The State of Minority Candidates

Whenever there is a coaching change, especially in football, attention is turned to who will replace him. Unfortunately some people, like for instance those who work for ESPN complain about the lack of black coaches getting hired. When given an opportunity to justify their claims, it is given that 85% of the teams in the NFL consist of black players, so naturally it is assumed that a black coach can more effectively reach these players better than a white head coach could. By this line of reasoning, if it is true, the only way for players in the NFL to be happy and successful is if the NFL had all 32 of its coaches to be black. That line of reasoning is showing that the personalities at ESPN favor Segregation. Now it is turning to the front office personnel and owners. I am going to offer ESPN a solution-start your own damn football league! You could make it to where only minorities can be the owner, GM and the head coach. All of your players could be black and all the assistants, referees and players are all black. Now how ridiculous does that sound? Very!

The Rooney Rule is in place where all NFL teams must interview a minority candidate for any head coaching opening. I can only recall a couple of coaches who have benefited from this rule recently-Jim Caldwell and Raheem Morris got interviews with other teams, and landed the head coaching gigs at their current teams. Do these men deserve their jobs? Yes-but not based on their skin color. Jim Caldwell laid the foundation at the NCAA as the head coach of Wake Forest. Caldwell laid the foundation for the current success of Wake. Raheem Morris was a defensive assistant who was elevated to Defensive Coordiantor for Tampa Bay. He interviewed with Denver so that they would be in compliance w/ the Rooney Rule and when Jon Gruden was fired, Morris was named the head coach. I like the hire, mostly because of what I have seen from him while on the Sidelines. He is young, intense and can motivate players very well. He is like his predecessor when he took over Oakland-young, never been a coordinator (In an NFL game), and intense. Now flip to Tony Dungy, now retired and Lovie Smith. Both men excelled as DC's in the NFL, and met up in the Super Bowl a few years ago. They have done excellent jobs with both their teams and deserve all the accolades they have received. Do I think they needed the Rooney Rule? No. These men got their jobs on their own and busted their butts to be the best in the game. There may have been a time when this type of rule was needed, but it no longer is. Interviewing minority candidates for the sake of being compliant with a rule is insulting. Some minority coaches have even refused to interview if they know the team has already made a hire. With most of the assistant coaches in the NFL classified racially as being minorities, one can assume that the majority of coaching hires in the next few years will be better for these candidates.

Some are proposing a similar rule for College Football. Again, this is a bad idea. If the coach is fired, and yes it has happened he can sue the University for being fired because he was black. This happened at UL-Lafayette when they fired Jerry Baldwin after 3 years, and hired a white head coach to replace him. Baldwin, a member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and a devoutly religious man filed a suit against the University claiming he was fired because he was black. It probably had more to do with the 8-25 record he compiled in his 3 years as head coach than his race did, but a judge did see it his way and he was rewarded an undisclosed sum of money, but later reports said it was about $3 million. That alone would alarm an NCAA School President and AD from hiring a minority candidate, or at the very least very apprehensive. If a hire is made in the SEC, Big 10, Pac 10, or other big BCS Conference they are demeaned for not hiring a black candidate, but nobody cares if the SWAC and MEAC, both conferences that are represented by historically black colleges, aren't demeaned for not hiring a white head coach. This where I believe the double standard exists in the big sports media.

Everyone soured on Rush Limbaugh when he made comments about Donovan McNabb being propped up by the media because they wanted a black quarterback to succeed. When he criticized his play, he was fired from ESPN. At the time, McNabb's stats were average; he used that publicity to reinvigorate his career and led the Eagles to the Super Bowl the next season. But Rush was dead on right with his analysis at the time. Rex Grossman was the flip side story here, and criticism of him remained even as he helped the Bears to a Super Bowl, only to lose partially because of his play. If Grossman had been black, I could bet you his criticism never would have been so high. The point that Rush wanted to prove is that it is okay to criticize a player if they are not doing so well, regardless of what the color of the player's skin is. From where I stand it still is.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." This quote by Dr. Martin Luther King is my favorite quote from him in his "I Have A Dream" speech. Unfortunately we live in an elitist race obsessed society fueled by our media. It has spilled over into sports, and the NFL and College Football in particular. When it comes to coaching, it shouldn't matter if the coach is white, black or Hispanic. A forgotten footnote in Football is that Tony Dungy was not the first minority coach to win a Super Bowl, it was Tom Flores of the Raiders. The truth is the state of minority candidates is a lot better now than it was 20 years ago, but rules do not need to be made to spur them on. They should not be judged solely on their skin color, but the content of their character. And the only things that fans will care about is if their team won on Saturday or Sunday. Winning is colorblind, as the searches for head coaches should be.