The last few years have not been particularly good for the National Football League, save one area — introducing diversity among its managers, coaches, top team management, senior administration, professional administration, physicians, head trainers, and broadcasters.
That point was brought home last week when The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida (UCF) gave the league its sixth consecutive A for its racial hiring practices in its 2015 NFL Racial and Gender Report Card. In addition, the NFL scored a C+ for gender hiring practices, which represented an improvement. This gave the NFL a combined B grade.
Richard Lapchick, Director of TIDES and the primary author of the study, was particularly impressed with the league’s improvement in its gender score.
“The gender grade takes on special significance in this year for the NFL in light of the Ray Rice story,” he said. “While there still is a long way to go, the gender grade increase of 6 percentage points and half a letter grade overall is significant.”
Lapchick noted that, “for the first time, the NFL League Office provided us with an audit of our analysis, which enabled us to have up to date data as of August 21, 2015.”
“In a year when the NFL was under great scrutiny for a number of issues including gender, the NFL continued to have good results on racial hiring practices and a significant improvement in gender hiring at the senior level in the League Office,” he added.
‘A Major Breakthrough’
Lapchick highlighted “a major breakthrough when Kim Pegula, an Asian American woman, joined NFL ownership on October 10, 2014 as an owner with the Buffalo Bills. Shahid Kahn became the first majority owner of color in the NFL after he purchased the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2012. Last year the San Francisco 49ers promoted Paraag Marathe to team president after Gideon Yu stepped down from the position. Gideon Yu was the first president of color in the history of the NFL. Four of the 12 teams making the 2014-15 playoffs had a person of color in the head coaching position.” The coaches were Marvin Lewis of the Cincinnati Bengals, Ron Rivera of the Carolina Panthers, Jim Caldwell of the Detroit Lions, and Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
“There has been considerable concern among NFL officials and advocates for increased head coaching opportunities for people of color, as there were only five people of color in head coaching positions in 2014. This year provided some encouragement as one coach of color was hired resulting in six people of color as head coaches at the start of the 2015 NFL season. However, this remains below the all-time record which was eight coaches of color in 2011.”
The NFL continued to struggle with gender hiring practices at the team level while there was a slight improvement for gender at the league level where a B- was earned for the second consecutive year time, according to Lapchick.
The Report Card asks, “Are we playing fair when it comes to sports? Does everyone, regardless of race or gender, have a chance to score a touchdown or operate the business of professional football?
“The answer is yes for racial hiring practices and not yet for gender hiring practices.”
