One could argue that the White population in the U.S is 76% & the black population is 13% so there's way more white coaches according to population? I have no idea & it's a touchy subject to some people. 70% black players in the NFL. Personally I don't care one way or the other what race the coach of my team is, I just want a coach that knows how to win. Hire the most qualified coach regardless of race. At the end of the day, these billionaire owners are gonna hire whoever they want regardless of compensatory picks or not. I can tell you right now a black man that I would love to have as our GM (Louis Riddick) that dude knows football & would nail it here imo.
I believe the comp picks system is dumb because it suggests owners aren't picking black GM's (or Black coaches) based on skin color. I don't believe thats the case. Tony Dungy and Mike Tomlin are some of the best coaches the NFL ever had, I don't believe any owner (well most, I'm sure there's a redneck or two still in there somewhere) would exclude any none white candidate from the job based on skin tone. The problem is supply. I often see "The players are 70% Black". What's that got to do with anything? Players rarely go on to become top coaches or GMs. Or even bad ones. Most players are good at playing football but couldn't run a McDonalds franchise, no matter their skin colour. Those that are smart are often millionaires many times over by 30 but with no coaching experience. How many are going to start out as a quality control coach on 60k a year? Even those that don't stick around the league often make enough money to do something like intense, even a poor player that hangs around the league long enough can earn enough money to get into property or something else where they don't need to work 70 hour weeks. Mike Tomlin is a great HC because he spent years learning to be a great HC. He wasn't a pro player. He came up through college and position coach ranks. Tony Dungy was a washout in the NFL who did the same. Went and coached college ball and worked his way up. So the percentage of players who are black or white has nothing to do with the supply pool for coaching and GM positions. Brad Holmes, the new Lions GM worked for the Rams for 20 years starting as a scouting assistant. You want more minority coaches and GM's? You need more supply. You need more of them in the grass roots of coaching and FO jobs. More scouts, more assistants, more college position coaches etc. The NFL should start a placement or training scheme for all NFL players that wash out the league before they are vested if they have the college degrees to qualify. Offering comp picks is not the answer.
Interesting how any time something is devised to give minorities a "hand-up" there's some "white" guy trotting out the specious "propagating racial divide" argument and claiming commonsense.
The NFL supports the Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellowship and the Nunn-Wooten Scouting Fellowship Program.
Wasn’t posting this to cause tension. I just thought if you want to give incentives (comp picks) for hiring minorities it might work better if you give it to the team signing them. Maybe a pick to the signing team and a pick to the team losing the candidate. Or not....
I know G, but it's nowhere near enough and rather tokenistic at the moment. They should have a much larger scheme in place for all players (which by demographics would be mostly non white) to encourage far more players that wash out to go into coaching. Also a more official coaching qualifications system similar to we have with the coaching badges scheme in European football. It wouldn't be easy as it would really need NCAA involvement ideally but it would get many more black players into grassroots coaching that in years to come will mean more NFL coaches.
The article didn't do a good job of doing that either. I sadly had to look at the comments below to truly understand.
