Boldly going where no NFL coach has gone before, recently fired Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores put his future career at stake and filed a class-action lawsuit against the league, the New York Giants, the Denver Broncos and the Dolphins, alleging discriminatory hiring practices among team owners.
Coincidentally, a study I began working on in the spring of 2020 was published online in the Review of Black Political Economy mere hours before Flores’ lawsuit went public. My colleagues and I used data on all NFL offensive and defensive coordinators since the 2003 introduction of the Rooney Rule, which required all NFL teams to interview at least one minority candidate for vacant head-coaching jobs.
