http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/1...ority-coaching-failure-rooney-rule-tony-dungy
THE NFL HAS sponsored programs, implemented the Rooney Rule, counseled team owners and convened committees to address its diversity problem in the coaching ranks. None of it is working. Minority coaches are frustrated. The numbers explain why -- emphatically.
Teams have taken a chance on 21 first-time white head coaches and only one first-time minority head coach, Todd Bowles, over the past five hiring cycles (2012-16). The gap was an identical 21-1 nearly two decades ago, when the New York Jets made Herm Edwards the only first-time minority hire from 1997 to 2001.
It's as though team owners have reverted to previous form, undoing the historic gains driven by Tony Dungy and his coaching tree in the early 2000s.
"Remember the old thing [where they said] you can't win with a black quarterback?" a minority assistant coach asked. "It is almost like that for the coaches."
Various league initiatives -- led by the Rooney Rule, which required teams to interview at least one minority candidate when searching for a new head coach -- continue to address the symptoms, not the underlying issues:
The path to becoming an NFL head coach is clear. It is also largely unavailable to minorities, especially with Dungy in retirement. Dungy and his former assistants accounted for 43 percent of minority head-coaching hires over the past two decades and 39 percent since the Rooney Rule took effect.
"The good thing about the Rooney Rule was not that you had to interview a minority candidate but that it slowed the process down and made you do some research," Dungy said, "but now it seems like in the last few years, people haven't really done what the rule was designed for. It has become, 'Just let me talk to a couple minority coaches very quickly so I can go about the business of hiring the person I really want to hire anyway.'"
Minorities dominate coaching positions for running backs and, to a lesser degree, the defensive secondary, but whites fill the most upwardly mobile spots. Researchers at the Georgetown McDonough School of Business expounded on this subject in a study of coaching staffs from 1985 to 2012. They concluded in part that while teams do hire minorities for positions carrying a lower likelihood for promotion, white coaches gained promotions more readily even when researchers accounted for assistant coaches' initial and current NFL jobs.
Current minority coaches agreed to share their thoughts for this story in hopes they could raise awareness to effect positive change. They requested anonymity because they felt that speaking candidly for attribution could jeopardize future opportunities. Dungy felt no such restrictions in retirement.
First-time minority head coach hires
From 1997-2016
ARIZONA CARDINALS COACH Bruce Arians hired minority coordinators on offense (Harold Goodwin) and defense (Bowles) when he took the job in 2013. (Bowles has since moved on to the Jets.) He added former NFL linebacker Levon Kirkland to his staff last season under a two-year coaching fellowship designed to help former players get into coaching. Arians cringed during a conversation at the NFL owners meetings in March when told teams had hired white head coaches 120 times in 141 chances over the past two decades.
"Those are staggering numbers," Arians said.
How staggering? Second-, third- and fourth-time white head coaches outnumber all minority hires by a 40-21 margin during that span.
Arians thinks the league should expand the Rooney Rule to include interviews for jobs as coordinators. (The rule was expanded in 2009 to cover "lead personnel executives," such as general managers.)
"You could expand the Rooney Rule if you wanted," a minority coordinator said, "but the problem is, they say, 'OK, we need a minority coach, and he coaches DBs, D-line, running backs, receivers. He does not coach quarterbacks, he does not coach offensive line.' Guys like Tony Dungy and Jim Caldwell have tried to put minority coaches in positions where they are next in line so they get an opportunity, but when you look at it, all the new hires were the offensive guys this past year."
recently analyzed for The Undefeated regarding Golden State Warriors guard Steph Curry.
"I'm not as light as Dungy," this coach said. "There is a different element of racism there. There is racism, and then there is dark-skinned racism. There are layers, now. It goes deep. You'd better be spit-shined and polished, your teeth had better be white, you'd better be well-groomed and you'd better sound intelligent and see everything around you. Then, on top of that, you'd better be a damn good coach."
A longtime NFL executive who has participated in the hiring process with multiple teams said owners look to make safe choices. Dungy's credibility enabled his former assistants to break through partly on his recommendation. Owners recently have been more apt to hire minority candidates who have been head coaches previously. Second-time minority head coaches Romeo Crennel, Caldwell, Hue Jackson and Smith account for four of five minority hires since 2012.
"In a way, it is good that those guys have been second-timers and they roll into the system so that they are treated like everyone else," Dungy said. "That is progress. But in looking at the numbers overall, we have shifted back to some old hiring practices."
Percentage of minority coaches, 2016
Excludes non-football personnel
THE PANTHERS, JETS and Steelers are the only teams with coaching staffs composed of at least 50 percent minorities this season. All three have minority head coaches, but five of their six offensive and defensive coordinators are white. This is not an anomaly. The minority head coaches hired over the past 20 years filled their initial staffs with minority defensive coordinators 11 times in 21 chances, beating the 30 percent rate for white head coaches over that span. However, these same minority head coaches started out with white offensive coordinators 76 percent of the time.
Sometimes it's not permitted or simply impractical for new head coaches to replace existing coordinators. Dungy and Caldwell, for example, both inherited Tom Moore, the Colts' offensive coordinator and Peyton Manning's right-hand man. Arians was already on the Steelers' staff and in line to become coordinator when Rooney hired Tomlin in 2007.
Of course, it's tough to hire minority offensive coordinators with so few candidates in the offensive pipeline. Twenty-six of 28 head offensive line coaches are white. All 28 quarterbacks coaches are white, as are all four assistant QB coaches and five others with some oversight of the position. Eighteen of 19 coaches responsible for offensive quality control are white (the lone minority, Rock Cartwright of the Cleveland Browns, is also assistant running backs coach).
"Remember the old thing [where they said] you can't win with a black quarterback? It is almost like that for the coaches."
A minority assistant
There are 29 minority running backs coaches (three white) and 17 minority receivers coaches (16 white). One of those minority running backs coaches, Craig Johnson, was a longtime quarterbacks coach and a former college offensive coordinator. He is now 56 years old and coaching running backs for the New York Giants under McAdoo, whose NFL career path took him from offensive quality control coach (2004) to offensive line coach (2005) to tight ends coach (2006-11) to quarterbacks coach (2012-13) to offensive coordinator (2014-15) before McAdoo became a head coach at age 38.
Becoming an offensive or defensive coordinator is the game within the game. Teams have employed white offensive coordinators about 85 percent of the time over the past 20 years. The rate has been closer to 75 percent white for defensive coordinators, not far off the two-thirds ratio of all NFL coaches who are white this season.
Why does this matter? Thirteen of the 36 head coach hirings over the past five years were offensive coordinators in their previous jobs, while eight were defensive coordinators. Fourteen of the remaining 15 (all but Tomsula) held head-coaching jobs at the college or pro level, including interim NFL head coaches.
"I have talked to a bunch of owners over the past 10 years who were looking for coaches and saying, 'I have to get somebody to get my offense going,'" Dungy said. "And you say, 'Well, if I were copying someone, wouldn't I copy New England or Seattle or Pittsburgh? That might tell you that you don't have to have the hottest offensive coordinator to win Super Bowls."
Percentage of minority coordinators
From 1997-2016
ONE OF THE speakers at a recent NFL symposium for potential GM candidates told attendees the Steelers have outlined three primary characteristics the team seeks in a head coach. They want their guy to possess a commanding presence, good communication skills and strong character. Being able to assemble an appealing staff also can be pivotal, according to team executives. Two minority coaches who have interviewed for head-coaching jobs said they went into the process feeling their chances would suffer if their proposed coaching staffs appeared heavy on minority assistants.
"The first thing they are going to say to me is that I am hiring my friends," one of these minority coaches said.
Dungy called Rooney "unique" for his willingness to research each head-coaching hire with the right qualities in mind. Bill Cowher and Tomlin were not scorching-hot candidates when Rooney hired them. Cowher, though prominent at the time, remained available in 1992 while the other four teams with vacancies filled those jobs. The Steelers then arranged to re-interview Cowher and two other finalists before making the hire on their timetable.
"Too frequently, we don't look at leadership, we don't look at getting the most out of people, we don't look at bringing people together and staffs together -- all those things that you need to be a head coach," Dungy said. "It is an inexact science. It is done in an inexact way. Look how long it took Bruce Arians to get a head-coaching job; it is not just with minorities.
"But I think when you are a minority coach, you have even that added burden, or added handicap of not always being highly publicized. For owners who do not know what they are looking for, it is much easier to say, 'Well, I'll take Candidate A because at least everybody knows him and everybody will say this is a good hire.'"
THE NFL HAS sponsored programs, implemented the Rooney Rule, counseled team owners and convened committees to address its diversity problem in the coaching ranks. None of it is working. Minority coaches are frustrated. The numbers explain why -- emphatically.
Teams have taken a chance on 21 first-time white head coaches and only one first-time minority head coach, Todd Bowles, over the past five hiring cycles (2012-16). The gap was an identical 21-1 nearly two decades ago, when the New York Jets made Herm Edwards the only first-time minority hire from 1997 to 2001.
It's as though team owners have reverted to previous form, undoing the historic gains driven by Tony Dungy and his coaching tree in the early 2000s.
"Remember the old thing [where they said] you can't win with a black quarterback?" a minority assistant coach asked. "It is almost like that for the coaches."
Various league initiatives -- led by the Rooney Rule, which required teams to interview at least one minority candidate when searching for a new head coach -- continue to address the symptoms, not the underlying issues:
- 80 of the NFL's current 85 offensive coordinators, quarterbacks coaches and offensive quality control coaches are white, including all 37 with the word "quarterback" in their titles.
- 23 of 32 defensive coordinators are white.
The path to becoming an NFL head coach is clear. It is also largely unavailable to minorities, especially with Dungy in retirement. Dungy and his former assistants accounted for 43 percent of minority head-coaching hires over the past two decades and 39 percent since the Rooney Rule took effect.
"The good thing about the Rooney Rule was not that you had to interview a minority candidate but that it slowed the process down and made you do some research," Dungy said, "but now it seems like in the last few years, people haven't really done what the rule was designed for. It has become, 'Just let me talk to a couple minority coaches very quickly so I can go about the business of hiring the person I really want to hire anyway.'"
Minorities dominate coaching positions for running backs and, to a lesser degree, the defensive secondary, but whites fill the most upwardly mobile spots. Researchers at the Georgetown McDonough School of Business expounded on this subject in a study of coaching staffs from 1985 to 2012. They concluded in part that while teams do hire minorities for positions carrying a lower likelihood for promotion, white coaches gained promotions more readily even when researchers accounted for assistant coaches' initial and current NFL jobs.
Current minority coaches agreed to share their thoughts for this story in hopes they could raise awareness to effect positive change. They requested anonymity because they felt that speaking candidly for attribution could jeopardize future opportunities. Dungy felt no such restrictions in retirement.
First-time minority head coach hires
From 1997-2016
ARIZONA CARDINALS COACH Bruce Arians hired minority coordinators on offense (Harold Goodwin) and defense (Bowles) when he took the job in 2013. (Bowles has since moved on to the Jets.) He added former NFL linebacker Levon Kirkland to his staff last season under a two-year coaching fellowship designed to help former players get into coaching. Arians cringed during a conversation at the NFL owners meetings in March when told teams had hired white head coaches 120 times in 141 chances over the past two decades.
"Those are staggering numbers," Arians said.
How staggering? Second-, third- and fourth-time white head coaches outnumber all minority hires by a 40-21 margin during that span.
Arians thinks the league should expand the Rooney Rule to include interviews for jobs as coordinators. (The rule was expanded in 2009 to cover "lead personnel executives," such as general managers.)
"You could expand the Rooney Rule if you wanted," a minority coordinator said, "but the problem is, they say, 'OK, we need a minority coach, and he coaches DBs, D-line, running backs, receivers. He does not coach quarterbacks, he does not coach offensive line.' Guys like Tony Dungy and Jim Caldwell have tried to put minority coaches in positions where they are next in line so they get an opportunity, but when you look at it, all the new hires were the offensive guys this past year."
recently analyzed for The Undefeated regarding Golden State Warriors guard Steph Curry.
"I'm not as light as Dungy," this coach said. "There is a different element of racism there. There is racism, and then there is dark-skinned racism. There are layers, now. It goes deep. You'd better be spit-shined and polished, your teeth had better be white, you'd better be well-groomed and you'd better sound intelligent and see everything around you. Then, on top of that, you'd better be a damn good coach."
A longtime NFL executive who has participated in the hiring process with multiple teams said owners look to make safe choices. Dungy's credibility enabled his former assistants to break through partly on his recommendation. Owners recently have been more apt to hire minority candidates who have been head coaches previously. Second-time minority head coaches Romeo Crennel, Caldwell, Hue Jackson and Smith account for four of five minority hires since 2012.
"In a way, it is good that those guys have been second-timers and they roll into the system so that they are treated like everyone else," Dungy said. "That is progress. But in looking at the numbers overall, we have shifted back to some old hiring practices."
Percentage of minority coaches, 2016
Excludes non-football personnel
THE PANTHERS, JETS and Steelers are the only teams with coaching staffs composed of at least 50 percent minorities this season. All three have minority head coaches, but five of their six offensive and defensive coordinators are white. This is not an anomaly. The minority head coaches hired over the past 20 years filled their initial staffs with minority defensive coordinators 11 times in 21 chances, beating the 30 percent rate for white head coaches over that span. However, these same minority head coaches started out with white offensive coordinators 76 percent of the time.
Sometimes it's not permitted or simply impractical for new head coaches to replace existing coordinators. Dungy and Caldwell, for example, both inherited Tom Moore, the Colts' offensive coordinator and Peyton Manning's right-hand man. Arians was already on the Steelers' staff and in line to become coordinator when Rooney hired Tomlin in 2007.
Of course, it's tough to hire minority offensive coordinators with so few candidates in the offensive pipeline. Twenty-six of 28 head offensive line coaches are white. All 28 quarterbacks coaches are white, as are all four assistant QB coaches and five others with some oversight of the position. Eighteen of 19 coaches responsible for offensive quality control are white (the lone minority, Rock Cartwright of the Cleveland Browns, is also assistant running backs coach).
"Remember the old thing [where they said] you can't win with a black quarterback? It is almost like that for the coaches."
A minority assistant
There are 29 minority running backs coaches (three white) and 17 minority receivers coaches (16 white). One of those minority running backs coaches, Craig Johnson, was a longtime quarterbacks coach and a former college offensive coordinator. He is now 56 years old and coaching running backs for the New York Giants under McAdoo, whose NFL career path took him from offensive quality control coach (2004) to offensive line coach (2005) to tight ends coach (2006-11) to quarterbacks coach (2012-13) to offensive coordinator (2014-15) before McAdoo became a head coach at age 38.
Becoming an offensive or defensive coordinator is the game within the game. Teams have employed white offensive coordinators about 85 percent of the time over the past 20 years. The rate has been closer to 75 percent white for defensive coordinators, not far off the two-thirds ratio of all NFL coaches who are white this season.
Why does this matter? Thirteen of the 36 head coach hirings over the past five years were offensive coordinators in their previous jobs, while eight were defensive coordinators. Fourteen of the remaining 15 (all but Tomsula) held head-coaching jobs at the college or pro level, including interim NFL head coaches.
"I have talked to a bunch of owners over the past 10 years who were looking for coaches and saying, 'I have to get somebody to get my offense going,'" Dungy said. "And you say, 'Well, if I were copying someone, wouldn't I copy New England or Seattle or Pittsburgh? That might tell you that you don't have to have the hottest offensive coordinator to win Super Bowls."
Percentage of minority coordinators
From 1997-2016
ONE OF THE speakers at a recent NFL symposium for potential GM candidates told attendees the Steelers have outlined three primary characteristics the team seeks in a head coach. They want their guy to possess a commanding presence, good communication skills and strong character. Being able to assemble an appealing staff also can be pivotal, according to team executives. Two minority coaches who have interviewed for head-coaching jobs said they went into the process feeling their chances would suffer if their proposed coaching staffs appeared heavy on minority assistants.
"The first thing they are going to say to me is that I am hiring my friends," one of these minority coaches said.
Dungy called Rooney "unique" for his willingness to research each head-coaching hire with the right qualities in mind. Bill Cowher and Tomlin were not scorching-hot candidates when Rooney hired them. Cowher, though prominent at the time, remained available in 1992 while the other four teams with vacancies filled those jobs. The Steelers then arranged to re-interview Cowher and two other finalists before making the hire on their timetable.
"Too frequently, we don't look at leadership, we don't look at getting the most out of people, we don't look at bringing people together and staffs together -- all those things that you need to be a head coach," Dungy said. "It is an inexact science. It is done in an inexact way. Look how long it took Bruce Arians to get a head-coaching job; it is not just with minorities.
"But I think when you are a minority coach, you have even that added burden, or added handicap of not always being highly publicized. For owners who do not know what they are looking for, it is much easier to say, 'Well, I'll take Candidate A because at least everybody knows him and everybody will say this is a good hire.'"
