THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
For many people, the Super Bowl halftime show is the highlight of the evening, and this year's extravaganza was significant beyond just its being a demonstration of vintage hip-hop and rap, which both pleased the core adult audience with nostalgia while also presenting, in effect, a safe show for those who didn't know or thought they didn't like that music. The real significance may have been that the show was put together by Jay-Z and his company Roc Nation as the biggest, and many might say first, major benefit from his 2019 partnership with the NFL that was designed to, in the league's words "enhance the NFL's live game experience and amplify the league's social justice efforts."
It will be those efforts which come under examination in the wake of a lawsuit filed by Brian Flores, whose firing as head coach of the Miami Dolphins on January 11 - 'Black Monday', the day after the end of the regular season - sent shockwaves around the league. Flores, who's only 40, was seen as one of the brightest young coaches in the league, and one of the few former Bill Belichick assistants to have seemingly installed a winning culture away from New England. His teams also went 4-2 against Belichick's in those three seasons.
Although Flores' overall record was 24-25, in his first season he went 5-11 with a team many observers predicted would finish bottom of the NFL and get the first overall pick in the draft, which at that point was supposed to be Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. In fact there was popular opinion in Miami that the team should not try too hard to win, in order to ensure that first pick, a so-called "Tank For Tua" strategy, which became part of Flores' lawsuit. Ironically, the team wound up with Tua anyway, with the draft's fifth pick - Joe Burrow, last seen for the Bengals in the Super Bowl, went first and the Dolphins stuck with Tua ahead of Justin Herbert who went to the Chargers.
The suit was filed on February 1, against the NFL and three teams: Miami, New York Giants and Denver Broncos, alleging racial discrimination in his firing and in the league's hiring processes, going back to 2019 before Miami signed him. Specifically it targeted the league's 'Rooney Rule' which specifies that teams must interview minority candidates for head coaching and general manager positions. The rule, named after Pittsburgh Steelers' owner (and former US ambassador to Ireland) Dan Rooney, went into effect in 2003, after the firings of black coaches Dennis Green in Minnesota and Tony Dungy in Tampa seemed as shocking then as Flores' did now.
The Rooney Rule worked in many ways, especially in Pittsburgh where, in 2007, a young Vikings' assistant named Mike Tomlin was hired after impressing Rooney and the Steelers front office in his interview (though the team contended Tomlin was always on their short-list, and current Washington head-coach Ron Rivera, a Latino, was their Rooney interview). Tomlin is still the Steelers' head coach (only their third since they hired Chuck Noll in 1969) and after the firing of Flores and Houston's David Culley, was briefly the only black coach in the league. (The Jets' Robert Saleh, whose family are Lebanese Muslims, is the league's other current minority coach).
Flores' suit appears to have exploded from a text message error by the famously social-media averse Belichick. He sent a text to Flores congratulating him on the Giants' decision to hire him. Except Flores' interview with the Giants was still two days away. The text had been intended for a different Brian, ex-Patriots assistant Brian Daboll, the Bills' offensive coordinator. Flores, not doubting Belichick's inside information, assumed his interview was a sham, and recalled when he was interviewed in 2019 by Denver's GM John Elway and others, when he alleges they turned up late, "obviously" hung over, and simply went through the motions before hiring Vic Fangio. That explains why the Giants and Broncos are parties to the suit, but he claims the league uses the Rooney rule as shade for a continuing residue of bias against black coaches, who have more trouble getting hired and are quicker to be fired, than their white equivalents.
The rest of the suit concerns his firing by the Dolphins. The team said it was because "key dynamics weren't functioning", which was generally interpreted as a power-struggle between Flores and GM Chris Grier, who is also black, over questionable draft picks and free agent signings. But Flores went on to accuse Miami owner Steve Ross of being biased against him because in the 2019 season he refused to accept a $100,000 bonus per game the team lost, in effect to Tank For Tua, and that in 2020 he refused to participate in a meeting with Ross and a "prominent free agent quarterback", assumed to be Tom Brady, whom Flores knew from New England, in an effort to persuade Brady to sign with the Dolphins. It came at a time when such meetings were forbidden as "tampering" and Flores did not want to put himself in a position to be punished by the NFL on his owner's behalf.
Paradoxically, these items concerning Ross are probably going to be the most dangerous for the NFL, whose best arguments will be either they are false, or that they don't indicate racial bias in Flores' firing. Flores will likely argue that the "key dynamics" included the owner (and Ross was also not shy about indicating the Dolphins' interest this year in trading for the Texans' Deshaun Watson, who sat out the season on full pay while facing 22 civil suits and four criminal complaints on grounds of sexual assault or harassment), and that assertive coaches who are not black (say, Bill Parcells) are expected to fight to get their way within the team's system.
The NFL refuted the charges immediately, while at the same time promising an "independent" investigation of the bias they stated does not exist. The teams said Flores' claims were factually wrong; the Giants hadn't decided on Daboll, the Broncos were exhausted by a red-eye flight, the Dolphins did no such things with Flores. The deposition of Bill Belichick ought to be a good one; coaches, unlike journalists, do not have "protected" sources, while the one of Steve Ross will be the one the NFL wants to avoid, as the claimants can take discovery into all sorts of areas, including team financing, which the NFL wants to keep to itself.
The NFL hired former US attorney general Loretta Lynch as its defense attorney. As Mike Freeman of USA Today wrote, "they can't find a black coach to hire, but they can find a black lawyer." The arguments against entrenched racial discrimination are likely to point out that the Rooney Rule, since 2020, has included compensation for teams who lose minority coaches to head coaching jobs, or front-office minorities to GM posts. Indeed, last year the draft-pick profligate LA Rams' lost Brad Holmes to Detroit, where he became GM, received a much needed third-round compensatory pick in the 2021 draft, and will get another in 2022.
This year, the Bears hired Ryan Poles from Kansas City and the Vikings Kwesi Adofo-Mensah from Cleveland, as GMs, which brought the league total to seven (out of 32 teams). Both Chicago and Minnesota also hired new white head coaches. Only two NFL teams have minority owners: Jacksonville's Shad Khan, and Buffalo's Kim Pegula, though Pegula is seen as the lesser partner to her husband Terry, who is also the team's CEO. Washington's Dan Snyder, named his wife Tanya co-owner and CEO, ahead on the corporate pyramid of the team president, Jason Wright, who is black and was hired in 2020. But Snyder appointed his wife while in the midst of an NFL investigation of sexual harassment and "workplace misconduct," including bullying and intimidation, which was conducted for the NFL by prominent DC attorney Beth Wilkinson, a woman hired to investigate complaints primarily from women. The league released only what it called a "summary of findings" of her report, but with no details, and now the US House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform has begun its own investigation, and complained that the NFL refused to turn over more than 100,000 documents, citing issues of privacy.
The assumption is that after someone in either the NFL or Washington front offices leaked a series of emails between Washington team president Bruce Allen and Jon Gruden, which resulted in Gruden's firing as coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, the NFL fears the release of specific conversations could lead to an outcry, similar to what forced NBA owner Donald Sterling to give up his team. The real threat of the Flores suit may well be of something similar emerging from discovery.
Flores lawyers may also point out that even within the NFL offices, black executives are not in the positions to make major policy decisions; instead they primarily have roles in "league operations" such as enforcement of rules regarding player behaviour.
Defending the league's coaching hires will be more complicated, because of an ingrained culture in the NFL which rewards nepotism and the old boy network, and might be argued to be only peripherally concerned with race. You could point out that since the Rooney Rule went into effect, the league has hired far more coaches of Irish descent (McCarthy, Shanahan, Quinn, McDermott, Carroll, McVay, McDaniels, McDaniel, Mularkey etc.) than other minorities. But when Tomlin was briefly the only black coach standing, you could also point out that there were more head coaches who were the sons (Kyle Shanahan) or grandsons (Sean McVay) of former NFL coaches than there were black coaches.
The NFL is much like a loose gathering of feudal states. Ownership is, of course, mostly hereditary (except in publicly-owned Green Bay) and the Jones, Rooney, Mara and Brown families man the front offices of their family businesses, as well as the boardroom. The coaching fraternity is like a medieval guild, which is tough to break into and which rewards old connections and family ties. Bill Belichick has two sons on his staff, Bum Phillips' son Wade is a legendary defensive coach. Buddy Ryan offered two fruits to the coaching tree, and many other examples, like Mike Zimmer and Gary Kubiak, abound. The same in front offices where the sons of GMs like Bill Polian or Ron Wolf or coaches like John McKay, went into the trade. Coaches hire those they know and like. Mike Sherman and Joe Cullen played coaching tag going back to their days at Worcester Academy, a prep school in Massachusetts; Bengals' coach Zac Taylor is Sherman's son in law and began his career coaching under him.
So some biases may be tough to percolate through this semi-closed system. Remember, the NFL was segregated from 1933-46, and despite their breaking the apartheid color-barrier a year before Jackie Robinson debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers (with Robinson's UCLA football teammates Kenny Washington and Woody Strode with the LA Rams, and Hall of Famers Marion Motley and Bill Willis with the Cleveland Browns of the NFL's rival All-American Football Conference) the then-Redskins didn't integrate in segregated Washington until 1962. The first black quarterback didn't play until 1953, when the aptly named Willie Thrower threw 8 passes (completing three) in a game for the Steelers. Shack Harris was the first black starting QB, for the Rams in 1968. And famously, when Doug Williams led Washington to a Super Bowl win in 1988, the first question he was asked after the game was "how long have you been a black quarterback?".
It was assumed that blacks were not smart enough to be "field generals," as they were called when QBs called their own plays, that many white players would not follow them and that they lacked the discipline to stand in the pocket, a criticism which has not disappeared even today. Blacks were also discouraged from playing middle linebacker, usually the defensive signal-caller, and even center, for fear they couldn't remember snap counts. So there is an element of racial stereotyping still extant, and it works both ways: next time you hear a receiver called "sneaky fast" you can bet he will be melanin-challenged.
After Flores' firing the Texans belatedly fired Culley, with many assuming they would hire Flores. After the suit, they appeared focused on Josh McCown, a veteran (white) quarterback who only retired in 2020 and has no coaching experience. In the end, the Texans promoted their defensive coordinator Lovie Smith, formerly head coach with the Bears and Bucs, with a career 92-90 mark, and the Dolphins hired Mike McDaniel, another Kyle Shanahan protege, and Yale graduate, whose appearance saw him described as having a black father - in that sense little has changed since Jim Crow days, and a small amount of black blood will define you. This argument won't be made, as it cannot justify racial bias in hiring, but the league will point to the compensation scheme as a success.
Flores' legal team will likely point to this year's black coaching candidates, who included long-term bridesmaid Eric Bieniemy of Kansas City. The excuse for his repeated failure to clear Rooney interviews is the perception he isn't the play-caller in Andy Reid's offense, a perception which hasn't held back Doug Pederson, Frank Reich or Matt Nagy. Nor the stream of non-playcalling offensive assistants to Shanahan or McVay. Tampa's offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich is in a similar bind. Caught between head coach Bruce Arians and QB Tom Brady, no one, not even in Jacksonville where he was a popular player, accepts the credit both men give him. Tampa's defensive coordinator Todd Bowles was credited with a game plan that won a Super Bowl; but his first stint as a head coach with the dysfunctional Jets shouldn't eliminate him from a second chance. Other prominent ex-head coaches include two guys whose teams went far this year: Rams' defensive coordinator Raheem Morris, Bills' defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier, as well as Carolina's Steve Wilkes, whose first chance in Arizona lasted one season. Like Bowles, all three took over struggling teams, and having learned from that, may deserve second chances.
Flores' legal team will likely make a couple of more telling points against the league. One will be point to other another lawsuit for bias against the league, namely Colin Kaepernick's, which ended in a settlement for himself and his teammate Eric Reid. Kaepernick took his knee during the national anthem to protest racial injustice in America. Despite some gestures at considering him, he has not played in the NFL since, most tellingly being passed over by Seattle in favor of the immortal Austin Davis. Kaepernick's own suit was settled in February 2019 and a few months later the league did its deal with Jay-Z. With the Players Coalition they have started a program called 'Inspire Change' within their focus on community work, the kind of thing reporter Chris Williamson questioned in these words: "How do we stop racism, systematic oppression, and police brutality?Jay-Z and the NFL: Let’s sell t-shirts and throw concerts". The league allows players to choose from six inoffensive slogans on the backs of their helmets, things like "end racism" or "say their stories", which seem about as challenging as the words on heart-shaped Valentine's sweets, and about as effective.
The other damaging item would be last year's revelation that the NFL was measuring black players' claims in their $1 billion concussion settlement plan with the assumption that blacks started out with a lower cognitive function. This so-called "race-norming" meant lower payouts for blacks, which were challenged by a lawsuit and a 50,000 signature petition organized by some players' wives to the judge in charge of monitoring the settlement. The league claimed such measurements were left to the doctors, until it emerged the league had appealed the size of payouts which were not adjusted downward for race.
It is this pattern, rather than the specific biases against Flores, which could turn the case, but given the potential dangers of such side issues, and of Ross' involvement, a settlement might be the most likely outcome. Will Flores coach again? In fact, the overwhelming reaction in the media to the announcement of Flores' lawsuit was that he, like Kaepernick, would never work in the league again, which might be considered another marker that his case has merits.
On the other hand, Bill Belichick could atone for his texting error with a dream scenario where he hired Flores to return to New England as defensive coordinator. The problem is that the Patriots' losses in this year's coaching carousel have all been on the offensive side of the ball, and the defense is being run jointly by former Pats' linebacker Jerod Mayo, already talked about as an up and coming black head coaching candidate, and Steve Belichick, Bill's son. The Pats won't get compensatory draft picks if another team signs Steve.
STOP PRESS! No sooner had we published the above, not wishing to imply the influence of The American or Iron Mike, but the Pittsburgh Steelers hired Flores, as "senior defensive assistant and linebackers coach". Ironically, after growing a beard, Flores' look on the Miami sidelines was extremely reminiscent of Steelers' head coach Mike Tomlin's. When defensive coordinator Keith Butler retired after this season, Tomlin promoted Teryl Austin, another black coach mentioned as a possible head coach in the past, from his post of "senior defensive assistant and secondary coach", so Mike Tomlin may be seen to be working the Rooney rule better than those charged with doing it. It will make it hard for the NFL to argue this shows there is no racial bias, and after all, Flores is not a head coach.
