exec hired through at least their third season with the team.
If this actually comes to pass, the NFL will get to pass itself off as fixing a problem, and they’ll largely get applauded for it. And what would be forgotten is how insane it is that the league is having to bribe itself into hiring minority candidates. For the record, the owners don’t even have to vote to change the Rooney Rule. They could have chose to implement changes at literally any time. That they are doing so in the light of day is less because of realizing their own mistakes and shortcomings and more because the outcry this offseason was so large that they had to address it to save face.
The fact that Joe Judge, a literally unknown special teams coordinator with precisely zero credentials has a job while Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bienemy doesn’t is a damning indictment of the NFL’s systemic racism towards not only its players, but it’s coaches and its execs as well. That they are, quite literally, rewarding themselves for being less racist speaks volumes about how the actually view inequality.
I love the double standard that says it’s not fair to fire someone like Matt Patricia after two miserable years because you don’t really know them, but it’s OK not to hire someone because you don’t really know them.
Unless, of course, you’re hiring Matt Patricia. Which makes it a triple standard, I guess.
But with all the winning the Lions have done, it’s important to get a coach who can continue the legacy.
And really the Joe Judge thing is overstated. New York City just isn’t ready for a minority coach.
New York just got through two seasons with Todd Bowles without exploding or the world ending. Who would you rather coach your shiny first round draft pick quarterback who is coming off an okay but promising season; literally *anyone* from the Bill Belichick coaching tree, or the guy who helped turn the Chiefs offense into a juggernaut, who won games with Matt fuckin’ Moore (who was retired until last season), and was on his way to winning a Super Bowl?
The could’ve had the guy who helped to develop Patrick Mahomes and instead they got a guy no one has heard of and the guy partially responsible for squandering Dak Prescott, Zeke Elliot and one of the best offensive lines in football. If New York Giants fans can’t deal with a black guy coaching them, they deserve to fail.
And in the end, they couldn’t even be bothered to put lipstick on that pig.
NFL owners pass on plan to boost diversity
I’m curious about something, because it seems to happen A LOT here in MN (Ryan Saunders with the Wolves, Jerry Kill’s entire coaching staff with Gopher Football, Adam Zimmer & AC Patterson with the Vikes, etc.), how often in other cities do head coaches end up with either their family members, or old college buddies on their coaching staff rosters?
Not that *some* of those folks aren’t plenty qualified… but there seems to be a good deal of sheer nepotism, too…
In the case of Patterson in particular, there *doesn’t* seem to be quite the level of nepotism-is-ness, since he DID go coach elsewhere before joining the Vikes…
And YEAH, Ryan Saunders seems to be a good coach… buuuut Ryan *did* only get those initial assistant spots with the Wolves years ago, ‘cuz he was Flip’s kid.