The NFL’s new diversity hiring initiative which gives an NFL draft advantage to teams with minority coaches appears to have backfired as minorities within the organization publicly object to their latest social justice push.
NFL Introduces Diversity Hiring Plan with Draft Incentive
Last week, the NFL approved the 2020 Resolution JC-2Aa diversity measure that would compensate teams with draft picks who elevate minority staff members to premium positions and head coaching jobs.
Here’s the “gist” of the resolution from USA Today:
• A team that loses a minority assistant coach who becomes a head coach or loses a personnel executive who becomes a general manager will receive third-round compensatory picks in each of the next two drafts.
• A team that loses two minority staffers to head coach and general manager positions would receive three third-round picks.
But, not surprisingly, it looks like the NFL missed the end zone with this one.
NFL’s Diversity Hiring Plan Backfires
First, they failed to include the very people they supposedly wanted to help. Second, their diversity hiring plan went over like a lead balloon.
So minorities within the league don’t actually see this plan as a positive thing at all. They were particularly unhappy that they were not consulted at all before the NFL implemented this plan.
“This will affect all of us, and we wanted to be involved in the process,” one person of color within the NFL told ESPN. “We don’t know whether it’s lip service or real, and we just want to be judged on our own merits.”
Others have taken issue with the plan itself, worrying about how it could impact intradivisional hirings going forward.
“It’s counterintuitive,” another source. “They’re rewarding you for doing something that you should have been doing already.”
NFL owners spent ten months discussing how they can increase minorities in executive positions within the league.
At the beginning of the season, the NFL had four minority head coaches and two minority general managers.
The league has since promoted two minority interim coaches, the Falcons’ Raheem Morris and the Texans’ Romeo Crennel.
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Experts Have Concerns As Well
Yahoo News reported that various experts have had negative things to say about this plan as well.
“I am always wary of financial incentives related to inclusive hiring practices because they fail to adequately address the systemic motivations for the issue in the first place,” said Courtney Cox, a professor of race and sports at the University of Oregon. “This initiative’s attempt at minority retention and leadership ultimately rewards rivals, which isn’t going to motivate anyone long-term.”
“It all feels odd to me; teams should be doing this anyway,” added Ben Carrington, a professor at USC’s journalism school and author of “Race, Sport and Politics: The Sporting Black Diaspora.”
“It’s a kind of admission that those in charge lack the will to change, so we need an imposed market mechanism to achieve an anti-racist result, when surely the culture of the NFL teams and senior management is what needs to change first?” he continued.
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NFL Commissioner Stands By Latest Social Justice Push
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, however, stands by the plan.
“This is an important initiative for the NFL,” Goodell said. “Our effort here is to continue to look at everything we are doing to try to improve our policies, our procedures, to encourage and to get the results we want, which is more diversity and inclusion within our ranks.”
Over the past few months, the NFL has been submitting to the race-baiting radical left like never before. It remains to be seen how this will work out for the league in the end.
You can learn more about the NFL’s latest social justice push and its diversity hiring initiative as the Sports Pulse debate the plan’s merit in the video below.
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