Brian Flores v NFL
Brian Flores, the former head coach of the Miami Dolphins has taken a class action lawsuit against the NFL, and the New York Giants. Flores was dismissed by Stephen Ross, the owner of the Miami Dolphins after 3 years, 3 successful years, if you understand the mess he walked into. Some of the leaked reasoning for his firing was due to his ‘difficult to work with’ mentality, normally translated into ‘he didn’t do what the owner wanted him to do’. And it seems like Flores was right to not toe the line.
In one recorded episode of Flores ‘being difficult to work with’, was his reluctance to lose games in exchange for a $100,000 bonus for each loss. This goes against just about ever aspect of the NFL. Fans will sometimes wish their team would throw games in a bid to get a worse record and then in turn a higher draft pick. This unfortunately goes against the grain when you think about the people who work for the team. It’s their job, they work for a living, every game, win or lose, is a judgement on their employment going forward. They get 17 Sunday’s a year to prove that the work they’ve done over the last 365 days was worth it. When the first Monday after their 17 game comes, if they’re not in the playoffs, their position is reviewed. It’s a cold business in the NFL and results matter, so asking a coach to put his team in a position to lose, might get you the 1st pick in the draft, but it will also likely end up with coaches getting fired, and players getting released
Think about this:
The Dolphins go full tanking in 2019, they get the first pick in the 2020 draft and they get to select Joe Burrow - the Super Bowl bound Joe Burrow - and their future is looking bright. However, to get the first pick in 2019 would mean that you’d need a record worse than the Bengals, so you need to lose 15 games. Meaning you won 1 game all season. Fans don’t like losing, and the press like to put pressure on coaches who lose. So after the 2019 season, in this mystical world where the Dolphins win 1 game, the press aren’t going to start gushing over Flores, no, the owner is going to be asked if he trusts Flores to put Burrow in the best situation, is the right offensive coordinator in the building?, do they need to hire Joe Brady to come with Burrow from LSU? Now it’s not just a 1st round pick, Flores could lose his job, Chan Gailey is losing his job, Robbie Brown, and the list goes on and on. And that’s just the coaches!
NFL players are playing for their jobs too. The QB that started the 2019 season, losing all but one game, in this scenario, Ryan Fitzpatrick is going to be out of work, or best sitting on the bench. Does he want to tank for the 1st pick? The Dolphins were asking their coach to put his players in a position that would cost them their position on the team the following year. Hall of Fame wide receiver Isaac Bruce was once asked, towards the end of his career if he’d be willing to help coach and mentor the new draft picks at his position, his reply, ‘I’ll coach them all the way to the bench!’. Every player is playing for his job, if you’re not ‘the guy’ then your team is out looking for ‘the guy’.
Back to the real world.
Flores, after he was fired, was tarnished with the disgusting ‘hard to work with’ label. Well, his players will tell you differently. In 2019 they lost 7 straight, but went on to win 5 of their last 9 games. When you’re out of the playoffs toward the end of the season, only teams that respect and appreciate their coaches will play as hard as if they were pushing for the Super Bowl, when you’re out of the playoffs and the coach has lost the respect of the team, you get a situation like the 2019 Detroit Lions who lost their last 9 games straight under Matt Patricia. When Flores was fired, just about every talking head and journalist was shocked. How could they remove Flores when he’d given them back to back winning seasons, given them a decent floor to start improving the team, and some form of respect when they had previously had little.
Now, Flores was in line for multiple jobs, her had a lot of interviews, one of which was with the New York Giants. However, his interview came after they interviewed Brian Daboll. Daboll is the former Bills offensive coordinator, a highly respected coach, and much deserving of a chance to be a head coach. After Brain Daboll’s interview, and before Brian Flores’ interview, Flores received a text for Patriots head coach Bill Belechick stating ‘sounds like you have landed - congrats’ and ‘I hear from Buffalo and NYG that you’re their guy’. Bill was texting the wrong Brian. It turned sour from there on. Flores was being brought in for a coaching interview with the New York Giants so the Giants could comply with the Rooney Rule.
The Rooney Rule was brought in to the NFL by former Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney in an attempt to increase the number of minority coaches in the NFL. The rule stats that any head coaching job must have candidates from one minority in the interviewing process. However, the rule is, and has long been, trounced by owners and general managers. Usually owners know who they want, and it’s rare when it’s a minority, but they will bring in Coach X and give him a sham interview, if he rejects the interview because he knows it’s a sham, then he’s seen as ‘not willing to put his neck out’.
Is race the real problem?
The Rooney Rule might as well not exist. Flores has clear proof that it’s been abused, but what will the NFL do in return? They’ve already come and said that it’s an allegation ‘without merit’. Well, if the NFL thinks that the Rooney Rule is working, they’ll have to examine the landscape of their domain.
List of NFL owners:
Arizona Carindals: Michael Bidwell (white American)
Atlanta Falcons: Arthur Blank (white American)
Baltimore Ravens: Steve Bisiotti (white American)
Buffalo Bills: Terry Pegula (white America)
Carolina Panthers: Dave Tepper (white American)
Chicago Bears: Virginia McCaskey (white American)
Cincinnati Bengals: Mike Brown (white American)
Cleveland Browns: Jimmy Haslam (white American)
Dallas Cowboys: Jerry Jones (white Cowboy)
Denver Broncos: Joe Ellis (white American)
Detroit Lions: Sheila Ford (white American)
Green Bay Packers: no owner - president: Mark Murphy (white American)
Houston Texans: McNair Family (white Americans)
Indianapolis Colts: Jim Irsay (white American)
Kansas City Chiefs: Hunt Family (white American)
Las Vegas Raigers: Mark Davis (white American)
Los Angeles Chargers: Dean Spanos (white American)
Los Angeles Rams: Stan Kroenke (white American)
Miami Dolphins: Stephen Ross (white American)
Minnesota Vikings: Zygi Wilf (white American)
New England Patriots: Robert Kraft (white American)
New Orelans Saints: Gayle Benson (white American)
New York Giants: John Mara (white American)
New York Jets: Robert Johnson (white American)
Philadelphia Eagles: Jeffrey Lurie (white American)
Pittsburgh Steelers: Art Rooney II (white American)
San Francisco 49ers: Jed York: white American)
Seattle Seahawks: Jody Allen (white American)
Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Brian Glazer (white American)
Tennessee Titans: Amy Strunk (white American)
Washington: Dan Snyder (white American)
and….
Jacksonville Jaguars: Shahid Khan (Pakistani born American)
You don’t need another list, but only 5 of the 32 general managers are non-white. Only 1 team has a non-white head coach. You could make a case that Robert Saleh and Ron Rivera come from a minority background, Saleh coming from a muslim family and Rivera, who’s father was from Puerto Rico and his mother from Mexican decent. That’s still only 9 out of 96 top NFL jobs being occupied by a non-white American.
Now, this is not a direct result of racism in todays USA. In the USA, the current cost of buying the Denver Broncos, who are for sale, is at a cool $4 billion. Understandably, the political and economic differences in the history of the USA have slowly been changing, but the people from black American families have had little time to build up an enormous family wealth, when compared to their white counterparts. The increase in minorities at ownership level might take a little longer, the NFL is built on a franchise model, if you have the money, you can buy, the only colour the NFL really cares about, is green. So if a black American wished to buy the Denver Broncos, provided he has the capital to do so, would likely be given the go ahead. The issue here is that white American families have had many more generations of time to build a family wealth, as a black American, it’s only been 60-ish years since they could sit where they like on a bus.
For a league that has a 70% black player pool, the higher up you go, the whiter it gets. The elevation of talented black American NFL players should be more visible in coaching circles, but is not.
Grass Roots of Evolution
The NFL has had gay players before Carl Nassib. Former Washington and Green Bay Packers head coach, Vince Lombardi, was outraged when some players where outspoken against a Washington player, David Kopay, who was known to be gay in 1970. In the 1960s, it was considered that linebackers had to be white, because it required the most amount of technical knowledge about defensive schemes, and so black Americans didn’t have the same level of understanding and education to play at that level. In 1967 Willie Lanier of the Kansas City Chiefs became the first black middle linebacker to play professional football. Dave Robinson of the Green Bay Packers had also played outside linebacker in the mid 60s, but it was Lanier who would be the first to take the spot at the coveted middle linebacker position. The first black quarterback was Fritz Pollard, for the Akron Pros in the mid 1920s, but in the modern era of the NFL, in 1968 Marlin Briscoe was the first black QB for the Denver Broncos, it wasn’t until Doug Williams in 1986 that an NFL team would win the Super Bowl with a black QB, however, you still see some remarks towards black QBs that wouldn’t be said about white QBs.
Michael Vick single handedly changed the way teams took at quarterbacks. Until 2001, if you wanted to be a quarterback, you need to be slightly mobile, if you could run, maybe like Steve Young, then all well and good, but all you needed to do was be accurate. Michael Vick was electric. The forerunner to Lamar Jackson, Vick ran faster, changed direction quicker, and was all around more athletic than any other QB in the league, in fact, he was likely more athletic than any player in the league regardless of position. However, it also played into the stereotype. Low IQ commentators will resort to the least common denominator when talking about football, and if they see a black QB running the ball and making players miss tackles, they say he’s a great athlete. When a white QB does it, then the commentator will point out how the white QB noticed the breakdown in coverage and took advantage of the defence being out of position. Subtle differences matter.
The NFL knows that race is a problem. They know that they have a requirement to better reflect the face of America. The issue might be that they are run by themselves. The NFL team owners basically get together and hire a commissioner, a person who will be the face of the NFL, because the NFL is owned and run by the owners themselves. The commissioner is elected by the owners and given the task of governing the league, a strange situation to be asked to govern your boss! The main task, however, is the commissioner is expected to govern the revenue sharing agreement between the players and the owners, also known as the Collective Bargaining Agreement - CBA. Once a CBA is agreed, it’s the job of the commissioner to enforce that agreement and also work to generate more money for the owners, so the next job the commissioner has, is to strike the best broadcasting deal as they can. And I think this is where the NFL is doing a poor job of following through on its desire to act against racism.
Green rules
The owners want the best product on the field, right now, they have it. And the latest broadcasting deal they have is worth $113 billion over the next 10 years, that is just the domestic deal with the USA. Now that they have the best product on TV, and the more popular sport, they are also the most scrutinised too. Since the NFL has grown from its merger in 1970, through the labour dispute in 1982 and then into the stunning growth from the late 1990s, it’s tried to show that it’s caring of the way that it is not just a money making machine, but also a tool for communities to grow. It’s had multiple programmes to aid various charities, causes, but it’s never been able to prove, without doubt, that it’s capable of dealing with racism, because it’s not something that will generate income. Money is made from promoting charities, but little money is made from promoting inclusive environments for minorities. They have tried to turn it around since Colin Kaepernick took a knee, but when they put up $250 million over 10 years to work against racism it smacks of being a little shallow. A close group of 32 people who all run one massive company that generates on average about $10 billion in profit each year, still play by the rules they set for themselves, and they decided that of that $10 billion made from players, 70% of whom are black, they’ll put $2.5 million into ‘solving’ inequality.
So why does the NFL still have an issue with race? The answer might be playground politics. The Rooney Rule was nice, but was only window dressing. In the NFL, all the owners care about is the colour green, and most of them think with a polluted mindset. They are not all of one mind, however, there are great coaches who don’t care about colour and only cared about winning, there have been great owners in the past, like Dan Rooney and Al Davis who couldn’t care about colour when hiring coaches, they just wanted winners. Today’s owners are more concerned with optics, than winning, how else do you explain the New York Jets or the Miami Dolphins. When teams hire the media darling instead of the best coach, there is something wrong. When Jim Caldwell isn’t a head coach, something is wrong. When Eric Bieniemy ins’t a head coach, something is wrong. When Aaron Glenn isn’t a head coach, something is wrong. When Lovie Smith isn’t a head coach, something is wrong. When Raheem Morris isn’t a head coach, something is wrong.
Adam Gase was terrible in Miami and worse in New York, but he was Payton Manning’s guy, how could it go wrong? Morris has yet to be given a second chance, and Jim Caldwell should be fought over, I’m talking street fights, he actually made Detroit a winning team, bringing them to the playoffs twice, TWICE! Not to mention getting the Colts to the Super Bowl only for Manning to throw away the game.
The owners are the only ones who can change the future of the NFL, how they handle this Flores case going forward, and if they start hiring by the quality of the coach, and not because of cronyism, then they have a chance to maintain their grip on American sports. If they don’t, then the few black American coaches that are fighting will eventually see that the rot is all the way to the core, they will see that change is not possible with this polluted mindset and move on. Sometimes it becomes clear that it would be better to let the dying die. It’s up to the owners if they want to be put out to pasture, or maybe, maybe they want to fix this. Time will tell.