NFL teams are havens of racism. Or, at least, that’s what the NFL seems to think.
The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport dropped its latest Racial and Gender Report Card for the NFL, which is a lot of buzzwords to say some professors counted the race and gender of NFL hires. The NFL received an overall B- grade, with a B+ in racial hiring, but that is not the big headline of the report.
The NFL received a D+ for the hiring of head coaches and an F for general managers — all this despite receiving an A+ for the hiring of assistant coaches. One might take away the obvious fact that the diversity of coaching staffs is more representative of the NFL’s hiring than the smaller sample size of 32 head coaches or perhaps the fact that the very top echelon is more reflective of junior hiring decisions made decades ago, whereas today’s assistant coach hires will be more reflective of head coaching roles a few decades hence. But that’s not the position the NFL has taken. The NFL thinks that it’s racist.
“We have done a thorough examination of what we’re doing wrong, what doesn’t work,” NFL executive Troy Vincent said, “diversity, we’re not seeing what we all hope for. We’re not seeing true inclusion.”
The NFL has been chasing a phantom on this issue. In 2018, 25% of the league’s head coaches were nonwhite. After five of them were fired, the NFL panicked. But these fluctuations have occurred before; 2018 merely tied the record-high number of minority coaches set back in 2011. The 2020 NFL season started with four nonwhite head coaches, but that number has risen to six, thanks to the interim head coaches in Atlanta and Houston.
Meanwhile, other candidates’ names have already been circulating. The two most popular ones for upcoming vacancies are black: Eric Bieniemy of the Chiefs and Robert Saleh of the 49ers. Former longtime Bengals coach Marvin Lewis, who was fired after the 2018 season, is also expected to make the rounds as a legitimate candidate for a coaching role.
NFL teams have diverse coaching staffs outside of their head coaches, and that proves that this is a nonissue. But this is the criticism that the NFL has opened itself up to, trying to correct this “problem” by commodifying minority coaches and bribing teams to hire them.
NFL teams don’t really have a racism problem in hiring, but the league wants to pretend they do. This is the image the NFL has chosen for itself: a league dedicated to social justice and fighting racism that itself is one of the most racist institutions in the United States.
