Note the new “n” word is not in use.
Fact – There are 32 NFL teams.
Fact – There are approximately 1500 active players, on any given fall Sunday.
Fact – Almost 1,000 of these players are black.
Fact – There are 2 black head coaches.
Fact – Only one black player, Bryan Cox, has emphatically, unequivocally, and without dancing around his answer, deplored the leagues diversity head coach hiring practices.
NFL Policy – If a team holds head coach interviews with anyone outside its staff, the team must interview at least one ‘minority’ (I will get this word banished.) candidate.
A team, the Detroit Lions, has been fined $200,000 for failing to ‘interview’ black candidates. Black candidates contacted declined interviews because everyone knew the Lions wanted just-fired San Francisco head coach, Steve Mariucci.
The brouhaha began.
Should the Lions have been fined? Yes, they violated the policy. No black candidates were interviewed.
Should the Lion’s argument of ‘good-faith’ effort (they tried but were declined) create an exception? No. It’s not good-faith to offer an interview for a job already ‘filled’.
Should there even be an NFL policy? Should Johnnie Cochran threaten litigation?
A better question is why has the only football voice been from a close to retirement but is still an awesome kick butt defensive player – Bryan Cox.
Where’s Gene Upshaw (black), head of the NFL Players Association (whose members are 65% black)?
Where’s Donovan McNabb (black), quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles who reached the NFC Conference Championship last year?
Where’s Warren Sapp and Keyshawn Jackson (both black), who played for the 2003 Super Bowl Champions Tampa Bay Buccaneers?
Where’s Art Shell (black), Tony Dungy (black), Herman Edwards (black), Jerry Rice (black), Randy Moss (real black), Priest Holmes, Curtis Martin, Emmitt Smith, Jeff Blake, Fred Taylor, Shannon Sharpe (never at a loss for words), Ray Lewis, … (black, black, black, black, black, black, black, still black)?
Where are the folks willing to put their money on the line and say ‘I will not support such a blatant disregard of talented people when their only common denominator is the blackness of their skin?’ It’s kind of a safe bet. Since 1863, the person generating the money has some power over the person keeping the money when he or she is less replaceable. Most players are replaceable. But the first string? I don’t think the Eagles will pull McNabb out of the line up, or the Vikings Randy Moss, or the Bucs Warren Sapp, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday for speaking their opinion.
If it is their opinion.
Does it really matter what color leads the team, or the corporation?
Doesn’t the work still get done? The profits still made?
Is this much ado about nothing?
Must be cuz if it were something there would be voices.
Where’s all those black voices?
Come to think of it, where are all the white voices? And Hispanic? And …
It’s awfully silent right now.
So the Lions got fined because what …?
Thank you a lot for sharing this with all folks you really know what you are talking approximately!
Bookmarked. Kindly also visit my website =).
We will have a hyperlink exchange contract among us
Matt Millen plays by his own rules. If football antalsys were like cops in movies, Millen would be Joe Don Baker. And I don’t mean the Walking Tall version.