More Rooney Rule

I always thought that Pittsburgh Steerlers owner Dan Rooney was following the rule that bore his name when he interviewed and hired Mike Tomlin as head coach. I've since learned that Rooney had already satisfied the requirements of the rule when he interviewed Ron Rivera prior to bringing in Tomlin. With that in mind, the Rooney Rule has never played a role in the hiring of a minority head coach. That could change one day. Hopefully, it does. If the Rooney Rule leads to the hiring of only one minority head coach, it's a good rule.

I think that much of the grief that the NFL receives from the media over the lack of minority head coaches is misplaced. The days of George Preston Marshall bringing racism into the league's ownership room are over. I refuse to believe that there is a uniform effort by the owners to restrict the number of minority coaches. That's a competitive bunch. I doubt that they care about the ethnic background of a coach if that coach can bring them a Super Bowl. I must admit that I was surprised that Jim Caldwell didn't get any coaching interest this past offseason. I wasn't so surprised that one of the eight teams didn't hand the keys to their team to Lovie Smith. I have nothing against Smith as a football coach. I just can't find fault in any of the coaches that were hired. I was more surprised that it took pretty much forever for either Marc Trestman or Bruce Arians to finally get a head coaching shot. If I were a San Diego Chargers fan I'd be more excited about Mike McCoy leading my team than Hue Jackson. That has nothing to do with the race of either coach. It has more to do with the way that the Denver Broncos shifted to a Tim Tebow-led offense last year and then adjusted a Peyton Manning-led offense this year. The shift to Tebow, in particular, on-the-fly, in the middle of the season was nothing short of incredible. The next minority head coach in the NFL could be Stanford's David Shaw. I wouldn't mind seeing the NFL pilfer another terrific coach from Stanford, but that's beside the point. One of the eight teams looking for a new coach tried TWICE to entice Shaw. The NFL didn't hire a minority coach this year but it's not for a lack of trying. There's more qualified, ready, minority coaches now than there were only a decade ago. That likely translates to more minority head coaches in coming years. I'm just looking forward to the day that we don't need anything more descriptive than "head coach." Maybe Leslie Frazier winning a whole bunch of Super Bowls will bring that day closer.