Possible Cardinals connection No. 2
The second situation sounds like when the Cardinals hired Steve Keim as their general manager.
I also got a call from an assistant GM — another African-American, who wants to be a GM, but who has been passed over several times. He told me about how, after he helped construct a playoff team, he was interviewed by another organization to be their general manager. It went great — they even told him during the interview that he was the best candidate for the job. He thought he was poised to get the gig until he got a call from the team telling him, basically, thanks, but the job had already been promised to someone else. Someone white.
“I had no shot,” he said. “Man, some of these teams have never had a black head coach or general manager. They’ve never had a black coordinator or personnel director either. All I’m asking for is a fair chance. The same opportunity that some of these other guys get. No matter what I do, I keep getting passed up.”
This sounds like it could be Morocco Brown, the minority candidate the Cardinals interviewed in 2013 before hiring Keim. Brown was well-respected and many believed he was a great candidate for the job.
It felt at the time that Keim was always the favorite, having been with the team in the front office moving up the ranks for more than a decade. He even sat in on head coaching interviews before he was officially hired.
So the team might have felt and even said in the interview that Brown was the best candidate or that could have been his impression. Of course, it is important to note that when Brown said some teams had never had a black coach or GM, that he clearly could not be referring to the Cardinals, as they were attempting to replace Graves, who is black.
The decision to hire Keim over Brown, if this scenario refers to that hiring, isn’t even necessarily the wrong hiring. However, it would be frustrating to be qualified and passed over multiple times.
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