In February, the NFL swiftly defended itself against Brian Flores’s lawsuit alleging racist and discriminatory hiring practices by calling the coach’s claims “without merit.”
For a corporation armed with enough lawyers to out-business-card Patrick Bateman, it was an incredibly poor choice of words, because beneath Flores’s headline-grabbing claims about cash payments offered for losing (which the Dolphins have denied) and clumsy Bill Belichick text messages, Flores was simply speaking a truth head coaches of color face each and every day—a truth that represents the rotting core of the league’s diversity efforts. Many minority coaching candidates go into interviews knowing they won’t receive fair consideration. One source in the industry said candidates sometimes find themselves suspicious of requests and wonder whether they are simply made to satisfy the Rooney Rule requirements.
Many coaches of color exit that process too afraid of losing future employment to say anything about it; too scared to tousle the hair of the old boys’ club.
