By Sylvester “Nunnie” Robinson
In the recent past I’ve written articles featuring our phenomenal high school and college student-athletes, especially those in the South Florida area aka the Gold Coast. In the not too distant past, however, I’ve used the space provided by publisher Bobby R. Henry, Sr. to comment on situations, stories, trends and prevailing attitudes in the sports world that we find particularly interesting, troubling, disturbing or worth commenting on.
Since the NFL draft is rapidly approaching, and I have no burning interest in who or which player is drafted first, allow me to opined about the state of Black head coaches in the league or rather the lack thereof.
According to Google, The Rooney Rule is a National Football League policy that requires league teams to interview ethnic-minority candidates for head coaching and senior football operation jobs. It is an example of affirmative action, even though before 2022 there was no hiring quota or hiring preference given to minorities, only an interviewing quota.[1][2][3] The first actual hiring quota was established before the 2022 season, mandating that at least one member of each team’s offensive coaching staff must be either an ethnic minority or a woman. The Rooney Rule was established in 2003, and variations of the rule are now in place in other industries.
In my humble opinion, The Rooney Rule has been a dismal failure, not necessarily in concept but in application. And based on my analysis, it has failed miserably, intentional or not. First, they go through the facade of interviewing minorities for compliance purposes. When they hire a minority candidate, the leash is usually short and tight ! Failure is not an option. A few years ago, Steve Wilkes was promoted to the head coaching position with the Arizona Cardinals, then fired after one season as they suddenly developed a different vision based on Texas Tech head coach Cliff Kingsbury and Oklahoma star quarterback Kyler Murray. The vision went unfulfilled as Coach Kingsbury, who had a mediocre record as a collegiate coach, was fired by the Cardinals brass but recently hired as an assistant with USC.
The Houston Texans hired two minority coaches – David Cullers and Lovie Smith- in succession and summarily fired them after one season each. Any coach charged with turning around a struggling team deserves more time. Again the Rooney Rule failed, and I believe is on life support because it simply isn’t working for minority coaches. If you are an NFL fan, you are probably familiar with the job that Steve Wilkes did as interim coach of the Carolina Panthers after Matt Rhule was let go in mid season after signing a multi-year contract to resurrect the team. What happened: Coach Wilkes should have been hired as the permanent head coach, but they chose to hire Frank Reich, recently fired in Indianapolis. And Matt Rhule, despite his lack of success with Carolina, signed another multi-year contract to Coach the Nebraska Cornhuskers even though the Black interim coach had performed admirably.
Is there anyone, without googling, who can tell me how many Black head coaches there are presently in the NFL? I know of only two: Mike Thomas with Pittsburgh and newly hired DeMeco Ryans with Houston. Obviously, experience is no longer a primary requisite as both Caucasian Philadelphia coordinators were hired as head coaches though they lost the Super Bowl. Stop the pretense, get rid of the hypocritical Rooney Rule and allow the Jerry Joneses of the league to continue their tried and true racist hiring policies.
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