The 6%

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” -Dr.Martin Luther King jr. There are about 1,696 players in the NFL (National Football League), and over 68% of them are black. However, with 32 teams, there are only three minority Head Coaches,  and two of them are black. 68% black players, while 6% black coaches. This isn’t some horrific nightmare, this is the unfortunate reality that we live in, and as MLK jr. said, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” Hope, that one day these things WILL change.

At the end of the 2019-2020 NFL season, there were a total of six head coach vacancies to be filled. Out of the six, only one who was hired was of minority race (hispanic), Ron Rivera.  I am NOT trying to discredit any of the coaches who have been hired; however, I find it very unlikely that out of all of the black players turned coaches or just black coaches, there are only two that are qualified enough to be an NFL head coach. 

Now you may be wondering: “Well, who are the black candidates for Head Coach anyway?” There are two great quality coordinators who are in this year's Super Bowl. One of the coaches is the offensive coordinator for the high flying number six ranked offense in 2019, the Kansas City Chiefs (Eric Bieniemy). The other is defensive coordinator of the number two ranked defense in the San Francisco 49ers (Robert Saleh). The ironic part is that the Cleveland Browns hired former Minnesota Vikings Offensive coordinator Kevin Stefanski to be their head coach, even though Stefanski faced and was held to 10 points by Saleh’s defense during the playoffs this year. You have two great, well respected coordinator’s in this years Super Bowl who were BOTH passed over by multiple teams for reasons unknown. However, with the lack of black coaches, one could speculate the TRUE reason why.

Fortunately, the NFL is “woke” enough to realize that the lack of black coaches in the league IS indeed a problem, which is why they added the Rooney rule. The Rooney rule requires teams to interview “ethnic-minority” coaches during NFL coaching searches. Unfortunately, the NFL ISN’T “woke” enough to realize that this rule is not working, which is evident by the fact that there are only three minority head coaches. One way I believe we could fix the Rooney rule is by making ALL NFL teams to have at least one fourth of the coaching staff be minority. However,  Tyler Tynes from the Ringer has a different perspective. In his article he wrote “In addition to working to increase the number of people of color who make hiring decisions (team owners and general managers), it is imperative to work on improving the perception of competence’ of sport business professionals of color,”  borrowing from the professor Kenneth Shropshire’s 1996 work on the subject. “Stated differently, even if there is an increase in general managers of color and team owners of color, negative race consciousness associated with the coaching and coordinating capabilities of candidates of color may still exist and persist.” I think he NAILS it with this quote because we also have to get rid of the perception that black coaches can’t run a team. If we don’t, it doesn’t matter how good your credentials are, if they don't believe a black coach could lead a team, they will never be given the chance to prove them wrong.