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In response to the ridiculous takes in the Kris Richard thread
The Washington Post did a long series of articles on this topic recently
==============================================
Despite the league’s end-zone pledge to “END RACISM,” Black coaches continue to be denied top jobs in a league in which nearly 60 percent of the players are Black.
It is a glaring shortcoming for the NFL, one highlighted by the findings of an investigation by The Washington Post. Black coaches tend to perform about as well as White coaches, The Post found. But while White candidates are offered a vast and diverse set of routes to the league’s top coaching jobs, Black coaches face a much narrower set of paths. They have had to serve significantly longer as mid-level assistants, are more likely to be given interim jobs than full-time ones and are held to a higher standard when it comes to keeping their jobs
Since 1990, Black coaches have been twice as likely as others to be fired after leading a team to a regular season record of .500 or better.
Amid growing scrutiny of the issue, The Post compiled and analyzed three decades’ worth of data and conducted interviews with 16 of the 24 living current and former NFL head coaches who identify as Black, as well as dozens of other coaches, former players, team executives, agents and others.
The data quantifies the frustration felt by many of those coaches, which erupted into the public eye this year with a lawsuit by Brian Flores, fired by the Miami Dolphins in January, that accuses the league and its teams of racism in their hiring and firing practices. The lawsuit and its potential implications hover over the NFL as its new season unfolds with just three Black head coaches: Todd Bowles of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Lovie Smith of the Houston Texans and Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
That’s the same number as in 2003 — the year the NFL, under intense external pressure, introduced the Rooney Rule, which required teams to interview at least one candidate of color for open head coach and front-office jobs.
Taken together, The Post’s analysis mirrors the sentiment among Black coaches that they are playing by a different set of rules than their White counterparts. The result, Black coaches said, is a league in which many Black assistants have resigned themselves to the notion that they will never get an opportunity to be a head coach — a position that, in addition to the immeasurable prestige, also could pay, on average, 10 times what a mid-level assistant makes — while others have left the profession entirely..............
As part of this project, The Post contacted all 32 teams seeking interviews with its owner (or, in the case of the publicly owned Green Bay Packers, its top executive). Only one — the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Art Rooney II, for whose father, Dan, the Rooney Rule is named — agreed to be interviewed for this story before it was published.........
“The NFL doesn’t have a diversity problem. The NFL has a Black problem,” said Dennis Thurman, a former defensive coordinator for the Jets and Bills who left pro football in 2020 to join Deion Sanders’s coaching staff at Jackson State, a historically Black university. “There aren’t that many Hispanics playing in the NFL. There aren’t that many Asians. There aren’t women on the field in the NFL. I understand them wanting to be inclusive, and I applaud what they’re doing for those groups.
“But the issue is not women. It’s not Asians. It’s not Hispanics. The majority of players in the NFL are Black. They use the word ‘diversity.’ It’s real slick. But, no, uh-uh. That’s not the issue.”..........
Maurice Carthon, who won two Super Bowl rings as a running back with the New York Giants, was persuaded to go into coaching by Parcells in 1994. He served as an assistant for seven NFL teams over the next 19 seasons, three times rising to the role of offensive coordinator; in 2009, he was named assistant head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs. Carthon would interview unsuccessfully for five head coaching jobs before retiring in 2012 at 51.
During an interview with the Oakland Raiders in 2004, Carthon, then with the Dallas Cowboys, knew almost as soon as he got off the plane that his candidacy was a farce — because, he said, Raiders senior personnel executive Michael Lombardi told him so. “He said to me, ‘You know, you’re not going to get this job,’ ” Carthon recalled.
Lombardi, now a media analyst and author, said he does not remember the conversation and was not directly involved in Carthon’s job interview, which was conducted by owner Al Davis. He did acknowledge contacting Carthon on behalf of the team, though, and recalled that Davis was more interested in a different candidate: Sean Payton, another Cowboys coach, who was regarded as a “young quarterback guru.” In any event, the unpredictable Davis hired Norv Turner..........
But the most memorably unpleasant of Carthon’s interviews came with the New Orleans Saints in 2006, he said. During his conversation with owner Tom Benson, Carthon recalled, Benson said to him, “You know, in our organization here, we let the boys wash the cars.”
The Saints, who have never employed a Black head coach, hired Payton. Until being asked for comment by The Post, the team said in a statement, it had never heard of Carthon’s allegations, adding that no candidate ever mentioned receiving a racial comment from Benson, who died in 2018.
Carthon said he kept the “racist comment” to himself. Black coaches often do, Dungy said, to avoid appearing as if they’re blaming racism for not getting hired.
“There’s a culture of forced silence because, if you want another opportunity, you just can’t go out and say, ‘That interview that I got was a sham,’ or, ‘I didn’t get a fair deal,’ ” Dungy said. “It’ll be held against you.”
The NFL’s Vincent acknowledged Black coaches’ reluctance to speak up but insisted he and other league officials are willing to intervene when coaches feel they have been discriminated against.
“They remain silent because they want a second opportunity,” Vincent said, “and to speak out when you’re the minority, sometimes it can hurt you. We’ve seen that happen. So we try to be a buffer where we can allow them to share in confidentiality.”.............
The Washington Post did a long series of articles on this topic recently
==============================================
Despite the league’s end-zone pledge to “END RACISM,” Black coaches continue to be denied top jobs in a league in which nearly 60 percent of the players are Black.
It is a glaring shortcoming for the NFL, one highlighted by the findings of an investigation by The Washington Post. Black coaches tend to perform about as well as White coaches, The Post found. But while White candidates are offered a vast and diverse set of routes to the league’s top coaching jobs, Black coaches face a much narrower set of paths. They have had to serve significantly longer as mid-level assistants, are more likely to be given interim jobs than full-time ones and are held to a higher standard when it comes to keeping their jobs
Since 1990, Black coaches have been twice as likely as others to be fired after leading a team to a regular season record of .500 or better.
Amid growing scrutiny of the issue, The Post compiled and analyzed three decades’ worth of data and conducted interviews with 16 of the 24 living current and former NFL head coaches who identify as Black, as well as dozens of other coaches, former players, team executives, agents and others.
The data quantifies the frustration felt by many of those coaches, which erupted into the public eye this year with a lawsuit by Brian Flores, fired by the Miami Dolphins in January, that accuses the league and its teams of racism in their hiring and firing practices. The lawsuit and its potential implications hover over the NFL as its new season unfolds with just three Black head coaches: Todd Bowles of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Lovie Smith of the Houston Texans and Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
That’s the same number as in 2003 — the year the NFL, under intense external pressure, introduced the Rooney Rule, which required teams to interview at least one candidate of color for open head coach and front-office jobs.
Taken together, The Post’s analysis mirrors the sentiment among Black coaches that they are playing by a different set of rules than their White counterparts. The result, Black coaches said, is a league in which many Black assistants have resigned themselves to the notion that they will never get an opportunity to be a head coach — a position that, in addition to the immeasurable prestige, also could pay, on average, 10 times what a mid-level assistant makes — while others have left the profession entirely..............
As part of this project, The Post contacted all 32 teams seeking interviews with its owner (or, in the case of the publicly owned Green Bay Packers, its top executive). Only one — the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Art Rooney II, for whose father, Dan, the Rooney Rule is named — agreed to be interviewed for this story before it was published.........
“The NFL doesn’t have a diversity problem. The NFL has a Black problem,” said Dennis Thurman, a former defensive coordinator for the Jets and Bills who left pro football in 2020 to join Deion Sanders’s coaching staff at Jackson State, a historically Black university. “There aren’t that many Hispanics playing in the NFL. There aren’t that many Asians. There aren’t women on the field in the NFL. I understand them wanting to be inclusive, and I applaud what they’re doing for those groups.
“But the issue is not women. It’s not Asians. It’s not Hispanics. The majority of players in the NFL are Black. They use the word ‘diversity.’ It’s real slick. But, no, uh-uh. That’s not the issue.”..........
Maurice Carthon, who won two Super Bowl rings as a running back with the New York Giants, was persuaded to go into coaching by Parcells in 1994. He served as an assistant for seven NFL teams over the next 19 seasons, three times rising to the role of offensive coordinator; in 2009, he was named assistant head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs. Carthon would interview unsuccessfully for five head coaching jobs before retiring in 2012 at 51.
During an interview with the Oakland Raiders in 2004, Carthon, then with the Dallas Cowboys, knew almost as soon as he got off the plane that his candidacy was a farce — because, he said, Raiders senior personnel executive Michael Lombardi told him so. “He said to me, ‘You know, you’re not going to get this job,’ ” Carthon recalled.
Lombardi, now a media analyst and author, said he does not remember the conversation and was not directly involved in Carthon’s job interview, which was conducted by owner Al Davis. He did acknowledge contacting Carthon on behalf of the team, though, and recalled that Davis was more interested in a different candidate: Sean Payton, another Cowboys coach, who was regarded as a “young quarterback guru.” In any event, the unpredictable Davis hired Norv Turner..........
But the most memorably unpleasant of Carthon’s interviews came with the New Orleans Saints in 2006, he said. During his conversation with owner Tom Benson, Carthon recalled, Benson said to him, “You know, in our organization here, we let the boys wash the cars.”
The Saints, who have never employed a Black head coach, hired Payton. Until being asked for comment by The Post, the team said in a statement, it had never heard of Carthon’s allegations, adding that no candidate ever mentioned receiving a racial comment from Benson, who died in 2018.
Carthon said he kept the “racist comment” to himself. Black coaches often do, Dungy said, to avoid appearing as if they’re blaming racism for not getting hired.
“There’s a culture of forced silence because, if you want another opportunity, you just can’t go out and say, ‘That interview that I got was a sham,’ or, ‘I didn’t get a fair deal,’ ” Dungy said. “It’ll be held against you.”
The NFL’s Vincent acknowledged Black coaches’ reluctance to speak up but insisted he and other league officials are willing to intervene when coaches feel they have been discriminated against.
“They remain silent because they want a second opportunity,” Vincent said, “and to speak out when you’re the minority, sometimes it can hurt you. We’ve seen that happen. So we try to be a buffer where we can allow them to share in confidentiality.”.............
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