NFL Will Now Require Every Team To Hire A Minority Offensive Coach

NFL to Make Every Team Hire Minority Offensive Coach, Rooney Rule Will Now Include Women

Source: Icon Sportswire / Getty

While the NBA is an organization with diversity and is always pro-player and player-first, the NFL is lagging while trying to make changes from the outside looking in. Though the NFL still has no Black owners, we may see that change with the selling of the Broncos in the future.

The NFL is now making a few changes to its Rooney Rule that will see a change in diversity.

“It’s a recognition that at the moment, when you look at stepping stones for a head coach, they are the coordinator positions,” said Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney II, the chairman of the NFL Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee reports ESPN. “We clearly have a trend where coaches are coming from the offensive side of the ball in recent years, and we clearly do not have as many minorities in the offensive coordinator [job].”

[…]

“The truth of the matter is that as of today, at least, there aren’t many women in the pool in terms of head coach,” Rooney said. “We hope that is going to change over the years, but for that reason we didn’t see it as inhibiting the number of interviews for racial minorities at this point in time. Obviously, we can address that as time goes on, but for now we didn’t see that as an issue.”

 

The series of enhancements is “designed to provide better outcomes in the hiring cycle,” which we can’t help but take as letting teams figure out diversity for themselves. The stand-out in all of this is the NFL requiring every team to hire a minority offensive coach and paying the salary for the position for two years.

In that statement, the NFL also mentioned ownership and will push to have more diversity among owners, and supposedly they have the support of the 32 owners in this effort. While this is a start to diverse hiring, let’s hope the NFL doesn’t take its foot off the gas.