NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has admitted that the league “fell short” on diversity policy and hiring minority coaches.
Speaking ahead of the Super Bowl this Sunday Goodell said that the league “fell short” in terms of increasing the number of minority head coaches as the number stayed at five after two were fired and two hired this offseason.
Goodell reiterated that he has invited outside experts to consult on ways forward and said that league policies will be reviewed along with the Rooney Rule which requires teams to interview a minority candidate each time a head coach position becomes available. Goodell said “We won’t tolerate racism. We won’t tolerate discrimination. If there are policies that we need to modify, we’re going to do that. If we’ve seen evidence of discrimination, we will deal with that in a very serious way that will reflect the fact that we won’t tolerate that.”
Last week former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores filed a lawsuit against the NFL, Miami Dolphins, New York Giants and Denver Broncos accusing them of racial discrimination. Flores claims that teams have conducted “sham interviews” in order to satisfy the Rooney Rule requirements when they had no intention of hiring the coach.
Goodell added that the league is “not doing a good enough job… We need to find better solutions and better outcomes. Let's find more effective policies… We're not having the success we want with head coaches. How do we evolve that rule, or do we have to have a new rule? Do we need to find some other way of being able to achieve that outcome? I think we're not going to rest until we find that, until we get those outcomes that are mandatory for us to move forward and have an inclusive league.”