Does the N.F.L. Have a Race Problem? (Published 2022) (2024)

Update, Feb. 9: Earlier this week Mike McDaniel, who is biracial, was hired as head coach for the Miami Dolphins, and Lovie Smith, who is Black, was hired as head coach for the Houston Texans, bringing the total number of head coaches of color in the N.F.L. to five. The two articles excerpted below were published before those two recent hires.

Are you a football fan? Will you be watching the Super Bowl on Sunday?

While football remains the most popular spectator sport in America, and last year’s Super Bowl between Tampa Bay and Kansas City was the highest-rated prime-time telecast, with over 92 million viewers, the league continues to be plagued by controversies, from the ongoing debate over brain injuries to issues about race.

The N.F.L. has acknowledged repeatedly that there are not enough coaches and team executives of color even as nearly 70 percent of players are Black. As of Feb. 9, after a new round of firing and hiring, the league has only five head coaches of color and no Black team owners.

Do you think the N.F.L. has a race problem? And if so, what do you think can be done to bring greater racial equity to its ranks of coaches, executives and owners?

In “Brian Flores Sues N.F.L., Claiming Bias in Coaching Search,” Ken Belson and Jenny Vrentas write about a class-action lawsuit filed by the former head coach of the Miami Dolphins:

Brian Flores, who was fired as coach of the Miami Dolphins last month and was rejected for new jobs with other clubs, has sued the N.F.L. and its 32 teams alleging that they have discriminated against him and other Black coaches in their hiring practices.

His filing in federal court comes just days after the Giants, one of the teams he interviewed with for a position, named Brian Daboll, who is white, as their head coach.

Flores cited text messages he said were sent by his former boss, New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick. In the messages, Belichick appears to congratulate Flores for winning the Giants’ job, which he had yet to interview for at that point. Flores responded by asking if Belichick had intended the message for Daboll, who interviewed before Flores’s scheduled meeting.

The respondent answered: “I think they are naming Daboll. I’m sorry about that. BB”

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A Giants spokesman, Pat Hanlon, said in a statement the team was “confident with the process that resulted in the hiring of Brian Daboll” and that “Flores was in the conversation to be our head coach until the eleventh hour.” A Patriots spokesman said he did not anticipate that the team would be issuing a response.

The N.F.L. said it is “deeply committed to ensuring equitable employment practices” and “we will defend against these claims, which are without merit.”

The screenshots of a conversation purportedly initiated by Belichick, the notoriously tight-lipped coach, as well as other anecdotes that paint an unflattering portrait of Stephen Ross, the Dolphins’ owner, provide a rare insight into the league’s business in a class-action suit that contends there is widespread discrimination in the N.F.L.

Flores is the son of Honduran immigrants to the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn. He led the Dolphins for three years, including two winning seasons, and in the suit said he was “humiliated in the process as the New York Giants subjected him to a sham interview in an attempt to appear to provide a Black candidate with a legitimate chance at obtaining the job.”

In a statement, Flores said that he understood that “I may be risking coaching the game that I love and that has done so much for my family and me. My sincere hope is that by standing up against systemic racism in the N.F.L., others will join me to ensure that positive change is made for generations to come.”

In his suit, Flores stated that there were more than 40 other coaches who could join the class action, though he did not name any of them. Still, the case faces high legal hurdles, most prominently because Flores needs to prove that race was specifically a factor in his being turned down for jobs, even as he continues to interview for open coaching positions.

In the Opinion essay “Let’s Talk About How the N.F.L. Is Failing (While the N.B.A. Reaches New Heights),” Jane Coaston adds more context to pro football’s history with coaches of color:

Owners seem to have less patience with nonwhite N.F.L. coaches. In 2019, the sports website The Undefeated published results from a study that found that from 2009 to 2018 nonwhite head coaches averaged much shorter tenures than their white counterparts and were less likely to land a second head coaching position after getting fired. As Sports Illustrated’s Conor Orr put it, they get “​​half the runway of their white counterparts, requiring gargantuan expectations to succeed in impossible scenarios.”

The league has been confronted with these criticisms for decades. In 2002 the famed attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr. released a damning report titled “Black Coaches in the National Football League: Superior Performance, Inferior Opportunities.” It showed that over 15 years, Black N.F.L. coaches averaged more wins than their white counterparts and yet had harder times getting hired and were more likely to get fired. Cochran then threatened to sue the N.F.L. if it did not change its hiring practices.

The N.F.L. did what any large corporation would do in response to news it didn’t particularly like: It created a committee to study the issue, offering the appearance of action to a public that was increasingly demanding it. Headed by Dan Rooney, then the owner and president of the Pittsburgh Steelers, the group released a set of recommendations, including the so-called Rooney Rule, which was adopted by the team owners: “Any club seeking to hire a head coach will interview one or more minority applicants for that position.”

And yet in the 19 years since the rule was adopted, we’ve gotten nowhere. There were three Black head coaches in 2003. Today, there are three minority head coaches, one of whom is Black.

Students, read one or both of the articles, then tell us:

• Do you think the N.F.L. has a race problem? How big a problem is it that in a 32-team league where most players are Black there are now only five head coaches of color and no Black team owners?

• What is your reaction to Mr. Flores’s lawsuit? Do you believe Black coaches have been discriminated against by the N.F.L.? What evidence best supports your view?

• Mr. Flores said, “My sincere hope is that by standing up against systemic racism in the N.F.L., others will join me to ensure that positive change is made for generations to come.” Do you think his lawsuit could lead to changes in the league’s hiring practices and racial composition among its coaches? How so?

• Ms. Coaston writes that “we’ve gotten nowhere” in the 19 years since the adoption of the Rooney Rule, which requires teams to interview “one or more minority applicants” for the head coaching position. Why do you think there has been so little progress toward diversifying the N.F.L.’s leadership?

• What do you think pro football can do to increase the number of head coaches of color, and in particular, Black head coaches? How might pro football learn from the recent gains in equity from the N.B.A., which Ms. Coaston writes about?

• Do these two articles change how you view the N.F.L.? What changes would you like to see in the league next year and in the future?

Want more writing prompts? You can find all of our questions in our Student Opinion column. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate them into your classroom.

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.