Rooney Rule founders point to diversity needs

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A recent uptick in challenges to diversity efforts in business and government has added to questions over whether the NFL might back away from the rule, which mandates more assertive action to create advancement opportunities for minority and women coaches and executives.

In his pre-Super Bowl news conference this week in New Orleans, Goodell said the league remained committed to the Rooney Rule, not because it is a “trend” but because it is “the right thing” to promote diversity.

“I think we’ve proven to ourselves that it does make the NFL better,” he told reporters.

Still, the league must keep trying to do better, according to Cyrus Mehri and John Wooten, whose work led to implementation of the Rooney Rule in 2003. Mehri said the ranks of NFL offensive coordinators — a job that is the most common steppingstone to head coach — continues to lack diversity.

There are no Black offensive coordinators in the NFL. One offensive coordinator, the Giants’ Mike Kafka, is part-Puerto Rican and attended the NFL’s minority-focused accelerator program.

“There’s been a historic challenge when it comes to Black coaches in the offensive coordinator position,” Mehri told ESPN. “There’s always been a shortfall. We’re nowhere near where we could be or should be. And that creates a headwind against representation in the head coaching positions because that’s the primary pipeline.”

Mehri said “more than half of head coaching jobs are filled through the offensive coordinator position.”

“And then maybe around 30% defensive coordinator, maybe 10% from others like either former head coaches or college ranks,” Mehri said. “So that’s the key place where the NFL is not on all cylinders yet.”

Mehri cowrote the Rooney Rule with civil rights lawyer Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., along with major input from Wooten.

Despite its flaws, the Rooney Rule is working, said Wooten, 88, a college Hall of Famer who began as a player in the NFL in 1959. He later served on the Cowboys’ staff before becoming the first chairman of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, which advocates for more diversity in the NFL.

“When I played in the NFL, we never had a Black coach in that room, period. When you look at this weekend’s game, look at the men you’re going to see on the sideline,” Wooten said. “That’s what the Rooney Rule has done. I feel that we have got to keep pushing.”

At the start of the 2024 season, Black players composed more than half of NFL players, but there were seven Black head coaches, or 22%, The Associated Press reported. There were nine minority head coaches among the 32 teams, including the Jets’ Robert Saleh, who is of Lebanese descent, and the Panthers’ Dave Canales, who is Latino.

An NFL spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment.

According to the NFL’s Diversity and Inclusion Report, from 2012 to March 2023, 40 of the 77 head coaches previously held offensive coordinator roles for at least one season. Comparatively, 24 of the 77 head coaches hired during that period came from defensive coordinator roles.

One of the seven head coaching vacancies this season has been filled by a minority coach: Aaron Glenn, who was hired by the Jets. His most recent role was defensive coordinator for the Lions. Of the five other head coaching roles filled, three most recently came from an offensive coordinator role, two most recently were head coaches.

Mehri told ESPN the recruiting preference among offensive coordinators is “akin to the bias that existed for decades” regarding Black quarterbacks when it comes to “thinking” positions in the NFL. He pointed to this year’s playoffs to underscore how racial representation has changed: Three of the four conference-championship quarterbacks were Black, including both QBs in Sunday’s Super Bowl. He said the dearth of minority offensive coordinators is “holding back the NFL.”

“Otherwise, the Rooney Rule has been an enormous success,” he said.

Since the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended affirmative action in the college admission process, conservative activists have pressured public companies, including the NFL, to end diversity programs.

America Legal First, which was founded by top President Trump aide Stephen Miller, filed a letter with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2024 complaining that the Rooney Rule constituted a “quota” system that “resulted in fewer opportunities for similarly situated, well-qualified candidates who are not minorities.”

Miller is now a deputy chief of staff in the Trump administration, which has mandated elimination of all diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the federal government and entities receiving federal funds.

Mehri argues that the Rooney Rule is about creating equal opportunities, not equal outcomes. The NFL has simply added more candidates to the slate — not reduced the candidate spots available to whites, he said, adding that over the years more white coaches have been interviewed for top jobs than Black coaches.

The pipeline problem also is rooted in hiring practices at the college level, according to Richard Lapchick, who created the annual Racial and Gender Report Card in 1988. This year, Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman became the first Black head football coach to reach the national championship game.

“This is 2025, and we have the first Black head coach coaching in a championship game,” Lapchick said. “What does that tell us about our hiring practices? It tells us we have a long way to go at the college level.”

Changes to the Rooney Rule have included a gradual expansion of interview slates to include a minimum number of minority or women candidates. The NFL introduced compensatory draft picks if a minority coach transferred to another team.

In 2022, the league required teams to hire an offensive assistant who was a minority or woman. Critics have alleged that the interviews can — and have at times been — performative, as if teams are just checking a box, especially if teams have already identified a top candidate. A still pending federal lawsuit against the league by former Dolphins coach Brian Flores and two other Black coaches alleges hiring discrimination, including sham interviews.

Regarding the DEI challenge from Miller, Jean Kuei, a partner and head of the labor and employment group at the law firm Pillsbury, Winthrop, Shaw, Pitman, said that while some corporations and organizations should be concerned, programs like the Rooney Rule are not discriminatory because the hiring outcome isn’t determined by race.

The rule “increases the slate,” Kuei said. If there are, say, six candidates being considered but no diverse candidates, the rule says “you have to add two for certain positions. So now you’re just interviewing eight, but you’re not taking away two of the six that you were previously going to interview anyway.”

Wooten was emphatic that the NFL is on the right track, and that the Rooney Rule is succeeding. “And that’s why we’re going to keep fighting when we need to fight,” he said. “But we’re winning, believe me when I tell you this.”