While designed with the greatest intentions of creating equal employment opportunities in professional football, the Rooney rule does more than create opportunities...it promotes racism. The rule requires that an NFL team must interview a minimum of one minority candidate when conducting interviews to fill vacant coaching positions, and as of this week, that same rule applies to openings in the organizations front office.
The success of Black coaches in the NFL is not in question when looking at coaches such as Tony Dungy, Marvin Lewis and Dennis Green, which brings to my mind the question of why make it mandatory to interview minority candidates when they have already proven to be more then competent? The reason is that the NFL is trying to clean up the image that they have regarding the "thug" player by trying to maximize the amount of Black coaches to counteract the negative behavior of many of the black athletes, who make up the majority of participants on most NFL rosters (not to say that all black players are thugs by any means). Much like the NBA's dress code, which is in place to try and negate the once "street" image of the NBA player, now to promote a more professional image, the issue of a minority-coaching candidate is trying to do the same thing.
The biggest issue I have with the Rooney rule is that it truly only applies to Black coaches. The rule is there to make sure that Black coaches are given an equal opportunity to interview for head coaching positions. Why does the Rooney rule not apply to Jewish coaches? Or Asian coaches? Or physically handicapped coaches? They are all minorities. But the issue here is not whether or not the rule works, because it does, but what sort of implications it carries along with it. By using the term minority and only applying the issue to Blacks, it is simply enforcing the idea that we view Black people in this society as inferior and in order to make it appear less so, they need to be given an leg up or else they would not be able to accomplish anything. Which is clearly not true due to the success of the aforementioned African American coaches.
Now with the same rule overflowing into the front office, the same sort of question has to be raised. Currently there are five major front office executives of African American decent in a field of 32 teams. That comes out around 15% of the league offices have African Americans at their highest positions. In comparison to the list of fortune 500 companies run by minorities, there are only 22 minority CEO's, only five of which are black. With that in mind, the number of black coaches in the NFL is seven out of 32 for head coaches not even takin ginto account the large number of minority assistant coaches and coordinators. That percentage is far higher then corporate American, and while it does not deal with the disparity of racial participation, the NFL can easily consider itself an already (proportionally) diverse entity.
What I am trying to say is that the Rooney rule, despite its good intentions, is re-enforcing racism. It is promoting the idea that the only way for an African American to succeed is to get helped along. Now the rule extends beyond the field into the front office where each team must have the same process of interviewing a minority candidate when trying to fill a vacant front office position. Do I agree with the Rooney rule? No. Do I think it has allowed for some very successful coaches to get to where they are? Maybe. But more importantly, is there a double standard, or aspects that get too clearly overlooked? Yes. To play devils advocate for a minute, let us look at when the Steelers hired Mike Tomlin in 2003. During the process they only interviewed two candidates for the position, Ron Rivera and Mike Tomlin, both minorities. If the Rooney rule is designed to promote equal rights in the NFL, then a white candidate was not given a fair chance at becoming the head coach of the Steelers, and they in turn violated the rule that their owner created. While that is clearly not how it works, it just shows what the rule does, it promotes the idea that we need to be actively working against racism as appose to allowing for the qualified candidates to get the jobs, many of whom are already African American. And while racism is clearly still an issue here in the US after all these years and all the strides forward, the Rooney rule just remids us every year during the offseason that it is still alive and well.