US President Joe Biden said on Sunday that “decency” should lead the Professional Football League (NFL) to ensure there are more minority coaches in the job, as it faces charges of discrimination.
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“I don’t know if there isn’t a legal requirement, but in any case I think it’s a requirement of general decency,” Mr. Biden told NBC, about the need. to foster diversity, in a league which he pointed out is “made up of so many athletes of color (…) and not enough qualified African-American coaches to run these NFL teams.”
“I think the league should be held to a reasonable standard. Its commissioner underlined it, they did not keep their commitments, they did not respect their openness to hiring for more minorities in order to lead the teams, ”he added, to a handful of hours of the Super Bowl, the championship final to oppose the Los Angeles Rams to the Cincinnati Bengals.
On Wednesday, Roger Goodell, the boss of the NFL had acknowledged that the league “had really focused on trying to obtain results” in terms of diversity, before acknowledging: “we did not succeed, far from need it”.
Five minority coaches are currently in place for 32 teams. Two of them are black, in a league where 70% of the players are too.
In NBA basketball, there are 14 black or mixed-race coaches for 30 clubs.
Ousted in early January from the Miami Dolphins, Brian Flores, a 40-year-old black coach, filed a lawsuit two weeks ago against the NFL, “run like a plantation” according to him, as well as against three clubs, which he accused of racial discrimination. Both in “fictitious” job interviews, conducted in January by the New York Giants and in 2019 by the Denver Broncos, as well as in that of his recent dismissal.
