Why the NFL still has ‘work to do’ when it comes to head coaching diversity

Yahoo Sports host Andrew Siciliano and senior NFL reporter Jori Epstein discuss Roger Goodell’s recent comments about the lack of head coaching diversity in the NFL. Check out the full conversation on “Inside Coverage” – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.

Video Transcript

You’re looking at the cycle where of the 10 coaching openings this year, and again, technically, the Raiders have not made official their hiring of Seahawks offensive coordinator, Clint Kubiak.

That’ll become official after the Super Bowl.

But John Schneider basically confirmed it yesterday.

Yeah, it, it’s fully expected.

So if you take that, of 10 hirings this year, zero of them went to Black head coaches, and nine of them went to white head coaches, and then Robert Saleh, formerly the head coach of the New York Jets, is Lebanese American.

Now, a year ago, we had seven openings, one of which, Aaron Glenn with the New York Jets, went to a Black head coach.

And so no one is saying that talented white head coaches or talented white coaches generally should not get head coach openings.

But when you have a league that’s 70% Black, and you have a league that has previously stated its commitment to diversity, to elevating talented minorities, recognizing there’s a historical problem where talented minorities are not getting the same opportunities and the same leash to go chase those opportunities as their tal- their talented white counterparts, you gotta say, “Well, one out of 17 hires the last two years, zero out of 10?”

We went from having, I believe it’s gonna be nine minority coaches to seven to five, seven Black head coaches two years ago to five and now three.

And so I think you have to ask yourself, and the What I asked Roger Goodell was, for several years now, we had this accelerator program- Right … for talented, diverse candidates, and so they would say, “Okay, if you are a minority candidate,” whether that was female, whether that was racially diverse, “and you are on the coaching pipeline at one part of the year, the front office part- pipeline on the other, we’re gonna give you professional development.

We’re gonna allow you to network with each other, and we’re gonna give you basically a happy hour with ownership.”

Because if the idea is ownership isn’t gonna hire someone they’re not comfortable with, and there was a belief that they were more intuitively or inherently comfortable with people who looks like them, and the ownership looks white, then how do you get them in the building?

Well, the week of this accelerator program last year in May, right after Roger Goodell at Super Bowl week had said, “We are consistently committed to our diversity efforts,” despite the Trump administration not having interest in that, well, the week of it, all of a sudden, it’s like, “Oh, yeah, that’s not happening.”

It was on the calendar for the league.

They say it’s postponed.

I would argue that something that is on the calendar and doesn’t happen sounds more canceled than postponed, and then right after that, you have this trend.

And so I asked Roger Goodell, “Do you see a connection between essentially canceling the accelerator program and then Black coaches not being hired at all and nine of the coaches being white?

And if not, why not?”

And he said, no, he doesn’t.

He thinks that that did not have an impact on the coaching trends.

Why the NFL still has ‘work to do’ when it comes to head coaching diversity

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