In an interview before the start of Super Bowl LVI, President Joe Biden criticized the paucity of Black head coaches in the National Football League, where about 70% of the players are Black.
“Think about it: The whole idea that a league that is made up of so many athletes of color, as well as so diverse, that there’s not enough African American qualified coaches to manage these NFL teams — it just seems like a standard that they’d want to live up to,” Biden told NBC’s Lester Holt. “It’s not a requirement of law, but it’s a requirement, I think, of just some generic decency.”
“I think we are at a fork in the road,” the president said. “We are either going to keep it the way it is or go in another direction and actually make some real change in where we are actually changing the hearts and minds of those who make decisions to hire head coaches, executives, etc.”
President Biden’s comments come after the filing of a lawsuit against the NFL by former Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores. As previously reported, Flores’ suit alleges a persistent pattern of discrimination against potential Black head coaches.
In his 58-page complaint filed in a New York federal court on Feb. 1, Flores accuses the NFL of being “rife with racism” and blasts team administrators for not doing more to hire and retain Black head coaches, coordinators and general managers.
The Dolphins hired Mike McDaniel to replace Flores earlier this month; McDaniel identifies as multi-racial; his father is Black. He comes to the team having worked under San Francisco 49ers Coach Kyle Shanahan for the past 11 seasons, and gets his first shot as a head coach after only one year as offensive coordinator.
Per Deadline, Biden added that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and the league haven’t “lived up to what they committed to and lived up to being open about hiring more minorities to run teams.”
In another halftime interview, Biden told Westwood One, “You’ve got to go out and look — there’s innumerous, incredibly qualified African American coaches out there.”
In addition to the discussion about the NFL, Holt also asked Biden about inflation, which is rising out of control, much to the chagrin of many Americans. The president said inflation should “start to taper off,” and that the situation was temporary.
“I think a lot of Americans are wondering what your definition of temporary is,” Holt said.
Biden responded: “Well, you’re being a wise guy with me a little bit. I understand that’s your job, but look at the time what happened was the … let’s look at the reasons for the inflation. The reason for inflation is the supply chains were cut off, meaning that the products, for example, automobiles, the lack of computer chips to be able to build those automobiles so they could function they need those computer chips. They were not available.”
“So what happens? The number of cars were reduced, new cars reduced,” the president continued. “It made up at one point, one third, the cost of inflation because the price of automobiles were up. So what I did when I went out and made sure we started to make those domestically, we got Intel to come in and provide $20 billion to build a new facility. A number of organizations are doing the same kinds of things.”
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