The point here is that in the NFL, as elsewhere, references from/affiliation with the right people/organizations/universities are not being used as a single datapoint in the decision-making process. They are not being used to tie-break among similarly qualified candidates. They are literally trumping other, potentially more objective, measures of accomplishment.
For instance, Daboll has never been a head coach. Flores just spent three years as a head coach, with two winning seasons for an organization that had been a laughing stock for a long time. That seems at least as important as what others who worked with both of them a few years ago may think of their abilities today.
The most frustrating thing about all of this is that the same teams keep making the same awful coaching decisions over and over, using the same obviously flawed methods, and keep getting the same shit results. Yet many on this board seem happy to defend those methods (not saying YOU are!), even as, in the next sentence, they agree that the NFL has a problem with not hiring qualified coaches of color. Could it be that this defense of a self-obviously flawed system for assessing talent stems from the fact that it simply seems “normal” to us? Many of us have acknowledged that we see it in our own work places. Many of us have acknowledged that we hire this way ourselves. And I’ll acknowledge that I have most likely benefited from this system in my life and career.
But what if (again, this is not directed at YOU) you not only didn’t benefit from this system, but you also were being actively penalized by it because you don’t look like the people who are in the right network? How would you feel about the system? It’s funny to read the concern trolling in this thread about how Flores doesn’t understand the consequences of his actions. That he’s lit his career on fire without realizing it. You know the kind of person who is willing to take a stand like this knowing FULL WELL the effect it will have on him? The kind of guy who is offered, say, $1.2 to $1.6 million to intentionally lose games and instead tells the owner of the team to go fuck himself.