Biden says NFL must keep its word to hire more black coaches
US President Joe Biden waded into the controversy surrounding the NFL’s hiring practices in an interview that aired Sunday, saying it’s “just general decency” to ensure more opportunities to manage candidates. blacks and minorities.
“The idea that a league made up of so many athletes of color, as well as being so diverse, doesn’t have enough qualified African-American coaches to manage these NFL teams. I think that’s a standard that they would want to meet,” Biden told Lester Holt, of NBC News, in an interview that aired before the Super Bowl.
“It’s not a requirement of the law, but it is a requirement, I think, of some general decency.”
The president’s comments follow a federal class action lawsuit filed last week by former Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores that accused the league, along with three NFL franchises, of racial discrimination. Flores and other NFL critics question the effectiveness of the Rooney Rule, adopted in 2003, which requires teams to conduct at least one head coaching interview with a minority candidate.
Only one of the 28 employed head coaches in the NFL is black, with four teams officially without a head coach, in a league in which roughly 70% of the players are black. That only coach is Mike Tomlin of the Steelers, who won the Super Bowl in 2009.
There are two other non-black minority coaches: one of Puerto Rican and Mexican descent, and one of Lebanese descent.
