Post-Super Bowl LVII, more Black NFL coaches, por favor part 2
Episode 4Play
On his February 17, 2023 podcast, Kevin Ross asked that the NFL hire more Black coaches and proposed a 3-prong approach to achieve this goal. This time he’s not asking, going all in as to why his uncompromising strategy must be implemented… right now!
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Kevin Ross: Hi, I’m Kevin Ross and this is The Podcast. More Black NFL Coaches, Por Favor – Part two.
Kevin Ross: Let me tell you something boy. If I did give you power then you’ve got nothing. Nobody gives you power. Real power is something you take. That was the power speech Jock Ewing gave his son Bobby, on the iconic TV series “Dallas” some 42 years ago. I remember it like it was yesterday because it was raw. It was real. It was true. That’s facts, as my sons would say.
Kevin Ross: When it comes to the racism, black coaches in the NFL continue to be subjected to with impunity. That’s facts. On my February 17th podcast, I raised this issue and identified three ways to combat the institutional discrimination that festers in this country in general and in the NFL particularly. If 60-70% of NFL players are black men and 34% of the quarterbacks are black men, yet only 9% of the head coaches are black men, with all due respect, this ain’t a Hispanic problem. It’s not an Asian or Native American problem. It’s debatable whether it’s a female problem, but it is most definitely a Black problem.
Kevin Ross: So what do I propose? One, exhausting all legal remedies, time for everybody to be served and sued because look the NFL is a ginormous financial creature with a record, $11 billion haul 2021. Culturally it’s unmatched in reach of the country’s 100 most watched TV programs in ’21, 75 were NFL games. Now with the estimated worth of $200 million, commissioner Roger Goodell has led the league since 2006 and has acknowledged failures in promoting black coaches. Despite the league’s end zone pledge to quote unquote end racism, the son of a former new york congressman and U. S. Senator continues to characterize the NFL as largely powerless over the 31 private teams owned by billionaires. Good looking out Roger.
Kevin Ross: Thus after the 2023 hiring cycle will once again only see three black head coaches for a 5th straight year. DeMeco Ryans, of the Houston Texans, Mike Tomlin, of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Todd Bowles of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who is also a former Morehouse College Football Coach. Crazy right? Not so much, when you look at the December 1973 issue of Ebony magazine, there was an article titled, “Where are the black coaches?” Ebony reported that, that there were 198 coaches with approximately 1,118 players. While some 435 players were black, not a single black man was listed among the 26 head coaches. That was 50 years ago. Which is why I say take him to court because when Attorney Johnnie Cochran released a 2002 report titled “Black coaches in the NFL superior performance and for inferior opportunities”. It showed that over a 15 year period black coaches had more wins per season than white coaches and led their teams to the playoffs 67% of the time compared with 39% of the time for white coaches and yet they weren’t getting hired.
Kevin Ross: So Johnnie Cochran threatened to sue the NFL which led to the following year, the creation of the Rooney Rule. Now it was supposed to help increase the number of black coaches. It hasn’t. 20 years later, Brian Flores, now, Currently the Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator files a class action suit in Federal Court in February of ’22 against the NFL after being fired by the Miami Dolphins. Two others have joined him. Now the NFL and team’s name called the case meritless with both seeking to move the dispute to private arbitration. So of course Roger Goodell can decide the outcome who is not biased in any way despite his reported $128 million dollar commissioner payday from the league over the last two seasons, but no, he’s not biased.
Kevin Ross: Just one month after Flores filed his case seeking restitution however, the NFL announced that all teams must now hire a minority or female offensive assistant coach as well as provide more opportunities for women period. While the case is still pending, change by simply filing the case is causing progress to occur. It was a gutsy move by Flores who likely understands that as the first now to fight the power in court, he risks being Colin Kaepernick’d, which is why my second tactic is so critical. Pressure, praise and promote all non-black allies willing to challenge the status quo stat. Take for instance, Sean Gregory writer for the magazine Time, his article, ‘If He was White, He Would Have a Job. One of the Best Coaches in Football Keeps Getting Ignored’. And that was referencing two times Super Bowl winning former Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy recently hired by the Washington Commanders, but still no head coaching gig.
Kevin Ross: Nancy Armour, U.S.A. Today, she wrote a piece ‘NFL owners don’t Want Black and brown men as their coaches’. Even Skip Bayless, the sports columnist and commentator referenced Armour’s article when he recently even acknowledged that white NFL owners are uncomfortable around black people. It’s just culture. It’s just the way life is according to Skip and I don’t know how to defeat it. That’s what he was quoted as saying. These are non-black people speaking out – And they may be called too woke or there may be some, some stigma attached, but they see the unfairness, they taste the nepotism.
Kevin Ross: The site defector.com noted that of the 792 total coaching jobs in the NFL in 2021 111 were held by people related to current or former coaches. Either biologically or by marriage. More than a third of the head coaching jobs, 11 out of 32 were held by men related to current or former coaches also biologically or by marriage. So that’s facts. Someone like a Pete Carroll, oldest coach in the league at 72. It was one of several white head coaches who asked NFL owners at their 2022 Annual League meeting to please look beyond the color of the coach’s skin. At one point, Carol even went as far as asking owners what is wrong with you all? Answer? Crickets. Silence. That’s facts. Where is Black Twitter when you need them giving props to these folks, these allies. This is important.
Kevin Ross: Let’s look at the Washington Post. They published in 2022 a series called ‘How the NFL Blocks Black Coaches’ and they pointed out that black coaches tend to perform about about as well as white coaches, but they’ve had to serve longer as mid-level assistants. They’re more likely to be given interim jobs and full time ones and are held to a higher standard when it comes to keeping those jobs. Now they didn’t just write this with no research. They examine three decades worth of data and conducted extensive interviews to reach these conclusions.
That’s facts. Meanwhile, look at the NBA where 73.2% of the players are black men as of 2022 and half, half, half, half, half of their coaches are black, 15 out of the 30 teams and it hasn’t hurt their bottom line. That’s facts. The NBA generated combined revenues of around $10 billion in the ’21 – ’22, season. And come on, black men are the reason NFL team values have soared over the past 35 years from around 100 million on average to some $4.14 billion. That’s facts, and fight me on that – okay.
Kevin Ross: And also during this period, coaching pay has jumped from less than $300,000 on average, from $300,000 on average to more than $7 million. So I just want to know how do more of these dollars get into the pockets of black coaches? Which leads me to my third prompt – Step three, have historically Black colleges and universities serve as a coaching pipeline, leverage these HBCUs and changed the game. In 2020, Jackson State University named Deion Sanders head coach of the Jaguars. Three years later, Coach Prime announced his departure from J.S.U. for the predominantly white University of Colorado in Boulder. He didn’t have any previous collegiate college coaching experience. And yet Sanders has given aspiring black coaches the playbook.
Kevin Ross: Instead of doing what NFL Hall of Famer Ed Reed did putting Bethune-Cookman College, HBCU on blast before actually getting the assignment to run the Wildcats football program, work within the system, recruit top athletes to these HBCU schools get them straight, help them negotiate broadcast rights, then go on to a predominantly white institution or transition to the NFL like Todd Bowles, if that’s your goal or your calling. You know, Frederick Douglass said, “power concedes nothing without demand”. It never did and it never will. And that’s why I’m spending so much of my time talking about this. Hell, I’m not even that big of a football fan, but I am a man, a Black man who’s raised two sons who are now adult black men. I was student body president at Morehouse, the only all male black college in the country. I’m a member of a fraternity, mostly comprised of black men.
Kevin Ross: I’ve convicted black men. I’ve sentenced them to jail. I’ve dismissed their cases, I’ve expunge their records. So yeah, I take it very personal when my tribe gets screwed over and this situation, this situation with these gross disparities, despite all the empirical data is a bunch of B.S. and I’ll tell you this much, I won’t stop raising this issue until this wall is knocked down. My commitment is to fight the power, fight the powers that be. We just need a few more soldiers to do battle. Are you in?
Kevin Ross: I’m Kevin Ross And this is The Podcast powered by theGrio . Follow me @Iambossross on Instagram and Twitter.Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.
