US President Joe Biden said on Sunday that ‘decency’ should lead the NFL to ensure there are more minority coaches in the job, as the Goodell circuit faces accusations of discrimination .
“I don’t know if there’s a legal requirement, but in any case I think it’s a requirement of general decency,” 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 lead 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 few hours ago. of the Super Bowl between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals.
On Wednesday, Roger Goodell, the commissioner 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 achieve it, it is still a long way off”.
Five minority coaches are currently serving among the 32 teams. Two of them are black, in a league where 70% of the players are too.
In the NBA, there are 14 black or mixed-race coaches in the 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 accuses of racial discrimination, both in the context of “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
