UPDATE: Wow I just realized what a horrible article this is to post on the first day of Black History Month. Oh well, I wrote it and the point is that Roger Goodell is awful and kind of racist towards white people apparently.
Apparently Roger Goodell is totally unsatisfied with the Rooney Rule. Mein Fuhrer believes that several minority coaches should be hired every year, not just interviewed. This year there are a handful new coaches, and all of them are white. For shame, NFL teams! How dare you hire someone you want to be your head coach? Hire more black people!
I'm all for racial equality. Your skin color doesn't determine your qualifications for a job. Unfortunately Roger Goodell thinks it does, but totally on the opposite end of the spectrum. After the jump, we'll break this down.
The Rooney Rule has been a hot topic of conversation after a hiring cycle that included no minority hires among the 15 new head coaches and general managers this offseason.
Well, the Rooney Rule only says minority candidates have to be interviewed, right? They just have to be given the chance to get a job, but the best candidate should still get the job, right?
At his state of the league press conference Friday, Commissioner Roger Goodell made it clear that the results were "not acceptable."
Uh, excuse my insolence, but what exactly wasn't acceptable? Every team complied with the rule. And everyone they hired happened to be a white dude.
"The Rooney Rule has been very effective," Goodell said.
Awesome, so we're good.
"We have to look to see what the next generation is. We have to take it to another level."
Wait, what? We are seeing what the next generation is. Andy Reid is the only coaching hire with NFL head coaching experience. Chip Kelly came straight from the NCAA even!
Goodell went on to say that the league is committed to finding an answer that will allow the league's talent to excel. He said there will be many conversations to this end.
That sure looks like talent excelling to me! Every coaching hire outside of Kelly, Reid, and former CFL coach Marc Trestman is literally a promotion for assistant coaches around the NFL. Doug Marrone, Mike McCoy, Gus Bradley, Bruce Arians, all of these guys are good coaches who are getting big opportunities to run their own teams! Great for those guys! It's awesome to see hard-working guys get rewarded for doing good things.
"We want to make sure we have the best people in the best possible positions," Goodell said.
Yeah, isn't that what I just described? McCoy's offense in Denver was great. Bradley's defense in Seattle came out of nowhere to have a really great season. Bruce Arians even led the Colts to a playoff berth amid the turmoil of Chuck Pagano's leukemia and the growing pains of a rookie QB! These guys should absolutely have been rewarded for their excellent work last season.
"We didn't have the outcomes we wanted."
…What outcome did you want, Roger? Which of those candidates would you rather not be a head coach? Obviously Goodell believes someone among the new coaches and GMs doesn't deserve to be in their new position. He explicitly says, right there, that those aren't the outcomes he wanted.
Goodell stressed that "full diversity" is important to the future of the league.
Apparently in the eyes of the commissioner, racial equality has less to do with qualifications and more to do with skin color. He doesn't simply want the most qualified candidate at each position. He wants to make sure a few of them are black, presumably because it would make his league look better. Racial equality for Roger Goodell is evidently handing a position to someone because of their skin color. If there indeed was a better candidate for a job who didn't get it because of his race, then the burden is on Goodell to prove that. Since he won't be able to do that, the next best thing we can conclude is that Goodell doesn't understand what "equal opportunity" is.
You want to know a secret? Of every new head coach in the NFL this year, I have seen Chip Kelly, Andy Reid, and Bruce Arians in person. I know those three are white. But today I learned that Mike McCoy, Doug Marrone, Gus Bradley, Rob Chudzinski, and Marc Trestman are white. Okay, I could have guessed on Chudzinski but that's besides the point.
The Rooney Rule, in spirit, was created to give minority candidates a legitimate chance at a high-ranking position. In practice, I find it extremely patronizing that every organization has to bring in a "token black guy" when they already have a guy in mind for the job (looking at you, Seattle and Pete Carroll). It comes from a good place, though, and I think we can all agree that the spirit of the rule is a good thing. True racial equality should mean that the most qualified candidate gets the job, regardless of skin color. From my perspective, this season's new crop of head coaches was merely a list of names, and the fact that they were hired told me they were the best fit for their respective organizations. It wasn't until Roger Goodell condemned the results that I knew the ethnicity of any of the new names (even though, again, Chudzinski was a fairly easy guess). I believe that teams did their diligence in interviewing candidates and choosing the man they thought would be best for their organization. It so happens that this year, all of the best candidates where white. By the sounds of it, the next step is for Goodell to enact a rule that one in three coaching hires must be a minority or something. That isn't good for the game. Hiring the best man for a job is always good for the game.
Speaking of which, you know who isn't the best man for his job? How about Roger Goodell?
