OT: Brian Flores Suing NFL Alleging Racism

[Ronin]

Hue Jackson's record.
3

And

36

Lol

 

[GatorAZ]

Still not racism. This is normal practice for all businesses and I'm certain also happens all the time with white coaches.

IDK how that would warrant any kind of rule breaking unless he signed a contract before the other interviews were completed. If I ran a business I’d probably have a good idea who my top choice was and interview them first. That’s where the Rooney Rule is a better idea than rule.

It sounds like Flores wasn’t a yes man which owners like Ross and Bidwill prefer.

 

[TheCardFan]

Hue Jackson's record.
3

And

36

Lol

He must have been paid a lot!

 

[phillycard]

Here we go again. Let's hire people who may be unqualified for a certain position because their race/ethnicity/diversity fills an arbitrary diversity criteria.

I'll ask then. What is qualified to you? It really doesn't matter because the owners are going to do what they want to do. The Rooney rule has been a dog and pony show since it's inception. The league is no more advanced with regard to giving opportunities then it was before the stupid thing was introduced.

 

[Cheesebeef]

xc_hide_links_from_guests_guests_error_hide_media

That’s an interesting point brought up.

Like when the raft of racist/sexist charges were leveled at the Suns last year, the NBA didn’t dismiss them as out of hand. They announced their own independent investigation.

Then again, the NBA is so far ridiculously ahead of the NFL on racial issues. All you have to do is look at how the coaching ranks which are much, much more representative of the players in the league with 16 of 30 coaches being POCs.

 

[Chris_Sanders]

Hue Jackson's record.
3

And

36

Lol

He must have been paid well

 

[DesertDevil]

I'll ask then. What is qualified to you? It really doesn't matter because the owners are going to do what they want to do. The Rooney rule has been a dog and pony show since it's inception. The league is no more advanced with regard to giving opportunities then it was before the stupid thing was introduced.

I don't have a definition of what "qualified" is, but I think owners should be able to do whatever they'd like with their own team and have the freedom to hire whoever they'd like. If they want to implement diversity in their coach hiring, so be it. Forcing them to do it is ridiculous. If they push for it, we could talk about increasing player diversity as well since we want to be fair and equal.

 

[Chopper0080]

The biggest issue is that this will be a tough transition to make. The NFL is an offensively driven league and it's rules make it so. This creates a perceived advantage on that side of the ball and a priority in finding someone who can maximize that advantage. This leads to head coaches with offensive backgrounds. Similarly, the league due to the salary cap and college places a higher priority on younger players who are cheap and getting a young QB to develop. Many offensive coaches at the younger levels are former QBs at some level. Those QBs have been historically white. So the talent pool for offensive minds is skewed towards former QBs who predominantly are white.

The other side is that so many grad assistants and NFL assistants are players who had short NFL careers or no NFL career. Those individuals tend to be white as the league is predominantly black in terms of players. This leads to a larger pool of white former college players looking to find work in coaching than black former college players.

I don't have a ton of hard data in this other than my experiences in coaching and convo's with coaches and players.

 

[football karma]

Like when the raft of racist/sexist charges were leveled at the Suns last year, the NBA didn’t dismiss them as out of hand. They announced their own independent investigation.

with the NBA its was one organization, and, no lawsuit had been filed (rather, its was an ESPN article).

with the NFL, a lawsuit was filed against naming every team in the league. They almost have to deny them.. or said differently, they cant issue a press release that effectively says "it might have happened"..... even if it might have happened.

 

[Harry]

It's ironic because Flores almost certainly would have got another HC job somewhere had he not filed this frivolous suit. He's not wrong about the imbalance in black HC's, but the cases he has cited aren't going to win him anything.

Weird he picked Wilks given the Cards history of mentoring Black coaches and hiring black coordinators. A much better case would have been Culley in Texas, who I thought actually did pretty well with a lot of crap. In fact now I think of it he'd be a good guy to have as an OC/passing game coordinator for the Cards.

Nothing frivolous about this suit. It’s about 20 years late, but I think the NFL will negotiate a deal. Look at the numbers for black coaches compared to white coaches. The NFL has discriminated and they are about to pay the price.

 

[Harry]

It's ironic because Flores almost certainly would have got another HC job somewhere had he not filed this frivolous suit. He's not wrong about the imbalance in black HC's, but the cases he has cited aren't going to win him anything.

Weird he picked Wilks given the Cards history of mentoring Black coaches and hiring black coordinators. A much better case would have been Culley in Texas, who I thought actually did pretty well with a lot of crap. In fact now I think of it he'd be a good guy to have as an OC/passing game coordinator for the Cards.

I’m hearing Wilkes was chosen because some white coaches with similar first year records didn’t lose their job.

 

[Dback Jon]

The biggest issue is that this will be a tough transition to make. The NFL is an offensively driven league and it's rules make it so. This creates a perceived advantage on that side of the ball and a priority in finding someone who can maximize that advantage. This leads to head coaches with offensive backgrounds. Similarly, the league due to the salary cap and college places a higher priority on younger players who are cheap and getting a young QB to develop. Many offensive coaches at the younger levels are former QBs at some level. Those QBs have been historically white. So the talent pool for offensive minds is skewed towards former QBs who predominantly are white.

The other side is that so many grad assistants and NFL assistants are players who had short NFL careers or no NFL career. Those individuals tend to be white as the league is predominantly black in terms of players. This leads to a larger pool of white former college players looking to find work in coaching than black former college players.

I don't have a ton of hard data in this other than my experiences in coaching and convo's with coaches and players.

So Byron Leftwich should be a shoe-in for a job, right?

 

[Harry]

I was really hoping we would hire Flores to be our DC. He’s a solid coach. Because of what he said about Wilks I don’t see MB even thinking about him now. If what Flores is saying about the owner wanting and paying him to throw games that is really messed up. I hope that owner goes to prison for that and the Dolphins are taken from him with no reimbursement.

I’d still be good with hiring for that job or the head coach, where I supported a change. He can’t do that with this suit going on, but he’d be a step up.

 

[football karma]

curious if there is a consensus correct ratio of black head coaches in the NFL. 1/32 is clearly not right by any measure.


Flores' lawsuit references a league whose players are ~70% black. Is that the comparator? African Americans are ~13% of the population -- which would be 4 or 5 HCs in the NFL. is that the right comparator?


I always find it odd that the goal is never really defined other than "more". More is needed, but how will you know when you get there?

 

[Harry]

One question, if 70 pct of the league is black could it be reverse racism?

Hilarious

 

[Dback Jon]

Current black QB coaches

Pep Hamilton - Houston
Brian Johnson - Philly
Charles London - Atlanta
Ronald Curry - New Orleans

 

[kerouac9]

The biggest issue is that this will be a tough transition to make. The NFL is an offensively driven league and it's rules make it so. This creates a perceived advantage on that side of the ball and a priority in finding someone who can maximize that advantage. This leads to head coaches with offensive backgrounds. Similarly, the league due to the salary cap and college places a higher priority on younger players who are cheap and getting a young QB to develop. Many offensive coaches at the younger levels are former QBs at some level. Those QBs have been historically white. So the talent pool for offensive minds is skewed towards former QBs who predominantly are white.

The other side is that so many grad assistants and NFL assistants are players who had short NFL careers or no NFL career. Those individuals tend to be white as the league is predominantly black in terms of players. This leads to a larger pool of white former college players looking to find work in coaching than black former college players.

I don't have a ton of hard data in this other than my experiences in coaching and convo's with coaches and players.

I don't know. This sure seems like a short-term problem to me since QB has been an athlete-driven position in the high school level for a couple decades now.

I think the bigger thing is that to be a grad assistant or quality control coach you have to be willing to work for essentially nothing for several years. If you're an established NFL player, you probably don't want to work for nothing doing a thankless 60 hour per week job.

Remember when Adrian Wilson said that he'd coach a high school team if they paid him $100k per year? LOL.

The 25-30 year-olds who are willing to work for free usually come from wealthy backgrounds, and people who come from wealthy backgrounds tend to be white. Then you have a disproportionate number of white candidates in the pipeline.

Then you have the NFL's well-documented nepotism problem:

In the 2020 and 2021 diversity and inclusion reports, Troy Vincent, the league’s EVP of football operations, wrote, “Merit-based policies and practices need to be considered in order to discourage the system of nepotism that unduly influences the hiring cycle—family, agents, friend networks.

[snip]

”Both Belichick sons went straight from college to jobs on their dad’s staff, Steve as a coaching assistant and Brian as a scouting assistant. They did not coach high school or college football, and they are both now NFL position coaches. Brian played lacrosse at Trinity College, and Steve played lacrosse at Rutgers. According to his Patriots bio (which carries no mention of Bill, by the way), Steve did do a little bit of work to get ready for his NFL future: “After playing four years of lacrosse at Rutgers, Belichick walked on to the football team as a long snapper to help in preparations for a career in coaching.”

..

 

[Dback Jon]

I don't know. This sure seems like a short-term problem to me since QB has been an athlete-driven position in the high school level for a couple decades now.

I think the bigger thing is that to be a grad assistant or quality control coach you have to be willing to work for essentially nothing for several years. If you're an established NFL player, you probably don't want to work for nothing doing a thankless 60 hour per week job.

Remember when Adrian Wilson said that he'd coach a high school team if they paid him $100k per year? LOL.

The 25-30 year-olds who are willing to work for free usually come from wealthy backgrounds, and people who come from wealthy backgrounds tend to be white. Then you have a disproportionate number of white candidates in the pipeline.

Then you have the NFL's well-documented nepotism problem:


[snip]


..

Or you are Klint Kubiak who could afford to do the Grad Assistant gigs before landing jobs with Dad...

Klint Kubiak - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Harry]

curious if there is a consensus correct ratio of black head coaches in the NFL. 1/32 is clearly not right by any measure.


Flores' lawsuit references a league whose players are ~70% black. Is that the comparator? African Americans are ~13% of the population -- which would be 4 or 5 HCs in the NFL. is that the right comparator?


I always find it odd that the goal is never really defined other than "more". More is needed, but how will you know when you get there?

US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.” I’m not sure I can give you the number but I can tell you 1 in 32, isn’t it.

 

[TJ]

Here we go again. Let's hire people who may be unqualified for a certain position because their race/ethnicity/diversity fills an arbitrary diversity criteria.

With a 25% head coach termination rate every year, it sure seems like teams are doing a terrible job of hiring qualified candidates.

 

[Cheesebeef]

Another thing to consider here is a stat I just heard on sports radio.

Over the last 60 years, 121 White Head Coaches were fired that got a second chance either as a Head Coach or at least an OC or DC position. Over the same time frame, that number for second chances at HC/OC/DC for Black coaches was... 21.

we've all seen a TON of retreads over the decades we've all watched football and the overwhelming majority of them are white. So, that begs the question, why do so many White Head Coaches get second chances when the same can't be said about Black Head Coaches?

 

[Dback Jon]

With a 25% head coach termination rate every year, it sure seems like teams are doing a terrible job of hiring qualified candidates.

Boom!

 

[kerouac9]

With a 25% head coach termination rate every year, it sure seems like teams are doing a terrible job of hiring qualified candidates.

It's extremely difficult to argue that Kliff Kingsbury was a well-qualified head coaching candidate while Eric Bienemy remains unqualified.

 

[Harry]

Coaching is about teaching players who come after you, how to play the game. It’s inconceivable to me that with all these players with all those years of experience; we‘re expected to believe virtually none can teach? Can we also be told to believe guys who ID and change defenses on-the-fly; guys who call audibles at the line and guys who makes dozens of route and coverage choices during a game are not qualified to make decisions coaches make between plays. I don’t have all the answers but finding them starts with admitting what is being done now doesn’t work and accepting that process is unacceptable.

 

[RON_IN_OC]

curious if there is a consensus correct ratio of black head coaches in the NFL. 1/32 is clearly not right by any measure.


Flores' lawsuit references a league whose players are ~70% black. Is that the comparator? African Americans are ~13% of the population -- which would be 4 or 5 HCs in the NFL. is that the right comparator?


I always find it odd that the goal is never really defined other than "more". More is needed, but how will you know when you get there?

I don't know if there is, or what it might be...regarding a ratio...but a previous comment about the NBA having 50% of their coaches POC says if the league actually listens and puts forth effort, more of a balance can be acheived.