I can't think of any.How many other fields have 70% college educated Blacks as their featured employees and have 3-6% of Blacks as managers?
I’ll hang up and listen.
I can't think of any.How many other fields have 70% college educated Blacks as their featured employees and have 3-6% of Blacks as managers?
I’ll hang up and listen.
I hear you. So if we remove getting recommendations and talking to others in the industry who know these coaching applicants and have real world experience working with them, what process would you recommend? Because the elements of hiring seem to me to be:And yet, through the entire course of the very long history of coaches getting hired in the NFL, we almost never have had to. Maybe it's time that we stop excusing "behaving normally."
Not sure if quoting your own post is frowned upon, but this is what I wrote the last time we went around on this.I hear you. So if we remove getting recommendations and talking to others in the industry who know these coaching applicants and have real world experience working with them, what process would you recommend? Because the elements of hiring seem to me to be:
- Resumé
- Interview
- Recommendations
You remove recommendations and what you're left with is the interview and one's resumé. Do you think that's all it should be? Do you think that will help black candidates, to just go with the resumé and interview? (because on the whole, most white coaches have a much better resumé than black coaches; it's just how it is, and it goes to the underlying problem)
To me, the problem starts WAY earlier than this, and that's what they primarily should be addressing. If you have a structural problem in any building, the foundation is usually a good place to start. What we're seeing in the NFL is basically addressing a structural problem by fixing the roof. Not to say there's nothing wrong with the roof, because there is. But the problem with the roof is really a problem with the foundation. As long as the foundation goes unfixed, the roof will continually be messed up.
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.
Or that it benefited him, given what we've learned about the job.But he's not calling out Belichick. He's giving Belichick as an example of how the old boy network works, and why the old boy network is bad. Given that Bill is a literal old boy and part of the network, I'm not seeing the unnecessary roughness here.
And yes, the old boy network actually benefited Flores once. Doesn't mean that it's a good thing or that Flores shouldn't want to see its influence lessened.
OK, I'll try one last time: The point here is that checking references is not, in and of itself, necessarily a bad thing. When we hire, we hope to have identified three to (if we're lucky) five qualified candidates. We'll then interview those candidates, review their work history, try to glean something about who they are as human beings. Then, we'll often check their references, and use that information to fill in any gaps that may remain after all the other due diligence. We assume that not much that's useful will come out of the reference checks both because candidates are going to provide references who will say good things AND because many employers mandate that their managers express no opinions about former or current employees lest they get sued. So the reference check is way, way down on our list when it comes to deciding on a hire. But in the NFL, as in many other places, "checking references" actually means ignoring those other steps and just seeing who the people in your network think would be a good fit for the job. And research has shown that your network is likely to be made up of people who are very similar to you in terms of race, education, background, etc. So if "references" are the primary resource you use in hiring decisions, there's an outsize chance that the people you hire are going to look like the people in your network. That is how systems perpetuate themselves. That is how you can have systemic racism without anyone in the system necessarily being hostile to people of different races. It's just "normal." You know a bunch of people in your industry. You all have big jobs. You're all successful. So you reach out to them and they throw a few names at you, bright, impressive young people. You don't hire them *because* they're not black, or Latino, or Asian. You hire them because people you know and respect say they're talented and sharp. And they just happen, over and over again, to not be black or Latino or Asian.Right. Well the resumé would have helped Flores over Daboll in THIS instance, but it would have hurt Flores in the Miami hiring because another (white) candidate had a better resumé than he did, and I'd bet that BB's recommendation of Flores is what got him over the hump in that situation. So if we just go with resumé and not recommendation, then Flores doesn't even get the Miami job, and thus his resumé isn't any better than Daboll's this time around.
I agree with ALL this. Except that I'm not 100% positive that that's how it works in the NFL, only because I don't really know how it DOES work in the NFL. You may be 100% right that that's how it goes. Like, when BB finally goes, does (likely Jonathan) Kraft start making phone calls to people he knows well in the NFL, asking for their recommendations? Is that how the process starts? Or do people come to him first?OK, I'll try one last time: The point here is that checking references is not, in and of itself, necessarily a bad thing. When we hire, we hope to have identified three to (if we're lucky) five qualified candidates. We'll then interview those candidates, review their work history, try to glean something about who they are as human beings. Then, we'll often check their references, and use that information to fill in any gaps that may remain after all the other due diligence. We assume that not much that's useful will come out of the reference checks both because candidates are going to provide references who will say good things AND because many employers mandate that their managers express no opinions about former or current employees lest they get sued. So the reference check is way, way down on our list when it comes to deciding on a hire. But in the NFL, as in many other places, "checking references" actually means ignoring those other steps and just seeing who the people in your network think would be a good fit for the job. And research has shown that your network is likely to be made up of people who are very similar to you in terms of race, education, background, etc. So if "references" are the primary resource you use in hiring decisions, there's an outsize chance that the people you hire are going to look like the people in your network. That is how systems perpetuate themselves. That is how you can have systemic racism without anyone in the system necessarily being hostile to people of different races. It's just "normal." You know a bunch of people in your industry. You all have big jobs. You're all successful. So you reach out to them and they throw a few names at you, bright, impressive young people. You don't hire them *because* they're not black, or Latino, or Asian. You hire them because people you know and respect say they're talented and sharp. And they just happen, over and over again, to not be black or Latino or Asian.
Really good post. Practical question for the NFL: What do you mean by an "open" process? I kind of was joking in my last post about posting job openings to a place like Indeed or whatever and then having applicants.Checking references isn't the issue. References are provided by the candidate, so it is assumed that it is basically a box checking exercise. I've checked a million references in my career, not once have I gotten anything other than the standard response (so and so is great, he/she will be a great addition to your team, etc.). I still think they provide little value in the hiring process, but I don't think they perpetuate inequality, except for maybe entry level positions where some minority candidates may be less likely to have ANY references at that stage of their career.
What is problematic is (a) accessing your network to seed the candidate pool rather than having an open process where you are intentionally looking for a diverse slate of candidates, and (b) accessing your network to check a reference because you know Candidate A used to work with Person B and Person B is also in your network for whatever reason. (b) is what I think most likely happened with Daboll and BB. Mara knows BB, he knows Daboll worked for BB, he picks up the phone and calls Bill and says "I think I am going to hire Daboll, what do you think?" and Bill seals the deal for Daboll by providing him a stamp of approval, all before Mara even interviewed Flores (which Bill may or may not have known, who knows?). A white person (and in the non-NFL real world a white male person) is far, far more likely to have that random person in their network and in the interviewers network, which is why the practice is problematic.
The above really isn't controversial, we know that white men benefit from this kind of stuff disproportionately. But we accept that hiring happens this way, and we even tell ourselves "well, that's just the way things work, you can't hire people without kicking the tires on them that way." I call bullshit on that. If you get the right slate of candidates, have the right interview team, with people who know how to conduct behavioral interviews, you shouldn't need to call someone you know to kick the tires on the person you are thinking of hiring. That isn't to say that I expect this practice to change in the NFL any time soon, but the rest of us can learn and grow and try to effect change also.
I mean, think of the conversation that we are having here. We are so wedded to the way that we have always done things that we are unwilling to change even in the face of evidence that what we are doing is pernicious. That's structural racism.
In the NFL for a head coaching position there probably isn't any such thing as an "open process". You pretty much have to be a coordinator or a college coach to get a head job. That's why the Rooney Rule was (in theory) so important, to get minority coaches into those interviews rather than having the owner or GM just call the hot coordinator. But it only works that way if the Rooney Rule interviews are real interviews where the candidate actually has a chance at the job.Really good post. Practical question for the NFL: What do you mean by an "open" process? I kind of was joking in my last post about posting job openings to a place like Indeed or whatever and then having applicants.
Because I mean I bet that if BB resigned today, every coach under the sun would have his agent contacting the Patriots about that job. From THERE, what should Kraft do?
Very fair, and the bolded has been what I've been saying all along.In the NFL for a head coaching position there probably isn't any such thing as an "open process". You pretty much have to be a coordinator or a college coach to get a head job. That's why the Rooney Rule was (in theory) so important, to get minority coaches into those interviews rather than having the owner or GM just call the hot coordinator. But it only works that way if the Rooney Rule interviews are real interviews where the candidate actually has a chance at the job.
As we've discussed several times in this thread, the NFL should be focusing on getting more minority coaches into coaching in the first place, and they should also figure out why there seems to be a glass ceiling keeping those minority coaches from getting coordinator jobs.
Edit: I'll add, the same holds true for some executive positions in the real world as it does for head coaches in the NFL. A public company doesn't just open a job rec and post it on LinkedIn if they are looking for a new CEO. The experience you have to have to be considered for a job like that narrows the pool of candidates considerably. But just like the NFL should be looking at why black coaches have such a hard time getting coordinator jobs, in the real world we need to figure out how to get more women and minorities into those feeder jobs for those C-suite level roles.
Sometimes the structural problem IS the roof (which will also mess with your house). When I studied GM hires a few years ago, I found black candidates rose through the ranks in roughly equal proportion - except for the top jobs. We're seeing that on the coaching side, too, with the proportion of black head coaches low compared to the total coaching ranks, and the plum positions of OC and QB coach also underrepresented. Arguably the roof is the biggest problem, moreso than the "foundation."I hear you. So if we remove getting recommendations and talking to others in the industry who know these coaching applicants and have real world experience working with them, what process would you recommend? Because the elements of hiring seem to me to be:
- Resumé
- Interview
- Recommendations
You remove recommendations and what you're left with is the interview and one's resumé. Do you think that's all it should be? Do you think that will help black candidates, to just go with the resumé and interview? (because on the whole, most white coaches have a much better resumé than black coaches; it's just how it is, and it goes to the underlying problem)
To me, the problem starts WAY earlier than this, and that's what they primarily should be addressing. If you have a structural problem in any building, the foundation is usually a good place to start. What we're seeing in the NFL is basically addressing a structural problem by fixing the roof. Not to say there's nothing wrong with the roof, because there is. But the problem with the roof is really a problem with the foundation. As long as the foundation goes unfixed, the roof will continually be messed up.
These programs exist (Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellowship and Nunn-Wootten Scouting Fellowship) and I think they've been pretty effective. They have been much less publicized than the Rooney Rule.As we've discussed several times in this thread, the NFL should be focusing on getting more minority coaches into coaching in the first place,
Specifically offensive coordinator jobs. Something like 12 or 13 DCs are black, which is probably in line with the numbers in coaching in general. But the hot trend these days is the QB whisperer / playcaller head coach, and with very few exceptions black coaches are not getting these jobs. I think it's a by-product of subconscious racism more than anything.and they should also figure out why there seems to be a glass ceiling keeping those minority coaches from getting coordinator jobs.
Agree with the overall point but need to point out that the pay structure/scale for an employee/entry level manager in the NFL is dissimilar to other fields.How many other fields have 70% college educated Blacks as their featured employees and have 3-6% of Blacks as managers?
I’ll hang up and listen.
To this point, BB is the NFL’s highest paid coach presently and of all time. He’s making $12.5 million.Agree with the overall point but need to point out that the pay structure/scale for an employee/entry level manager in the NFL is dissimilar to other fields.
Your answer suggests that speaking to references is critical. And I don't think there's anything wrong about speaking to references. But how much credence you give to what the references say is the big issue. I do think there are important questions about how much NFL teams overrate referrals, recommendations and references. Like, it not only sucks for society that there's an old boy's network, that same reliance on the network can lead an organization to bad decisions. The Giants clearly don't have a good process for hiring, as seen by the McAdoo-Schumur-Judge parade, and it would behoove them to examine whether they in fact, overvalue things such as recommendations (I'll assume BB spoke well of Judge, for example) and throw objectivity out the window. But the NFL is structured is such a way that there's not a lot of financial penalty to the owner of any team that has a blinkered sense of "what's best for us".I have no problem with examining all aspects of it, and it's totally fair for us to ask questions about this aspect too. But I think it's crazy to imagine hiring the most important position in the organization and NOT talk to others around the league (or in college if he's currently a college coach) to find out how he coaches, what it's really like working with him, etc. I mean, it's utterly crazy to me to think that this is a bad practice.
I guess there's two ways to look at it. There's the immediate "hiring a person for THIS organization at THIS time" issue, and again, it seems nuts to me that any process in hiring someone as an NFL HC would not include talking to people who know him. But there's also the larger societal impact of the NFL hiring process and what any particular hire does to the entire culture of the NFL issue.
I just don't think that any NFL team making any particular hire is thinking about the second issue more than the first. Should they? I don't know. If BB were to retire tomorrow, would Pats' fans prefer that Kraft focuses on making the best hire for the PATRIOTS to put a successful team on the field, or that Kraft focuses on issues of social justice and racial equity when making this decision?
Note: I am NOT saying or hinting that the best person for the Pats would automatically be a white guy. I'm just talking about their *posture* towards the hiring process. What are they responsible for - what's best for the Patriots or what's better for SOCIETY? Maybe they end up being the same thing but one has to take logical priority over the other, it seems to me.
I'm not sure if it's even worth bothering, but I really don't think he was "going after" Belichick. I just looked back through the thread, and it's actually your post that quotes him. He's making a broader point about the overall environment -- I don't think it's an attack on Belichick specifically.
The point he's making is that there's an old boys club. Guess what? Belichick is part of that. He's not saying Belichick is specifically the problem, he's saying that there's a feedback loop and it is very difficult to break through that. There's no need to read this as a personal assault on Belichick, unless you're looking for a strawman to knock down.
https://nypost.com/2022/02/04/brian-flores-claims-bill-belichick-had-influence-in-giants-job/“I think there are back-channel conversations and back-channel meetings that are had that oftentimes influence decisions. I think [the Giants hiring process] is a clear example of that. Bill Belichick is a clear example of that. His résumé speaks to that,” Flores said.
As many times as someone says it, this will still not be the defense that you think it is. For the many different reasons that have been articulated in this thread.What does Bill's resume speak to? What does that even mean?
And what I'm saying is that Flores benefited from the feedback loop. Unless you think the Dolphins chose not to call Belichick or others who had input on Flores.
When you said Flores was “going after” Belichick I assumed you thought it was a personal attack. My misunderstanding?I don't think that it was a personal attack. I think it was an odd thing to say given that Bill gave Flores his first coaching job and likely helped him get his first HC job.
We'll have to agree to disagree. There's no indication at all that Bill provided different or lesser feedback regarding his black assistants than his white ones, and I think that he almost certainly provided feedback on Romeo and Brian F to the same degree that he did so for Charlie and Brian D is a sturdy defense. Your mileage differs but you saying it with certainty doesn't convince me at all.As many times as someone says it, this will still not be the defense that you think it is. For the many different reasons that have been articulated in this thread.
When you said Flores was “going after” Belichick I assumed you thought it was a personal attack. My misunderstanding?
I think this has roots in racism and the QB position (implicit and explicit bias in selecting for the position as well as more structural issues, e.g. the amount of financial resources that go into developing top flight HS and college QBs). Of the 27 currently filled OC positions in the NFL, by my quick count there are 15 former college/pro QBs. And the QB to QB coach to OC progression makes sense, and with it being a QB league teams are going to want to find the next offensive guru to develop a franchise QB.Specifically offensive coordinator jobs. Something like 12 or 13 DCs are black, which is probably in line with the numbers in coaching in general. But the hot trend these days is the QB whisperer / playcaller head coach, and with very few exceptions black coaches are not getting these jobs. I think it's a by-product of subconscious racism more than anything.
That's like 10% of the players.To this point, BB is the NFL’s highest paid coach presently and of all time. He’s making $12.5 million.
144 NFL players are making more than BB is.
8% of the league’s players - in a world with no coach salary cap but with a player salary cap - make more than the greatest coach in the history of the sport.
This is not at all like comparing entry level jobs held by college educated people with CEOs of companies.
Most NFL coaches (or front office types) were not former NFL players, but the vast majority of coaches played college at least. College football is, as of 2018, 39% black and 14% other minorities, and it gets less white as you get more competitive - D1 is 48% black and 37% white.I haven't remotely looked into this, but my general impression is that in baseball, for example, it seems like there are a huge number of former players as coaches (1st base, 3rd base, etc.).
My general impression is that in football, there are a lot of coaches that begin their careers as graduate assistants in college football programs. I imagine those individuals are likely not former NFL players, maybe former college or high school players (or never players for that matter).
Not sure why there would necessarily be that difference in what the 'entry level' coach is, per se. And maybe my observation isn't actually true, but it seems that way.
Disappointed that the Pats didn't get him for DC, if this is the best he could get right now.Hired by Pittsburg to be LB coach. Seemed noteworthy.
Got to be a pretty good coach to sue the NFL as a bunch of racists and still get a job. Even if it is as LB coach. How many head coaches coming off a winning season have gone back to become a position coach?
It's possible that there's an understanding that he's next in line after Tomlin. The Senior Defensive Assistant title suggests that his role is beyond LB coach.I’m a little surprised he would take anything less than a coordinator position. We have seen some others do that with the Patriots recently, of course, but their org structure is a definitely an outlier in the NFL.
Tomlin turns 50 this year, he’s not retiring anytime soon.It's possible that there's an understanding that he's next in line after Tomlin. The Senior Defensive Assistant title suggests that his role is beyond LB coach.
Cowher retired at 50. Don’t discount it.Tomlin turns 50 this year, he’s not retiring anytime soon.
Never got the story behind it, but most of the open coaching jobs had Tomlin very high on the betting odds to be hired. Possible they know something.That’s pretty thin, especially if the theory is Flores is gonna succeed - scratch that, that they promised him he will succeed - Tomlin. Have there been any rumblings that Tomlin would leave in the short term? And why would they have to promise Flores that job/feel compelled to do so just to get him in there as an assistant?
I’ll stick with the ‘I think Flores wants to stay in the game and avoiding missing a year or two is the best way to do that, and Pittsburgh wants another good coach in the building’ theory.
I think it be hard for him to come back to New England - a combination of running back to NE and also some of his comments prob hurt him as well.Yeah the simplest explanation is this was the only offer out there. And to be honest I’m surprised he even got this offer, I hate to say it but good for Tomlin and the Steelers.
Disappointed the Pats were not in on this.
I think a part of this may also be a case of Pittsburgh recognizing the talent, stepping up despite the circumstances and putting their money where their mouth (Rooney Rule) is.I’m pleasantly surprised he was hired by anyone, as all 32 of them are defendants in his law suit. I hope this keeps him on track to become a head coach again soon, and maybe indicates some progress from the league since the black-balling of CK.
Do we know they weren’t?Yeah the simplest explanation is this was the only offer out there. And to be honest I’m surprised he even got this offer, I hate to say it but good for Tomlin and the Steelers.
Disappointed the Pats were not in on this.
Well, silly, of course they weren't. If they were, they would have brought him back.Do we know they weren’t?
If they were then ignore my comment.Do we know they weren’t?
It's akin to saying that if Team A does sign or trade for a valuable player, they must not have tried. I'll never understand the line of logic that connects the twoI honestly have no idea. But him not rejoining the Pats isn’t an indication they didn’t want him back. It’s not they could force Flores to rejoin the staff.
Ok I’ll re-phrase, I’ll be disappointed if the Pats didn’t explore bringing him back. It is really not that big of a deal and I’ll never know for sure. It isn’t going to impact how much I root for them. But given the circumstances there was an opportunity to add a guy to the Pats coaching staff who is a quality NFL coach at a discount. I hope Bill was in on that.I honestly have no idea. But him not rejoining the Pats isn’t an indication they didn’t want him back. It’s not they could force Flores to rejoin the staff.
Pittsburgh. Pennsylvania, not California or Texas.