Like many around the league, Richard Sherman easily noticed the lack of diversity in coaching hires around the league.
The latest NFL head-coaching cycle has yielded entirely white hires with the Giants even elevating former Patriots wide receivers coach Joe Judge to head coach. The Cleveland Browns are the only remaining team with a head-coaching vacancy, but Vikings offensive coordinator Kevin Stefanski has recently been linked to the position.
If the current makeup holds, there will be just three black NFL head coaches — the same number as when the NFL instituted the Rooney Rule in 2003, requiring teams to interview minority candidates for head-coaching vacancies.
That rule clearly hasn’t helped provide real opportunities for qualified minority candidates, and according to Sherman, it’ll take a drastic shift in NFL ownership to see more black head coaches in the league.
“You can be terrible as a head coach and hey, no matter what in a couple more years you’re going to get another job and you’re going to get recycled if you look a certain way…
"The people who could change it make billions and billions of dollars and they could care less.” pic.twitter.com/VwQvkqe68Q
— KNBR (@KNBR) January 9, 2020
Sherman said to reporters on Wednesday:
“It’s always going to be a challenge in this game whether it’s male, female, or whether it’s coaches of color getting head-coaching gigs. I think it’s going to be a conversation. The owners still look a certain way, and they still come from a very old background. So, it’s going to be this way until things change.”
He continued, saying that most coaches of color who get interviewed are brought in just to meet Rooney Rule requirements:
“You can be terrible as a head coach and, hey, no matter what in a couple more years, you’re gonna get another job. And you’re going to get recycled back if you look a certain way. And that’s the unfortunate part.
“Obviously, Robert Saleh is a person of color and got an interview. But, you know, I think Lovie Smith, there’s tons of coaches out there that deserve a head-coaching job, (Eric) Bieniemy. But those guys aren’t even getting a look. And the ones that are getting a look are just getting it so they can check the Rooney Rule box off. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how much you talk about it because it’s not changing. The people who could change it make billions and billions of dollars, and they can care less.”
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