NFL's Racial Inequality: Examining the Rooney Rule and Minority Coaching

The National Football League (NFL) has faced accusations of racial prejudice, resulting in a lower percentage of minority coaches and administration. To address this issue, lawyers Johnnie Cochran and Cyrus Mehri proposed a plan to increase the number of minority coaches in NFL. The proposal includes rewarding teams that hire minority coaches and penalizing those that don't. However, critics argue that this plan may not work due to structural barriers and career mobility patterns that reduce participation of minority coaches. Studies have shown that minority coaches face unfair dismissal and retention practices, leading to a lack of minority head coaches in the NFL. To overcome these challenges, recommendations include obliging owners to adopt the given recommendation, conducting interviews for minority coaches, and implementing penalties for non-compliance.

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Case study
In 1920, national football league was founded and has 32 franchise located in the major
cities around the world. League is not merely sports it's a business enterprises to earn the
lump sum profit. There is accusation on an owner of been racial prejudice, which resulted
in lower percentage of minority coaches and administration.
The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES), located at the University of
Central Florida (UCF), publishes the Racial and Gender Report Card annually to indicate
areas of improvement, stagnation, and regression in the racial and gender composition of
professional and college sports personnel and to contribute to the improvement of
integration in front office and college athletic department positions. The publication of
the 2015 NFL Racial and Gender Report Card follows the publication of the reports on
college sport, the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball. The
remaining reports for this year will be for the Women’s National Basketball Associate
and Major League Soccer
To rectify the problem lawyers Johnnie Cochran and Cyrus Mehri has proposed a plan to
increase the number of the minority in NFL. Thus, they make draft choices represent the
NFL's essential currency; the proposal depicts that for responsible management, those
who hire minority coaches will receive extra rewards and other will lose some if they
decide to refrain from hiring minority coaches(Kovach, Kenneth A). No, this draft plan
will not work in case the minority coaches, as showed in many cases minority coaches
believe that the hiring process are biased and there are discrepancies in that. There are
fewer chances for minority coaches to be a head coaching position and there is always
favoritism towards non-minority coaches. It was also perceived by most collegiate that
minority coaches lack the necessary experience and skills to serve in leadership
There are various explanations for the lack of minority coaches in sports as a whole. It is
structural barriers and career mobility patterns which reduce the participation of minority
coaches in NFL. Structure barriers include. The university conference and from where its
belong whether it was a private institution or public institution and its also depends on the
empirical cases of the university all the success and failure result critically examined by
the conference members which influence their decision. Studies show till 2000, there had
never been a black head coach in the Southeastern Conference (SEC). In the starting
season of Mississippi state university in 2004, the first minor head football coach was
hired named, Sylvester Croom.
Other explored the possibility of racial discrimination in the dismissal and retention of
college football coaches by the university administration. Minority coaches stay for the
smaller number of time, and there are chances that the lack of minority head coaches is
due to unfair dismissal and retention towards black coaches. Data on 81 institutions over
11 year period that contains the coach's race, variables on cumulative winning records,
annual on-the-field improvement, pre and post season game participation and black coach
show a dismissal probability that is 9.6% below that of white coaches. Thus, studies show
there is possible discrimination at college level shown through the disproportionate
minority and nonminority coaches.
If I have a chance a chance to divert the plan to divert the plan I will surely do making a
draft choices represent the NFL’s essential currency, as a proposal for responsible
management, those who hire minority coaches will receive extra rewards, and other will

Case study
lose some if they decide to refrain from hiring minority coaches will not be successful
plan to increase the number of minor coaches in NFL. For the successful plan, there
should be obligations for owners to adopt the given recommendation. The committee can
recommend binding on all the NFL teams for conducting interviews for minority coaches
and if owners were failing to interview a minority candidate before filling a head coach
vacancy that is the violation of the rule would be subject to penalties at the NFL
Commissioner's discretion.
There should be variation in structural and career mobility patterns as private institutions
are more discriminating in choosing the non-minor coaches. There shouldn't be
discrimination in choosing practices of hiring head coaches in NFL. The advantage of
above plan, if there is a penalty on disproportion ratio of minor and non-minor head
coaches in NFL, owner have to pay penalities, which make compulsory for them to gave
equal opportunity to minor head coaches.
There is a strong influence for changing the hiring practices of NFL. According to the
labor economist, repots on NFL's head coaching hiring practices named black coaches in
the national football league; superior performance and inferior performance". This report
thoroughly analyzed the NFL's hiring and firing practices over the previous fifteen
seasons before 2002 and data were way more opposite what it was expected, the report
shows black coaches average 1.1 more wins per year than white coaches. Black coaches
led their teams to the payoffs more frequently than white coaches that are 67% of the
time for black coaches while 39% for the white coaches, before being fired, black
coaches won an average of 1.3 more games than white coaches in their last session. The
most important reason behind hiring the black coaches is they won average of 2.7 more
games than white coaches in their first seasons.
Despite an overall better record than their white counterparts, black coaches had a
difficult time getting hired, and once hired, black head coaches were fired before their
white counterparts. Labor economist finding the way to break the glass ceiling holding
back promising minority coaching candidates. Due to increasing discrimination in hiring
practices, a committee was form named committee on work place diversity, the
committee issue some recommendations on making a commitment to interview minority
candidates for every head coaching job opening unless there is no prior commitment to
hire a person from within its staff. Establish a coordinator/assistant head coach databank
to assist NFL teams in the consideration of qualified coaching candidates, and  allow
early interview opportunities for assistant coaches of playoff teams.
The Rooney Rule is a broken system because it forces private owners to interview a small
pool of minority coaches. Expanding the pool should be a cooperative effort between the
NFL and the American Football Coaches Association, where there is a much larger pool
of coaching prospects.
The diversity efforts must trickle down from the coordinator to quality-control assistant
positions. There is only one African American offensive coordinator in the NFL — Jim
Caldwell with the Ravens. The suggestion that the Rooney Rule be expanded to
encompass coordinator and assistant head coach openings is worth consideration. But a
more effective solution would be to allow position coaches to break contracts to get
coordinator promotions. Position coaches can't get out of their deals unless they get head

Case study
coaching jobs. This stymies position coaches from getting coordinator jobs, which also
prevents them from getting in the head coaching pipeline. General managers and team
owners looking for head coaches look first at offensive coordinators, and the best
assistants sometimes are not allowed to be offensive coordinators. This really isn't about
racism. It's about common sense.
The NFL owners held a series of conference calls to discuss the Committee's
recommendations, and the owners "strongly agreed on the principle that any club seeking
to hire a head coach would interview one or more minority applicants for that position.
For the successful plan, there should be obligations for owners to adopt the given
recommendation.Thus, Committee can recommend binding on all the NFL teams for
conducting interviews for minority coaches and if owners failing to interview a minority
candidate before filling a head coach vacancy that is violation of rule would be subject to
penalties at the NFL Commissioner's discretion