Friday’s reporting regarding the incentives that teams will realize for hiring minority head coaches and General Managers and for promoting the mobility of minority assistant coaches into positions that will assist their development may be just the beginning. The league could be moving toward revolutionary changes to the way coaches are hired.
“The old hiring system is dead,” said one source with knowledge of the dynamics of the situation.
Incentives for hiring minority coaches and General Managers are just part of a broader effort to enhance diversity on a league-wide basis. The league, the Fritz Pollard Alliance, and others have been working on a wide range of minority hiring initiatives in recent months.
Potential changes include adjusting the hiring period for head coaches, eliminating the ability of teams to deny permission for an assistant coach to interview for coordinator jobs or the quarterback coach position, and expanding the diversity initiative to address senior executive opportunities. The new program is expected to be rolled out over the course of the next two years, with careful evaluation of the manner in which the adjustments are working.
“It is going to be a comprehensive and dynamic process,” the source said.
Thus, despite the focus on the draft-pick enticements that have been proposed for hiring minority coaches and General Managers, the league will be addressing the situation far more broadly and comprehensively, in an effort to solve a problem that the original Rooney Rule, despite its good intentions, has not yet fully resolved.