Keith Strudler: Firing Day

If you’re a head football coach in the NFL, right now there are essentially three places you can be on the Wednesday after the regular season ended. One, preparing for the playoffs, which start this weekend. Two, getting to work on next season and figuring out a way to make it to the playoffs next year. Or three, cleaning out your office because you just got fired. That’s pretty much it for the elite fraternity of 32 that hold arguably the highest administrative position in all of American sport, league commissioners excluded. In the NFL, you’re either above average or you’re unacceptable. Which is why the NFL is often considered an abbreviation of Not For Long instead of the National Football League.

The hammer did come down hard this week, with now eight head football coaches looking for work, and eight teams looking for a new savior. This is not unusual. What is unusual is that five of those newly unemployed are African-Americans, leaving only two black head football coaches still in the league. This is a problem for a long list of reasons, beginning simply with the poor optics for an organization where around 70% of its athletes are black. Changing that optic has been a long-term priority for the league, including the creation of the Rooney Rule in 2003 that required all NFL teams to interview at least one minority candidate for head coaching positions. While that has helped hiring practices, it hasn’t necessarily created the pool of minority candidates currently working in lower level positions, various assistants and coordinators, that might become leading prospects for the top job. Minority assistants are only about 30% of the league, with even a smaller percentage of offensive or defensive coordinators, something of a gateway position. And perhaps even more in the weeds, there seems to be a disproportionately low number of African-Americans in top offensive coaching positions, which tends to be the more influential side of the leger in a sport that increasingly leans towards complex offensive schemes privileged by rules that limit defensive force.

Now, to be clear, there is an argument to be made for each of the five black head coaches that were fired this week. For example, Todd Bowles was fired from the Jets after going 14-34 over three years. Marvin Lewis has been at the helm in Cincinnati since 2003, which is lifetime in the NFL, and has never won a playoff game. Hue Jackson, who was fired earlier in the season, compiled an overall record of 3-36-1. So there are plenty of good arguments about why these coaches lost their jobs – and let’s be clear, very high paying jobs at that. There is also an argument as to whether white coaches would lose their positions as quickly with the same results, although perhaps less so in these particular cases. But ask Tony Dungy about that, who was fired in 2002 despite perennial success, and he might suggest that white head coaches get a longer runway than black ones. Regardless, these five NFL firings shouldn’t in themselves been seen as proof of unfair practices.

The League and its owners are aware of the problem, even if problem isn’t exactly the right word. Prior to all these firings, the owners had been discussing a way to strengthen the Rooney Rule. For all the critiques of league commissioner Roger Goodell, this probably shouldn’t be one of them, at least to the extent that he recognizes a shortcoming and wants to do something to address it. And to be clear, part of that solution has to address hiring more black team GM’s who will in turn be able to hire more minority coaches up and down the ranks.

I’d be naïve to suggest I have an answer that goes beyond the obvious proposals in play, most of which will always skirt the line between aggressive policy and overreach. For example, it’s not realistic to mandate coaching hires any more than it was to require that teams play African-Americans quarterbacks, which did eventually happen, even if still with undue scrutiny. There’s obviously an ongoing need to help black players to transition to coaching positions. And most notably, there are no black owners in the NFL. That’s not to suggest that white owners won’t hire black coaches, but it is an issue.

Which should just remind us that the NFL does not exist in a vacuum. As much as this is a league issue and one they must address, it stems from a larger construct of racial inequity and injustice in the US. So the fact that the NFL doesn’t employ enough minority head coaches isn’t surprising – it might be more surprising if they did.

Now, that also means that the NFL can help the nation towards a more just place by modeling best practices and ensuring African-Americans are more equitably represented at the top of a business that is primarily black. Which would make the firing of five black coaches less of a big deal.

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