still no minorities hired this year...

[Fake-Fat Sunny]

What difference does the color of ones skin make? Isn't it the content of their charactor that matters?

 

I personally think that it is totally wrong for the league to have made a rule that in essence says "each team that is looking for a new coach must bring in a token minority" This is self defeating and demeaning to the minority coach. Especially if he is the only minority that interviewed for the position. ie James Lofton.

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The difference that the ciolor of one's skin makes is that American society both by law and practice has unfortunately discriminated against people. This reality has produced not only unfairness (and even death) for Americans in its practice, but has created a disadvantage which has caused their children to start out with one hand tied behind their back.

 

One can devolve into an argument about the level of American socities discrimaination but suffice to say that I am talking about the impacts and effects of fortunately long past discrimination like slavery, more recent discrimination like the Jim Crow laws and statistics that indicate that even today when one compares US bamk rates of giving loans to people there is a racial disparity in these results even when one compares ethnic minorities to the results of the majority community for folks of the same economic level and background.

 

These discrimination issues are one thing for society but are even clearer and both recent and still exist in the NFL. Even tougher for the NFL, a majority of the current and recent workers are of A-A descent and the number of A-A HCs has lagged far behind this pool of potentially qualified candidates.

 

It is wrong to make judgments about employment based on irrelevant factors to an individual's character like skin color. However, American society and the NFL in particular has invested in hiring that at least has produced a result with a statistical disparity linked to race on issues such as QB employment and HC hiring.

 

The Rooney rule and the programs designed to increase the qualificiations of former players of A-A descent and to introduce them into the good ol boy network that really drives NFL hiring are there to increase the hiring of qualified A-As to have the number of A-A HCs be closer to the likely number of qualified applicants in the pool.

 

It has not achieved that yet, but it would be unreasonable to expect it would mere years after being in place when it is designed to reverse decades of folks of A-A deascent not getting a fair shot.

[Hollywood Donahoe]

...the number of A-A HCs has lagged far behind this pool of potentially qualified candidates.

You said in an earlier post that it's impossible to tell the size of the pool of qualified African-American HC candidates.

 

How, then, can the number of African-American HC hirings have "lagged far behind" a numeric entity that has no known value?

[The Dean]

You said in an earlier post that it's impossible to tell the size of the pool of qualified African-American HC candidates.

 

How, then, can the number of African-American HC hirings have "lagged far behind" a numeric entity that has no known value?

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Do we know exactly how many stars are in the universe?

 

If I guessed "Three"...would my estimate be lower than a "legitimate" estimate? We don't know how many qualified AA candidates there are...but we know there wer more than the # of coaches being considered before the Rooney rule.

 

Can't even believe you asked that question that way.

[Hollywood Donahoe]

We don't know how many qualified AA candidates there are...but we know there wer more than the # of coaches being considered before the Rooney rule.

You know how many were "being considered?" How, pray tell, did you come across this information? Do you have the ability to read the minds of NFL team owners and executives?

[Chilly]

I declare myself the winner of the thread.

[Orton's Arm]

First, all signs seem to point to the quality of NFL coaches improving as more people of A-A descent are hired. 

 

What signs are those? 50 years ago, the average record for an NFL team was .500. Guess what it'll be next year? .500.

 

Due to the increased focus on A-A hiring  guys like Lovie Smith are now getting their shot and a fellow like Marvin Lewis who should have been hired the year his Raven's defense set league records, but he had to wait not one off-season as NFL teams rushed to do hires before they were forced to take him after the SB and then he was not even hired the nest off-seasion.  As it happens both Smith and Lewis turned around franchises which had not been competive for years.

What about white coaches like John Fox or Charlie Weis, who also didn't get the head coaching jobs they deserved when they deserved them? One of the reasons Weis was put on hold was that he didn't have maybe the same connections as some less competent coaches hired ahead of him.

 

Your second point fails to recognize that statiscally moving from hiring zero or very few of a group discriminated against to a more fair hiring practice will actually improve the quality of the group hired.  This will be true as long as:

 

1. A hiring process based on quality is pursued in hiring under affirmative action.

 

2. The group receiving affirmative action includes people who are in fact qualified to do the job.

You're dead wrong about this. Take two different companies. Company A allocates 80% of its open positions to the well-connected, while leaving 20% for the best qualified. If this company adopts an affirmative action program, most of those 20% merit positions will go to minority candidates, leaving white, merit-based candidates out to dry. Company B is a strict meritocracy, and it doesn't matter who you know there. If this company adopts an affirmative action program, more qualified white candidates will be excluded to make room for less qualified minority candidates.

 

The ONLY way an affirmative action can lead to more of a meritocracy is if a company chooses to reduce the importance of connections while at the same time implementing the affirmative action program. This course of action seems unlikely at best.

 

If the tenth white guy you lose because someone has to lose their job is Rich Kotite and the man hired to replace him under the Rooney rule and affirmative action is someone likea Marvin Lewis or a Lovie Smith then clearly the HC pool is improved.

Rich Kotite is a good example of a coach who used networking to make up for his less than stellar performance. Better qualified coaches--including a number of white coaches--were excluded from head coaching positions to make room for him. In today's NFL, there is still room for the well-connected but mediocre head coach.

[Orton's Arm]

Many share a similar view, and while I'm not questioning your sincerity , specifically, it would ring truer if I witnesed them raising their voices against the 9 connected hires/placements as often and vociferously as they do against the one affirmative action hire.  While there seems to be much support among certain groups for eliminating affirmative action, I haven't noticed these same groups lobying for the elimination of using family references, "legacies" and other connections that give the already privlaged (and usually white) an unfair advantage in our society.

There are a number of reasons why people don't attack the privileges of the elite, most of them practical. One of the biggest is that anyone with the power to attack the elite is, by definition, part of that selfsame elite. For such a person, a successful crusade would mean reduced opportunities for their own children and family members. Few people are that idealistic.

 

It's a lot easy to set up a racial quota for a company, than it is to figure out what percentage of applicants were hired based on connections. Those who oppose affirmative action often feel that you can't legislate meritocracy, so the best the government can do is to stay out of the private sector's hiring practices.

 

There is a third reason why there isn't more of a push towards a meritocracy. Say you launched a crusade against the unfairness of the current, connections-based system. Maybe you'd want television coverage for your efforts. But are the people who make decisions over at the T.V. network using their own connections to help their family members? Will this influence their decision to cover you? Will their advertisers (who also may be using connections) put pressure on them? Maybe you should publish a book instead. But maybe the CEO of a book publishing company pulled a few strings to get his son a job that he didn't really deserve. To what extent will that affect his decision to publish a book about your crusade?

[sweet baboo]

If this company adopts an affirmative action program, most of those 20% merit positions will go to minority candidates, leaving white, merit-based candidates out to dry.

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It's not just white folk...there are also non-white minority groups that don't get affirmative action that are left high and dry. Indians (from India) and Asians are even more screwed because they're not white nor minorities that get handouts.

[The Dean]

You know how many were "being considered?"  How, pray tell, did you come across this information?  Do you have the ability to read the minds of NFL team owners and executives?

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Who gets interviewd is usually pretty public. If you don't get an interview...you ain't getting the job. It's hard to be "considered" if nobody has bothered to meet with you. (Sure in the liteal sense of "considered", that's possible: "We considered hiring Bill, but he's black...so we didn't bother to bring him in.")

 

I don't think for a minute you REALLY believe black coaches didn't have a hard time getting HC jobs in the NFL for many years.

[The Dean]

It's not just white folk...there are also non-white minority groups that don't get affirmative action that are left high and dry. Indians (from India) and Asians are even more screwed because they're not white nor minorities that get handouts.

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I liked your collection of screaming/drunk-looking girl Avators better than this rat-bastard with the monocle. Not that you care, of course.

[sweet baboo]

next time I see a screaming/drunk chick worthy of knocking off this snooty cat, i'll make the change...

 

just for you Dean

[Orton's Arm]

It's not just white folk...there are also non-white minority groups that don't get affirmative action that are left high and dry. Indians (from India) and Asians are even more screwed because they're not white nor minorities that get handouts.

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I'm not sure that Indians or Asians are worse off than whites, but certainly they're not better off.

 

It turns out racial employment laws, as implemented in the U.S., actually make it harder to establish a meritocracy. Let's say you as an employer adopted some kind of test to give all your applicants. Unless protected minorities do as well on this test as whites, you'll have to prove to a skeptical court that your test is directly related to the position you're hiring for. Most intellectual aptitude tests produce somewhat racially skewed results, so you can't use them unless you like the idea of spending time in court. You can't rule out people with felony convictions, unless you're going to make the case to the court that the particular felony conviction in question directly relates to the position at hand.

 

Because employment law creates artificial obstacles to employers using standard tests to determine merit, it's more tempting for them to base hiring decisions on connections instead.

 

Yet another obstacle to a meritocracy is that it's too easy to sue an employer for discrimination. If, as an employer, you're afraid of getting hauled into court based on turning someone down, then maybe you're going to be less willing to interview a lot of people. The whole connection system gets you a smaller pool of people to work with, each of whom is individually less likely to sue.

 

There are other countries that haven't turned their employment law into a circus, which is one of the reasons you see so many jobs leaving the U.S.

[Hollywood Donahoe]

I don't think for a minute you REALLY believe black coaches didn't have a hard time getting HC jobs in the NFL for many years.

I think that, regardless of the past, it is ALWAYS wrong to allow skin color to affect any aspect of the hiring process, in any field.

 

That such practices are now sanctioned by the league doesn't make them any less abhorrent.

[Orton's Arm]

Do we know exactly how many stars are in the universe?

 

If I guessed "Three"...would my estimate be lower than a "legitimate" estimate?  We don't know how many qualified AA candidates there are...but we know there wer more than the # of coaches being considered before the Rooney rule.

 

Can't even believe you asked that question that way.

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Your point would be a valid one if we were talking about numbers instead of ratios. Let's say we don't know anything about the number of qualified black coaches, except that it's greater than 100. And let's say we don't know anything about the number of qualified white coaches, except that it's greater than 1000. Can we use these very vague numbers to clearly conclude the NFL's hiring policies are racist? No!

[Fake-Fat Sunny]

You said in an earlier post that it's impossible to tell the size of the pool of qualified African-American HC candidates.

 

How, then, can the number of African-American HC hirings have "lagged far behind" a numeric entity that has no known value?

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This obviously is a guesstimate since there is no exact numeric value for the size of the pool of applicants and certainly qualified applicants.

 

However one would have to be a total fool not to be able to judge that those who played the game certainly comprise a significant number of the qualified applicants (the LeBeau's, Dungy's. etc.) and that since a majority of the current and recent players in the league are of African-American descent the number of qualified applicants of A-A descent is also probably substantial.

 

Does fact that roughly 20% of current HC's are of A-A descent lag far behind the applicant pool?

 

Well, it is a simple statememt of fact that the current % of A-A HC lags far behind the current number of % of A-A players.

 

I think it is certainly the case that not all players would not be good HC's, but the qualified applicant pool is actually larger that the actual HC pool since not all qualified applicants (white, black. or indifferent) will get jobs.

 

Someone else with the time and knowledge of sites to link to can do a count of what % of HCs are former players, but my guess is that when one takes the % of A-A players and subtracts out the one's who are not qualified HC applicants or have no interest in doing the job that a 20% A-A HC number still lags far behind the % of qualified A-A applicants. (This is particularly true when NFL teams have a definite history of actually choosing folks to be HC who in retrospect were clearly not qualified for the job.

 

GW for example may (and I mean MAY) be qualified for an HC job with the knowledge he gained from his time screwing up the Bills as HC. However, it is clear that at the time despite the fact that he blew TD away in the interview he actually was no way he was going to be an adequate HC given his deficits and his skills.

 

His amazing D knowlege makes him a great DC, but as an HC:

 

1. He really had little offensive skills or feel for running an O.

2. He really was to insecure as a person and for whatever reason did not put together a staff with folks with a past NFL history to match his deficits probably because he was not comfortable hiring an heir apparent or rival.

3. He had an overblown sense of theatrics and tools like the airhorn ended up producing a lack of respect for him among players.

4. He really lacked a good feel for the game as evidenced by a bad record of challenges, some definite poor clock management, and the bizarre decision to punt the ball from somewhere near the enemy's 35 yard line.

 

Rather than hire a guy with the skillset to win the game (John Fox and Marvin Lewis were amongst those available for the final HC opening that off-season) TD instead seemed focused on hiring an HC he knew he could beat if it came down to a fight like the one he lost to Cowher.

 

I think between the large number of A-A HC candidates likely to qualify for the applicant pool, he small number of HC jobs to fill, and a clear history of the NFL hiring men who proved to be bad HC's like Rich Kotite, Marty Morningwheg, and GW it seem a pretty reasonable statement to me to make that even a 20% A-A HC number lags far behind the available potential pool of A-A HC candidates.

[Fake-Fat Sunny]

What signs are those? 50 years ago, the average record for an NFL team was .500. Guess what it'll be next year? .500.

 

The signs which point to the addition of coaches of A-A descent being deserving of HC jobs on the basis of merit is that teams coached by these men have done well and in fact far better than they did under their previous HCs.

 

Specifically, Lovie Smith;s prescence coinciding with a reversal of Bear fortunes and in particular Marvin Lewis's orescent in Cin reversing years of poor performance there.

 

Ny good performance is am using the ability of their teams to get Ws and make the playoffs when the previous HCs could not do this with these teams.

 

There are a ton of factors which influence whether a team gets Ws or makes the playoffs besides the work of the HC.  There results are not conclusive at all, but really switch the onus to those who want to claim like Jimmy the Greek that A-As somehow lack the fundamentals to win.

 

When one adds in the level of success experienced by other A-A coaches like Tony Dungy and Herm Edwards leading their teams to the playoffs and getting rehired by the marketplace (again not proof positive of competence as even Rich Kotite got rehired after failure) but in conjunction with the good record produced by Lewis and Smith, there is a clear burden of proof on those to demonstrate that there is some A-A failing which mitigates them from being HCs.

 

Again add to that the odd occurence of trailblazer Art Shell producing a clear winning record as HC and getting to the playoffs a number of times but somehow not getting another nibble at a job.

 

It is statistically obvious that the total record of HCs will always be .500 so making this point is little more than facile and does not address the point i was making. The point I was making that this record of Ws (even with weight of Romeo Crennel team;s losing thus far) shifts the burden of proof to those who want to claim that HCs of A-A descent are not hired because of some alleged meritocracy in the NFL.

 

 

What about white coaches like John Fox or Charlie Weis, who also didn't get the head coaching jobs they deserved when they deserved them? One of the reasons Weis was put on hold was that he didn't have maybe the same connections as some less competent coaches hired ahead of him.

 

The answer is that the problem here is that GM's and the NFL actually are commiteed to something other than producing Ws as the only criteria for hiring.  If there was in fact a meritocracy in the NFL then our own Bills would have hired John Fox or gone after Marvin Lewis hard and recruited him.

 

Instead, I have felt virtually right from the start (and said so on TSW) that TD's primary motivation seemed to be hiring an HC who could not run him out of town the way Cowher did.  Thus, he hired an HC who very quickly to even an outsider like myself clearly was not competent to be an HC (his hires as position coaches smacked of his own insecurity amd unwillingness to hire someone capable of being an option for HC if hje failed, further, he had no real O skills or chops, further he was a butcher at making game decisions like clock management or dealing with challenges).

 

You correctly point out a real problem that good folks like John Fox got passed over by the NFL decision-makers (TD in this case) but the answer is not to accept the hiring of incompetents like Morninwheg or GW and say too bad to Lovie Smith and Marvin Lewis. or to require that either winning coaches like Smith and Lewis or winning coaches like Fox get left out (Weis is a proven great college HC but there is no proof he is a proven winner in the NFL at HC).

 

You fail to really acknowledge the issue that the NFL ain't a meritocracy but seem to insist that the only answer is for a Lewis or Smith to take the fallout of this idiocy.  I think that your target should be incompetent coaches.

 

 

You're dead wrong about this. Take two different companies. Company A allocates 80% of its open positions to the well-connected, while leaving 20% for the best qualified. If this company adopts an affirmative action program, most of those 20% merit positions will go to minority candidates, leaving white, merit-based candidates out to dry. Company B is a strict meritocracy, and it doesn't matter who you know there. If this company adopts an affirmative action program, more qualified white candidates will be excluded to make room for less qualified minority candidates.

 

The ONLY way an affirmative action can lead to more of a meritocracy is if a company chooses to reduce the importance of connections while at the same time implementing the affirmative action program. This course of action seems unlikely at best.

Rich Kotite is a good example of a coach who used networking to make up for his less than stellar performance. Better qualified coaches--including a number of white coaches--were excluded from head coaching positions to make room for him. In today's NFL, there is still room for the well-connected but mediocre head coach.

 

Again you seem to be accepting the fact that life will always be unfair and then demand that the no system be put in place which forces anyone besides A-A coaches to accept the burdens of the bad or unfair hiring system.

 

 

This view will not work because:

 

1. The history of race effect NFL hiring and employment which resulted in few A-As being QBs until recently and results in few A-A HCs is so statisitcally evident that it is simply not accepted in our society which has a history of race based slavery, Jim Crow laws and other race based transgressions.

 

2. Since a majority of players are of A-A decent it simply is bad employee relations and cannot stand for them to not be able to aspire for the highest on field NFL jobs when they retire as players.

 

In the end, the NFL will be better off because:

 

1. The first coaches of A-A descent are likely to be well qualified individuals like a Marvin Lewis or Tony Dungy who waited longer than normal for an HC job because of the NFL good ol boy network routinely passing over these men for jobs.

 

If an NFL owner is interested in getting the best HC material he can find, he needs to look seriously at the available A-A HCs out there.  This is true not because these men are inherently better coaches, but because if you are good but you are A-A you may well have been passed over as TD chose GW (instead of Lewis and also the succesful John Fox or Matt Millen who chose the clearly unbalanced and not-ready-for-primetime Marty Morningwheg as an HC.

 

2. When the Charlie Weis and John Foxes are the ones getting screwed in addition to the Marvin Lewis and Tony Dungy's maybe finally the NFL will adopt more meritocracy in hiring HCs.

 

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[Fake-Fat Sunny]

I'm not sure that Indians or Asians are worse off than whites, but certainly they're not better off.

 

It turns out racial employment laws, as implemented in the U.S., actually make it harder to establish a meritocracy. Let's say you as an employer adopted some kind of test to give all your applicants. Unless protected minorities do as well on this test as whites, you'll have to prove to a skeptical court that your test is directly related to the position you're hiring for. Most intellectual aptitude tests produce somewhat racially skewed results, so you can't use them unless you like the idea of spending time in court. You can't rule out people with felony convictions, unless you're going to make the case to the court that the particular felony conviction in question directly relates to the position at hand.

 

Because employment law creates artificial obstacles to employers using standard tests to determine merit, it's more tempting for them to base hiring decisions on connections instead.

 

Yet another obstacle to a meritocracy is that it's too easy to sue an employer for discrimination. If, as an employer, you're afraid of getting hauled into court based on turning someone down, then maybe you're going to be less willing to interview a lot of people. The whole connection system gets you a smaller pool of people to work with, each of whom is individually less likely to sue.

 

There are other countries that haven't turned their employment law into a circus, which is one of the reasons you see so many jobs leaving the U.S.

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Agsin the Rooney rule is designed to balance what many feel has been a demonstrable race based hiring practice in the NFL which did not allow many qualified A-A applicants (a majority of current and recent players being of A0A descent and thought that does not gurantee they will be good HCs certainly makes them viable applicants).

 

Yes our society has and does discriminate against Asain-Americans, Native Americans etc. However, the Rooney rule is about the NFL. If you want to make a case that there also is an NFL record of discrimination against Asian-Americans or NativeAmericans I am all eyes and they should be included.

 

If you can make a credible case of NFL discrimination against women applying for HC jobs then something should happen here (I doubt that there are even 17 qualified women to be HCs so that the total HC pool looks like the 50%+ Americans that are women.

 

If you want to make a case that the NFL and its good ol boy network does not have a recent history of not considering men of A-A decent to even be able to be QBs, much less HCs then again I am all eyes.

 

The Rooney rule and NFL affirmative action policies designed to increase the competence of A-A applicants through coach internships and such is designed to reverse a history of statistically demonstrable race base hiring practices by the NFL (compare the pool of qualifies applicants to the numbers hired or even interviewed for HC work or QB use).

 

Further, it is designed to deal with reality of managing a majority A-A employee pool, This management works far better when this player pool has some legitimate aspirations of obtaining the highest onfield job with the team after they retire as players.

 

Arguments which focus on the theory of race relations and employee management rather than the reality of the NFL are simply facile and do not focus on the real world.

[sweet baboo]

I'm not sure that Indians or Asians are worse off than whites, but certainly they're not better off.

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maybe worse off is the wrong choice of words, but it is more difficult for them to compete in a pool of white applicants only

there's this stereotype that asians and indians are supposed to be "smarter" or something...that they're better at math and science...it's simply not true, however when thrown into a pool of applicants, if they don't stand out to be far above average as expected, why hire them? what happens to the asian or indian kid that is simply average? perhaps it's entirely untrue, but i've heard it mentioned quite a few times...maybe it's a way for parents to scare their kids into working harder

[Fake-Fat Sunny]

maybe worse off is the wrong choice of words, but it is more difficult for them to compete in a pool of white applicants only

there's this stereotype that asians and indians are supposed to be "smarter" or something...that they're better at math and science...it's simply not true, however when thrown into a pool of applicants, if they don't stand out to be far above average as expected, why hire them? what happens to the asian or indian kid that is simply average? perhaps it's entirely untrue, but i've heard it mentioned quite a few times...maybe it's a way for parents to scare their kids into working harder

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These general theoretical comments (some of which make bizarre generalizations about racial groups which are simply a stupid way to judge individuals who are members of that racial group even if they were true) have little to do with application to the specific case of the NFL and use of the Rooney Rule.

 

The NFL coaches and HC jobs really represent such an incredibly small group of jobs (there are only 32 NFL HC jobs in the world) and an incredibly small group of qualified applicants that trying to draw rules which should be applied to these particular cases from the general stats can get pretty silly pretty quick.

 

In addition, there are some solutions which would create a result which would be fair to the folks involved which have no real application to societal treatment of this issue.

 

Also, folks are taking general rules which certainly are applicable to how government should operate, but they are applying them to how a private business operate and these are two different things were even when the same principles are applied there can be very different approaches mandated or dictated to produce the same results.

 

Its just extremely sloppy to say that the principles which have driven the acceptance of the Rooney rule by this business called the NFL means that the pool of HCs should have x amount of Native Americans, Asians or women,

 

The Rooney rule was adopted and crafted to remedy past race based results where the NFL had hired no or very men of African-American descent as HCs even though a majority of the current and recent players are of African-American descent.

 

I wisj folks would get beyond the idiocy that this rule somehow dictates that some number of Asians, Native Americans or other groups that have been discriminated against in our society are HCs.

 

That is not the intent, thought or practice behind the folks who thought up or agreed to live within this rule and quiite frankly one looks like a moron to insist otherwise.

[Orton's Arm]

I'm not going to address Fake Fat's posts point by point, because I don't want to get lost in a sea of text. Instead, I'll make the following points:

 

1. You don't create a meritocracy by emphasizing race. You do so by emphasizing merit.

 

2. Affirmative action programs, in settings outside the NFL, have placed needless restrictions on employers' ability to measure merit.

 

3. To some extent employment in the NFL is based on connections not merit. Qualified coaches of both races have been passed over to make room for less skilled but better connected men such as Rich Kotite. Some advocate solving this problem by trying to help the qualified but unconnected black candidates, while doing nothing for the qualified but unconnected white candidates. Such plans are unjust.