He is; the Rooney Rule states that teams which are looking to hire head coaches (or other “senior football operations” positions) have to interview minority candidates; AFAIK, the rule doesn’t distinguish between those who have previously held head coaching jobs and those who have not.
Its not set up that way. The rule says the interviews must be done. It doesn’t say you can choose to do it or just pay a fine. The league can later fine the team if its deemed to be improperly done like what happened with Matt Millen. Basically it can be enforced if the job was actually offered before the interviews. It can’t tell the GM he can’t have a favorite going in. You can’t legislate someone’s preference.
What I read from the lawsuit (I have not read word for word so I might be incorrect) Flores is claiming that the rule itself is flawed not that the teams are not following it.
For reference: in 2003, the NFL fined the Lions $200,000 for violating the Rooney Rule; they hired Steve Mariucci as their head coach, and did not interview any minority candidates. The Lions claimed that they tried to schedule such interviews, but that minority candidates withdrew from the interviews when they believed that the Lions had already made their selection.
A team could absolutely flat-out choose to only interview one guy (or have made their decision without an interview), and essentially say, “yes, we know, we’re violating the Rooney Rule.” The league will fine them, and reprimand them; that’s the trade-off, but there is no one holding a gun to a team owner or GM’s head and absolutely forcing them to interview a minority candidate.
The league has a problem with not hiring (and not considering) minority candidates. The Rooney Rule is an imperfect solution, because it leads to these sham interviews. The reason that we now suspect that the Giants had already made their mind up is because of Belichick’s texts; without that information, Brian Flores likely would have believed he had a legitimate shot at the job, rather than being there to check a box when he actually had no chance.
I’m surprised the candidates didn’t withdraw their interest when they found out the job was with the Lions.
It might not be a problem to you as a fan, but it should be a problem to you as a member of society who cares about equity. If that isn’t a concern - if you’re happy with the current system where white men have built-in advantages - then at least acknowledge it, because that is the outcome when people with no personal skin in the game take this attitude.
Well, the second part of this sentence is exactly the point.
It’s bad for you as a fan as well because it makes for worse teams, on average.
It’s not just about the morally right thing to do. It’s better for business and on-field success too.
What percentage of NFL head coaches have actually played in the NFL?
It’s not the norm. Vrabel. Ron Rivera. Dan Campbell. Frank Reich. I think a couple others may have played in Canada. I guess you can count Kliff Kingsbury, but he wasn’t exactly starter material at any point.
Working your way up in coaching is hard after a playing career. You have to compete with kids right out of school who are ok with being paid squat for a couple years for a chance to move up the ladder.
Former QBs (especially backups and journeymen) seem to be better represented. Recent notable ones are Jim Harbaugh, Jason Garrett, and Gary Kubiak. Sean Payton counts, I guess, since he was a strike replacement player.
Haha! Rooney Rule Amendment 1B: The Detroit Exception
When you expand this to NFL head coaches who played in college (at some level) I think it ends up being the majority of them.
My girlfriend’s nephew is going this route. He just finished up playing on a lower echelon D1 team and is in grad school and signed up to be a graduate assistant on the team. If he doesn’t get drafted (which is possible) he is going to try to get on the coaching track and see how far it takes him.
And if you expand further to high school, it’s virtually all of them.
Todd Haley was an exception. He was a high school and college golfer. There may be a few others, but you’d have to go back several decades.
That’s the primary coaching pipeline. You play some college ball and go graduate assistant. Or be an undergraduate trainer and go graduate assistant. If you can manage the ridiculous hours and low pay and make the right connections, you eventually move up the chain.
Former NFL players can shortcut the process a little and have built up some connections, but they’re often competing against hungry youngsters who are willing and able to out-work them and have the advantage of several years coaching experience in the trenches.
And, with a couple of exceptions (like Mike Vrabel), the ones who do make the transition to coaching are ones who had short careers, and/or were career backups.
A guy who was a star player, with a matching salary, is unlikely to be interested in the low pay and low status of starting back out near the bottom of the food chain.
Decades ago, there were a few examples of NFL stars who did move into coaching, often being able to bypass working their way up (e.g., Norm Van Brocklin, Bart Starr), but the league is a much different place now, and neither Van Brocklin nor Starr wound up being successful as coaches.
In other NFL news that could be seen as related, there was talk that Byron Leftwich had a really good shot at the Jacksonville Jaguars job but told the owner he couldn’t work with the GM. He then gave a suggestion for who should be hired. Now I’m seeing they are offering the position to Doug Pederson.
This could be the best possible career decision for Leftwich. I don’t see a good future in Jacksonville without a GM change.
Here’s a legal question:
As above, I don’t understand the grounds for Flores suit against the Giants in particular. But let’s leave that aside and assume the Giants conducting a sham interview process is some sort of tort against Flores.
The Giants are making the point that Belichik was not affiliated with the Giants in any official capacity, and only said in the text that he “thinks” they are going with the other guy. IOW, that he’s repeating some scuttlebutt he heard. My assumption is that if that’s all Flores has to go by, that won’t stand up in court. But the question is whether that’s enough for him to get court granted access to all documentation (emails, texts etc.) from anyone in the Giants organization involved in the decision-making process, so as to get more substance for his claim?
On the one hand, it’s hard to imagine that an organization is required to turn over all their internal documents on the basis of someone outside the organization repeating rumors that he heard. OTOH, ISTR a lot of times where organizations have been forced to do just this in other situations that I found hard to imagine. 
So who knows?
He’s alleging racial discrimination in their hiring practices and that’s definitely a legal no-no if true.
He also knows he’s likely not going to win and that the Giants (and the NFL) are going to prevent as much discovery as possible. People don’t always file suit expecting to win.
The league doesn’t exactly have a great track record on this, but that’s a far cry from anybody being able to prove anything in court. But they don’t necessarily have to. The NFL doesn’t like bad publicity, and this is bad publicity. They eventually paid Kaepernick off, because that was considered better than the alternative of letting some of the records get out.
The allegations of payoffs for deliberately losing games is also bad publicity. And that one may get traction where the institutional racism might not because a lot of gambling money is involved.
Giving him a sham interview has nothing to do with racial discrimination. Even if it could be proved with 100% certainty that the Giants gave him a sham interview, that wouldn’t mean they were liable for racial discrimination. I’m discussing the sham interview specifically.
Ok, you’re discussing the sham interview specifically.
Why do you think this is the extent of Flores’ suit and evidence? Or at least the only relevant part that involves the Giants? And why should that be relevant to anybody else?
What gives you this impression?
Here is a pretty interesting article related to this case:
One sports lawyer’s opinion is that Flores should have a pretty good case against the Giants, but not against the Dolphins or Broncos. That’s just going by the information released to the public so far. The allegations against the Broncos (people showing up hung over and late) and the Dolphins (being bribed to tank) would require some serious evidence.
The case against the Giants may not actually show the Giants did anything wrong. They apparently complied with the letter of the law for the Rooney Rule. But it questions the fairness of the Rooney Rule. The lawyer states:
“I do wonder if this case will ever get past motion to dismiss and enter the discovery phase where potentially Bill Belichick would be deposed. I think what it shows … is that the Rooney Rule has really become a type of ‘check the box’ platform.”
This is just one lawyer’s opinion, I’ll point out.
You specifically limited discussion to just the allegations of a sham interview to draw a much broader conclusion about the how much access to documentation this should grant for the overall case, at least as it regards the Giants.
Your conclusion about document access in the overall case did not follow from your premise limiting things to the sham interview. Drawing conclusions from one set of premises and applying the to a different set of premises doesn’t make sense.
If that’s not the case, my bad. But if the case is about more than that, the limitations on document access should also be different.