The NFL is racist, according to the NFL, and the league has been working to solve it over the past few years. Now, it has finally approved a plan to solve the dilemma: bribing teams to make hires based on race.
Teams will now be rewarded with two third-round draft picks if one of their own minority coaches or personnel staff are hired to be head coaches or general managers, whether they are hired by other teams or promoted in house. So now, NFL teams will be explicitly rewarded for making hiring decisions based on race. The third round of the NFL draft regularly produces starting players. Super Bowl MVPs Russell Wilson and Nick Foles were third-round picks, as were All-Pro selections such as Alvin Kamara, Travis Kelce, and Keenan Allen.
But is this necessary, or even constructive?
The 2020 NFL season started with two minority general managers and four minority head coaches, though two more have taken over as interim head coaches in Houston and Atlanta. This is down from 2018, which saw eight minority head coaches among the league’s 32 teams, matching the high points in 2011 and 2017. After five of them were fired at season’s end, the NFL determined it had a racism problem that couldn’t be solved by the Rooney Rule, an outdated proviso that forced teams to interview at least one minority candidate for a vacancy.
The new rule is racist, or at least ostentatiously racialist, on its face and also potentially counterproductive. By giving extra picks to the team from which coaches are hired, the rule will certainly discourage teams from hiring minority candidates from division rivals because those rivals would then get the extra draft choices. Most top candidates come from top teams, like the Kansas City Chiefs, ensuring that teams already rich in talent will get richer. And, of course, it commodifies minority coaches and personnel, making them tools to acquire more draft picks.
There are several minority coaching candidates poised for jobs this upcoming offseason, including the two biggest names in Robert Saleh and Eric Bieniemy. Atlanta’s interim head coach Raheem Morris is already staking his claim for the full-time job. This rule, just like the box-checking of the Rooney Rule, is unnecessary.
The NFL is learning, just like the NBA, that it can never be woke enough. The league wanted to lecture the public on racism and is now going to address its own allegations of made-up systemic racism by rewarding systemic racism. The NFL has made skin color a factor teams must consider in hiring, and it will have to live with consequences of that.
