Do you think the N.F.L. has a race problem? And if so, what do you think can be done to bring greater racial equity to its ranks of coaches, executives and owners?
Brian Flores, who was fired as coach of the Miami Dolphins last month and was rejected for new jobs with other clubs, has sued the N.F.L. and its 32 teams alleging that they have discriminated against him and other Black coaches in their hiring practices.
His filing in federal court comes just days after the Giants, one of the teams he interviewed with for a position, named Brian Daboll, who is white, as their head coach.
Flores cited text messages he said were sent by his former boss, New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick. In the messages, Belichick appears to congratulate Flores for winning the Giants’ job, which he had yet to interview for at that point. Flores responded by asking if Belichick had intended the message for Daboll, who interviewed before Flores’s scheduled meeting.
The respondent answered: “I think they are naming Daboll. I’m sorry about that. BB”
A Giants spokesman, Pat Hanlon, said in a statement the team was “confident with the process that resulted in the hiring of Brian Daboll” and that “Flores was in the conversation to be our head coach until the eleventh hour.” A Patriots spokesman said he did not anticipate that the team would be issuing a response.
The N.F.L. said it is “deeply committed to ensuring equitable employment practices” and “we will defend against these claims, which are without merit.”
The screenshots of a conversation purportedly initiated by Belichick, the notoriously tight-lipped coach, as well as other anecdotes that paint an unflattering portrait of Stephen Ross, the Dolphins’ owner, provide a rare insight into the league’s business in a class-action suit that contends there is widespread discrimination in the N.F.L.
Flores is the son of Honduran immigrants to the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn. He led the Dolphins for three years, including two winning seasons, and in the suit said he was “humiliated in the process as the New York Giants subjected him to a sham interview in an attempt to appear to provide a Black candidate with a legitimate chance at obtaining the job.”
In a statement, Flores said that he understood that “I may be risking coaching the game that I love and that has done so much for my family and me. My sincere hope is that by standing up against systemic racism in the N.F.L., others will join me to ensure that positive change is made for generations to come.”
In his suit, Flores stated that there were more than 40 other coaches who could join the class action, though he did not name any of them. Still, the case faces high legal hurdles, most prominently because Flores needs to prove that race was specifically a factor in his being turned down for jobs, even as he continues to interview for open coaching positions.
Owners seem to have less patience with nonwhite N.F.L. coaches. In 2019, the sports website The Undefeated published results from a study that found that from 2009 to 2018 nonwhite head coaches averaged much shorter tenures than their white counterparts and were less likely to land a second head coaching position after getting fired. As Sports Illustrated’s Conor Orr put it, they get “half the runway of their white counterparts, requiring gargantuan expectations to succeed in impossible scenarios.”
The league has been confronted with these criticisms for decades. In 2002 the famed attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr. released a damning report titled “Black Coaches in the National Football League: Superior Performance, Inferior Opportunities.” It showed that over 15 years, Black N.F.L. coaches averaged more wins than their white counterparts and yet had harder times getting hired and were more likely to get fired. Cochran then threatened to sue the N.F.L. if it did not change its hiring practices.
The N.F.L. did what any large corporation would do in response to news it didn’t particularly like: It created a committee to study the issue, offering the appearance of action to a public that was increasingly demanding it. Headed by Dan Rooney, then the owner and president of the Pittsburgh Steelers, the group released a set of recommendations, including the so-called Rooney Rule, which was adopted by the team owners: “Any club seeking to hire a head coach will interview one or more minority applicants for that position.”
And yet in the 19 years since the rule was adopted, we’ve gotten nowhere. There were three Black head coaches in 2003. Today, there are three minority head coaches, one of whom is Black.
