Making the Invisible Visible: Where are the Minority Coaches in the NFL?

Race related issues affect every sector of the job market. While many may argue that
competitive sports levels the playing field within this nation’s racial divide, there are still
obstacles and barriers to overcome should a person of color, specifically African Americans, in
the National Football League (NFL) want to advance their career to become a coach or owner.
Why is that? According to an article written by Walter Sharp (2021), 70 percent of the NFL
players are African American. Yet, the percentage among African Americans within senior
leadership roles, such as a head coach is slightly over 10. The pipeline from player to coach is
nearly nonexistent. In this paper, the writer will provide an overview of the history of Blacks in
the NFL, The Rooney Rule, lack of African American coaches in the NFL, social justice and the
NFL, and possible ways to increase the number of minority coaches and owners in the NFL
especially as it pertains to African Americans.
Representation, diversity and inclusion matter. “Race and sports showcases African
Americans as key figures making football, baseball, basketball and boxing internationally
popular though inequalities still exist today” (Ross, 2006). Even though opportunities occur by
way of retirements, sudden deaths due to health conditions or accidents, and personnel firings of
existing coaches, the results are highly unlikely for the hiring of an African American coach.
Similar to many workplaces, it is common to see a large number of minorities, especially African
Americans working in entry-level roles and fewer numbers of minorities in leadership positions
in upper management. The same holds true for African American players in the NFL who aspire
to become a coach. While this is not an impossible goal, it is not always an easy goal to attain.
Historically, during the development of the National Football League, Blacks were not
welcomed or permitted to play. While doing research, it can be discovered that record keeping
on historical events and information related to Blacks and African Americans may produce
different findings. According to information shared by the Pro Football Hall of Fame archives,
Blacks/African Americans made their debut in the NFL dating back to the early 1920’s with
players such as Frederick (Fitz) Pollard, Robert (Rube) Marshall, Paul Roberson, Jay (Inky)
Williams, John Shellbourne, Fred (Duke) Slater, James Turner, Sol Butler, Dick Hudson, Harold
Bradley, David Myers, Joe Lillard and Ray Kemp (Pro Football Hall of Fame, 2021). However,
according to the NFLPA (2021) it was not until the 1940’s when African Americans broke the
color barrier in professional football. Either timeline proves to be significant because it was two
decades before the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Four Black men, Marion Motley,
Woody Strode, Kenny Washington and Bill Willis were credited for integrating professional
football. Years later, James “Shack” Harris, who attended Grambling State University under the
legendary Coach Eddie Robinson, was credited for breaking the color barrier as the first Black
quarterback who was a regular starter in the NFL and the first to win a playoff game. After
James Harris' football career ended, he later became a scout and then became part of the NFL’s
first generations of black executives. These milestones have helped to open doors for those who
have come behind them.
A number of teams within the NFL have hired minority coaches over the years. Life as a
professional football player in the NFL is the training ground for these athletes to gain
knowledge and development leadership skills required to advance as a coach and perhaps a team
owner. As evident in the career of “Fitz” Pollard. Frederick Douglass “Fitz” Pollard is
recognized as the first Black player/coach in the NFL who later in life became the first Black
coach in the NFL’s history (Stuart, 2020). In more recent history, Art Shell is cited as being the
first Black coach in the NFL and in 1989 he became the second Black coach in NFL history
when he assumed the role as head coach for the Los Angeles Raiders (African American
Registry (2021).
For those who choose a football life as a long-term career, the natural progression
towards a professional coaching career is to start as a professional football player and then move
up the ranks into some type of coaching position or upper management. However, this journey
can seem almost impossible. There are roadblocks and barriers, which make this career pathway
difficult to navigate. Unfortunately, one of the major barriers and roadblocks may exist due to a
person’s race. The National Football League has recognized the racial divide among athletes
becoming coaches as a problem and has been working to resolve this issue. One
recommendation which the NFL uses to address this issue is the Rooney Rule.
What is the Rooney Rule? The Rooney Rule was created by the late Rooney, former
owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers. In addition to owning the Pittsburgh Steelers franchise, Mr.
Rooney also served on the NFL’s Diversity Committee. The Rooney Rule recommended that all
professional football teams interview minority candidates, when seeking to fill a coaching
vacancy. Mr. Rooney created this rule after hearing the expressed concerns from players talking
about the lack of diversity among the coaches along with the lack of front office opportunities
(Carroll, 2018). While the Rooney Rule was designed with intentions to address the needs to
diversify the NFL, The Rooney Rule has failed in its attempts to increase the number of minority
coaches including Black/African American coaches in the league. However, this has not stopped
The NFL’s quest from trying to come up with other ways to address the lack of minority coaches
including African Americans along with others from ethnic groups. The organization's goal is to
become more diverse and representative of marginalized groups.
As a result, The NFL reached out to some experts to suggest it might be time to turn the
courts in order to further push this agenda in the league in efforts to potentially increase the
hiring minority candidates. In 2003, the NFL took a stance and ensured that minority coaches
will be given an opportunity to be interviewed for head coaching positions. Originally, The
Rooney Rule required teams to interview one minority candidate before hiring a head coach.
Today, The NFL now requires its teams to interview two minority candidates for head coaching
jobs. In 2009, it was decided there was a need for expansion of The Rooney Rule to also include
minority candidates for General Manager positions and other equivalent front office roles. This
is a step in the right direction. Decisions like this helped to open up doors for Gene Upshaw of
the few African Americans to serve in a front office management position. It also paved a way
in 2002 for Ozzie Newsome to become the first Black General Manager for the Baltimore
Ravens. Newsome has been joined by two others who serve in the role of GM, Floyd Reese in
2009 with the New York Giants and Rick Smith in 2011.
Like anything else, these types of change will take time to produce the results people
would like to see. For example, The Kansas City Chiefs Offensive Coordinators Eric Bieniemy
interviewed for six vacant positions and was not hired for any of them (Goldman, 2021). Eric is
a former NFL player who has managed to get a job from being a player of color to a coach.
While he is an Offensive Coordinator, he is a member of a professional team’s coaching staff.
According to Pro-Football History, Bieniemy has proven himself successful as an Offensive
Coordinator with a winning percentage of nearly 64 and a playoff record of 50 percent (Pro
Football History.com 2021). It is important to mention, he had interviewed for seven head
coaching jobs over the previous two hiring cycles. This makes one question what is really going
on. So there are discussions happening.
During a recent panel discussion with the Global Sport Matters organization (2020),
several experts raised the possibility of lawsuit against the NFL. The NFL had a long history of
not hiring minority candidates, included, but not limited to African Americans) for head
coaching jobs, despite a large percentage of black players. Disappointingly, not much has
changed even with the Rooney Rule. In 2019, The Institute for Diversity and Ethic in Sports
Racial and Gender card found that nearly 59 percent of NFL players are black, but there were
only four African American head coaches that year. The most decent report card the Institute
gave the NFL was a D plus grading for the diversity of its coaches. And not surprisingly, it gave
the NFL an F grading for hiring minority General Managers.
The Global Sports Matters (2020) study revealed that the percentage of minority
offensive and defensive coordinators jobs considered the last stepping stone to a head coaching
position. It has dropped since 2002-2003. In the 2002-2003 season, 43 percent of offensive teams
were African American; it is only 8 percent today. On the defensive side African American
coordinators have dropped from 37 percent to 29 percent. In 2002, a criminal attorney Jonnie
Cochran and Civil Rights Attorney Cyrus Mehri threatened to sue the National Football League
after the firing of Black coaches Tony Dungy and Dennis Green.
In more recent discussions, The NFL recommended that teams who do not interview a
minority candidate for head coach vacancies, they should lose a first round draft pick and teams
should also lose a third round pick for failing to interview a minority for assistant coaching
positions. The NFL collaborated with Cochran and Mehri through, and the league adopted the
Rooney Rule the following year. When the National Football League adopted the newly
revamped The Rooney Rule in 2011, the highest number of minority coaches in one season was
eight. In two-years the number dropped back down to four minority candidates. In November
2020, Resolution JC-2A passed and now gives these professional football teams a third round
draft pick in consecutive drafts if another NFL team hires one of the minority candidates as head
coach, general manager, or executive position that is the equivalent of a GM (King, 2020).
The NFL made a new rule that quickly came into play when the Los Angeles Rams were
awarded a third round pick in 2021 and 2022 after the Detroit Lions hired Brad Holmes as
General Manager and executive vice president. Brad Homles, who is an African American man,
who served as the St. Louis Rams director of college scouting. Until the implementation of The
Rooney Rule, there have been only eight minority head coaches in the history of the NFL. Green,
Dungy, Fritz Pollard, Tom Flores, Wayne Fontes, Art Shell, Ray Rhode, and Herm Edwards who
is now the head coach at Arizona State. As mentioned prior, Fritz Pollard broke the color barrier
in 1921 as player coach of the Akron pros in the early years of the NFL. This was 58 years
before the Raiders hired Tom Flores as the next minority NFL head coach 1979.
Today there are five NFL Teams -the Pittsburgh Steelers, Miami Dolphins, New York
Jets, Washington Football Team, and Houston Texans that have a minority head coaches. Of
these five coaches, two of these minority coaches, Head Coach Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh
Steelers and Head Coach David Culley of the Houston Texans are Black. Head Coach Brian
Flores of Miami Dolphins and Head Coach Ron Rivera of The Washington Football Team are
Hispanic. And the New York Jets Coach Robert Satch is an Arab-American and is the league’s
first Muslim head coach. It seems progress and/or changes are being made when there is a
mention or filing of a lawsuit.
While litigation is an option, the threat of revenue loss seems to be a more powerful
influence of some of the decisions, which impact the NFL actions, especially, legally. For
example, when the Fedex corporation threatened to pull its name off of the Fedex Stadium, home
of the Washington Football Team, if the franchise refused to drop “Redskins’’ as the mascot, the
club dropped the nickname and became the Washington Football Team. But recent history
suggests that the threat of legal action can get the NFL attention. In addition to companies
threatening legal action against the NFL, players too have resorted to this course of action for
injustices within the league.
A number of professional football players have resorted to participation in social justice
issues to raise awareness of the mistreatment of African Americans and other minorities to make
societal changes. These player organization lawsuits have been used in order to make some of
the necessary changes to move the needle to advance the agenda of minority athletes, which also
reiterate the need for increased minority personnel in positions of leadership. For instance,
players Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid filed a grievance in 2017 that argued NFL owners had
colluded to blacklist Kaepernick because he kneeled during the playing the National Anthem in
his effort to bring attention to police brutality and racial inequity (Martin, 2019). Many
celebrities believe it is their responsibility to use their platform to use their voice to advocate for
the injustices occurring in this nation.

Diverse hiring still needs a lot of work. The NFL spent much of the last year trying to
figure out how to improve the chances for minority coaches and personnel executives to ascend
to the big jobs the progress for General Managers welcome news around the league for two
reasons General Managers often have ears of the owners, and general managers usually get two
or three head coaching hires. The Turnover cycle is not nearly as frequent for General Managers
as it is for coaches, and people around the league who monitor minority-hiring point to the
importance of stability and keeping the influence of someone with a minority background in the
decision-making rooms. Entering the hiring, the NFL had two black General Managers (Miami
Chris Grier and Cleveland Andrew Berry). Black candidates filled three of the seven GM
vacancies this winter. Washington hired Martin Mayhew, Detroit hired Brad Homles and Atlanta
hired Terry Fontenof. 59 General Manager Candidates that interviewed for the seven openings,
28 of them are minorities. In 2020, only three minorities interviewed for general manager
positions. On the Coordinator Ranks, there were 14 offensive vacancies in the winter. Three of
these jobs went to minorities a year after no teams hired people of color to direct their offensive
minorities filled six of 14 defensive coordinators openings. Coaches filled four of the ten special
teams coordinator positions this winter after none were hired in 2020. At least one of the seven
coaches in supervisory roles were related to the current head coach, 55 are white. 2021 Diversity
and inclusion Report.
While improvement is evident, there must be an ongoing effort to break mobility barriers
and establish a cultural norm of opportunity for all. The NFL recognizes these challenges and is
committed to taking practical steps to ensure concrete results. NFL executive vice president
Tony Vincent said, Since the first Diversity and Inclusion Coaching Mobility Report in 2013, it
has been noted that the NFL has led all the sports. Workforce, as well as increasing opportunity
for minority coaches. The annual study led by Dr. Keith Harrison from the University of Central
Florida, examines whether ethnic minorities are occupational access barriers after one or more
stints as a head coach in the NFL. Dr. Harrison and his team also analyzed occupational access
barriers and mobility patterns of the NFL General Managers, Offensive Coordinators, Defensive
Coordinators, and other primary NFL team coaches. Dr. Harrison to determine what the
percentages of people of color in certain categories in the NFL are from the 2019 season and
compared those to the 2016 season. In 2017, The NFL’s Diversity and Inclusion report and you
find that between February 8, 2016 and February 5, 2017 NFL teams hired a total of 30 open
positions for Head Coaches, Offensive Coordinators, Defensive Coordinators, and General
Managers. Only 23.3% of positions were filled by people of color in the 2019-2020 season.
These percentages can be looked at in a variety of ways, but seems to show there has not been
significant change from the 2016 season to the 2019 season in team or diversity in NFL coaching
staffs. The institute for Diversity and Ethics is sports. The NFL owners of color who both have
major ownership interest and are significantly involved in the operations of the NFL Club. One
Owner is Shad Khan, a Pakistani-born American Businessman and the Principal owner of the
Jacksonville Jaguars and became ownership in 2012. The Buffalo Bills also have an owner with
significant stake, Kim Pegula, who is Asian American women and joined NFL ownership in
2014. The start of the 2019, saw seven women principal in the NFL. Two people of color hold a
majority stake in the NFL teams with only seven women holding a majority interest. With 32
teams in the NFL, only 8 owners with majority stake are minority groups. The league office has
tried to be vocal about inclusivity, diversity and inclusion but many have deemed the sentiments.
Black Lives Matter protest of numerous killings of black men and women the NFL made a
statement that appeared to be a Hair Florida attempt to oppose the masses.
Mary Jo Kane, a professional sport psychologist at the University of Minnesota believes
improving hiring practices will be an important step for the NFL to take to show they are serious
about adjusting racial inequalities across the league. Kane points to white privilege and
unconscious bias playing a role in the league of lack of diversity and leadership we have had
historically white men hired, failing. And being hired even if it is not a head coach, certainly as
an offensive or defensive coordinator.
It's always to me about power and who’s in the room when it happens and until there is
no critical mass not just a taken presence of African-Americans being in the wrong or just not
going to see any sort of structural and therefore lasting change. For a sports league with close to
3/4 of the players are black the NFL lacks representation of leadership roles. Louis Riddick is a
former NFL player and a current analyst with partners at ESPN. He has interviews for general
manager positions with the San Francisco 49ers and the New York Giants. Really tall ABC park
is that the Rooney rule has not done enough to create equal opportunity for minority candidates
to be hired into positions of leadership. The NFL showed a willingness to speak against social
injustice in the past but it has taken a few years since the league partnered with hip-hop icon Jay
Z and 2019 to adjust social justice issues.
In the wake of George Floyd’s death America’s dialogue about racial inequality has
shifted. The tone of the NFL’s commissioner has shifted. Now the league as an opportunity to
prove its players' impassioned response will be a catalyst for the league to take proactive tangible
steps in addressing racial inequality. Riddick is cautiously hopeful that in the coronation with the
league, coaches, and players will continue to try to equalize the opportunity to create more
leadership positions in the NFL for minority candidates.
There has yet to be a female head coach. Allowing players to paste Black Lives Matter
decals on the back of your helmet does not mean much when those efforts are back my real
representations and change why coaches have consistently been given an upper hand when it
comes to management opportunities. The issue boils down to implicit bias, bias is that is a
deterring factor for its fine by coaches or managers. Much like in other areas of our profession,
what we see represents what we believe to be possible. But you can look at the football game on
television and see themselves as, but do not have a vision of their potential as coaches, managers,
decision-makers, or leaders in the game they love. If the NFL wants to see a future a black
representation in these positions they must act to see a future of black representation in these
positions, they must act mandates and take accountability for these faults.
Top NFL decision makers continue the instant that they are committed to improving the
abysmal numbers in coaching. The undefeated asked NFL minority head coaches to assess the
state of diversity in their ranks. Not surprisingly, all I know is that the league has plenty of heavy
lifting to do in his house to make significant progress at the highest level of coaching. I think the
numbers speak for themselves in that regard. It was a disappointing hiring cycle for someone
who watches it like I do, knowing some of the deserving men that I thought should have gotten
an opportunity who did not. But will continue to work and fight for equality and opportunity. It
is a grassroots operation Tomlin said. I was a young offensive coach and I received advice that I
had a better chance of ascending on the defensive side of the ball so I became a defensive coach.
If offensive coaches are a boy design cycle and guys my age group particularly those in color
have been advised and that way then obviously there might be fewer minorities in a pipeline on
the offensive side right now.
Just the overall development of sharp young coaches at all levels and making an
investment in them is what is important. Anthony Lynn, Los Angeles Chargers head coach said.
It has always been a struggle and is probably always going to be a struggle. We just had to keep
bringing it to everyone’s attention. I know when I was coming up the coaching later I had a
couple owners tell me I had to check this box. Owner said I needed to be a coordinator. He said I
needed to be evaluated as a coordinator. I just felt like coordinating skills and his coaching skills
are completely different. I think we are missing the boat and putting that criteria in front of
everyone. You see guy’s getting jobs who have not been coordinators guy’s with coordinators
titles never called a play. Make it consistent for everyone, not just some people. I want guys who
are qualified to get their opportunities in NFL coaching. The Washington Football Team Head
Coach Ron Rivera said. Coach Ron Rivera said he was very disappointed but at the same time I
do see the need to make sure that we are getting gas in the pipeline putting gas in position to be
interviewed. We have to look at this and figure out better practices in terms of developing more
guy’s who are ready. We as coaches for that matter have to be cognizant of that too. We had to
make sure we are training and putting guy’s in positions that they can advance. I think that is
important whatever we can do as he coaches us. Brian Flores Miami Dolphins Head Coach said.
I think there are a lot of quality minority coaches in this league who could be Head Coaches in
this league. They have the temperament and leadership ability. I was fortunate to get an
opportunity to interview at four places. I was very fortunate that way. There are many minority
coaches who, if given the opportunity, would excel in the interview process. It is just an
opportunity. Do I feel like I have to Champion the cause? not necessarily. But I know I'm an
example for minority coaches in the NFL
In conclusion, Race related issues affect every sector of the job market. While many may
argue the playing field is leveled within competitive sports, there are still obstacles and barriers
to overcome should a person of color, specifically African Americans, in the National Football
League (NFL) want to advance their career to become a coach or owner. Why is that?
According to an article written by Walter Sharp (2021), 70 percent of the NFL players are
African American. Yet, the percentage among African Americans within senior leadership roles,
such as a head coach is slightly over 10.
Even though opportunities occur by way of retirements, sudden deaths due to health
conditions or accidents, and firings, in most cases that does not always result in the hiring of an
African American coach. Representation and diversity matter. In this paper, the writer will
provide an overview of the history of Blacks in the NFL, lack of African American coaches in
the NFL, The Rooney Rule, and possible ways to increase the number of minority coaches and
owners in the NFL especially as it pertains to African Americans.
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