Well the Rooney Rule, was established in 2003,[1] requires National Football League teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching and senior football operations opportunities. The rule is named for Dan Rooney, the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the chairman of the league's diversity committee, and indirectly the Rooney family in general, due to the Steelers' long history of giving African Americans opportunities to serve in team leadership roles. It is often cited as an example of affirmative action. The Rule was established to ensure that minority coaches were considered for high-level coaching positions. Until 1979, Fritz Pollard was the only minority head coach in NFL history (which was during the league's early years in the 1920's) and by the time the Rule was implemented, only Tom Flores, Art Shell, Dennis Green, Ray Rhodes, Tony Dungy, and Herman Edwards had ever held head coaching jobs. (Only Dungy and Edwards were actively head coaching at the time of the Rule's implementation, though Shell and Green would later return to the sidelines as head coaches.) Dungy in particular had struggled for years before getting a head coaching job; he was often promoted as a head coaching candidate by Chuck Noll when Dungy was an assistant under Noll in the 1980's with the Steelers, but he would not become a head coach until 1996 when he took over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Since the Rooney Rule was established, several NFL franchises have hired minority head coaches, including the Steelers themselves, who hired Mike Tomlin before their 2007 season.[2] (The Steelers, however, had already interviewed Ron Rivera to fulfill the Rule before interviewing Tomlin, and Rooney himself contends that Tomlin's hiring did not result from the Rule.[3]) At the start of the 2006 season, the overall percentage of African American coaches had jumped to 22%, up from 6% prior to the Rooney Rule.[4] Even so, the policy is still debated and no team has stated whether the Rooney Rule contributed to the hiring of a minority.
The rule does not apply if an assistant coach has language in his contract guaranteeing him the head coaching job in case of an opening.[5] For example, this was the case when Mike Martz took over as head coach of the St. Louis Rams before the 2000 season. Also, the rule does not apply if the assistant coach taking over the head position is a minority, as was the case with Mike Singletary and the San Francisco 49ers in late 2008.[6]
In 2003, the NFL fined the Detroit Lions $200,000 for failure to interview minority candidates for the team's vacant head coaching job. After Marty Mornhinweg was fired, the Lions immediately hired former San Francisco 49ers head coach Steve Mariucci to replace him without interviewing any other candidates. The Lions claimed they attempted to interview other candidates but that the minority candidates withdrew from interviews, believing Mariucci's hiring was inevitable.[7]
Recently, legal scholars have advocated for extending the Rooney Rule to college football, where the number of minority head coaches hovers around 6%.[8]
As of June 15, 2009, Rooney Rule requirements now apply to all searches for senior football operations positions within the NFL, regardless of a team's title for that position.[9]
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