Former Miami Dolphins HC Brian Flores SUES the NFL FOR RACIAL DISCRIMINATION;owner offered HC $100k per loss 4 draft

[DowJones]

What is so damning about the Belicheck text? It's possible the Giants already made up their mind first before they interviewed Flores. Now if they did the right thing to do could be to cancel the interview, but maybe they thought they could give Flores a chance to wow them or whatever.

The Giants fulfilled their Rooney rule requirement prior to the Brian Flores interview, so that shouldn’t be an issue for them.

Flores is really reaching here. He is going scorched earth with not much in the way of evidence.

[AbeVigodaLive]

I'm not going to read though this thread because I am sure there are a lot of idiotic takes and I just don't have the patience to deal with that. The majority of this board just isn't knowledgeable and experienced enough to deal with anything race related.

I love the NFL, but it is about as corrupt and "good ole boys club" as it gets. We have seen it time and time and time again. (Bruce Allen, Jon Gruden, etc etc etc)

There is ONE current black head coach in the NFL right now.

Brian Flores and David Culley both got fired, even though they did very well considering the teams they coached/circumstances surrounding them.

Bills OC and Packers OC just got head coaching jobs. White dudes.
Chiefs OC and Buccaneers OC met in the Super Bowl last year. Both led amazing offenses. Neither one is a head coach right now. Black dudes.

Texans have interviewed Josh McCown for the past couple of years, and he's an ASSISTANT HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL COACH.

Eric Beinemy can hardly get an interview, even though he's led one of the best offenses in quite a while for years.

I know the NBA and the MLB has it's problems, but none are nearly in poor of shape as the NFL. It's a huge problem, and it's only getting worse.

If I remember correctly Beinemy has some legal issues in college and early in his career, including assaulting a woman, duis and traffic stuff, and assaulting a firefighter who was trying to put out a fire. In today's media that is not someone the NFL is going to want as a head coach.

Most of his legal issues go back 30 years, including grabbing a parking attendant's neck. The DUI was 20 years ago... and he also had some potential recruiting shenanigans in the early 2000s.

It's fair to bring them up. That stuff matters when choosing responsible leaders for your organization.

I did find it interesting though that it's been long reported that Bienemy had three traffic violations back in the early 1990s. Heck, it takes up an entire paragraph on his Wikipedia page.

Meanwhile... an indictment on Matt Patricia for a violent sexual assault in 1996 was only discovered after he was hired to be an NFL head coach and even now gets fewer words under "Personal Life" on Wikipedia than Bienemy's traffic violations get under "Legal Issues" on his.

[DowJones]

Can someone please pinpoint where/when the discrimination took place?

I’m not saying it didn’t. I just haven’t seen it.

Because the Giants chose a candidate before interviewing Flores?

That may violate the Rooney Rule but I don’t see how it is discrimination. Maybe they just actually really really liked the other coach.

Is there more I haven’t seen?

If they had already chosen the other guy and interviewed Flores only to meet the conditions of the Rooney rule, do you not see how that's an issue?

Flores has good reason to believe that he was only interviewed to check off a box and that he was never a serious candidate for the position. Now, if he'd been interviewed prior to the other guy, you could at least make an argument that the Giants actually took Flores seriously as a candidate.

The New York Giants actually interviewed three separate African-American coaching candidates. Flores was not a box to check. Again, this is important context.

[AbeVigodaLive]

Well to be honest I'm more familiar with Daboll since I'm an Alabama fan. He helped Alabama win a championship as the offensive coordinator there.

You said something though, you said: "Daboll has a bit more experience as a coordinator than Flores". Flores has never been a coordinator, ever, and was hired from linebacker coach to head coach. That was a massive reach, an enormous one and Flores actually revealed why that occurred. He was hired to lose games, he says that. So the Dolphins wanted to lose some games, they hired a guy unqualified for the job and that was that. I will admit that he overachieved relative to being completely unqualified for the job, but his resume is still very weak.

Just so everyone knows usually you go from assistant, to coordinator, to head coach. It's extremely rare to make the leap from assistant to head coach without being a coordinator. The reality here is a guy who was hired for a position he was not qualified for, in order to lose games, is upset he's not being taken seriously. Now, might he in fact turn out to be a great head coach? Who knows, he's so busy burning bridges right now we might never find out.

As for job titles... it brings up a good question. Is it more important to have the title of "coordinator"... or be the one to actually call the plays? While Flores still had a brief history as a coordinator, apparently he was calling the plays for a team that won the Super Bowl. Again, that's not nothing.


[Note: Again, not saying Flores > Daboll. I have no idea. I'm just trying to follow your reasoning. Whether you think Flores was an unjustified hire or not for the Dolphins, we can't just ignore that he actually proved to be decent at the gig he was interviewing for with the Giants.]

I'm saying Daboll has a much better resume. 8 years as a coordinator (coached under arguably the two greatest football coaches of all time), success with the Bills, championship at Alabama, plus he has a similar pedigree to Flores with the Patriots. Being mad because the team wanted Daboll just doesn't make sense to me.

It sounds like Flores real gripe is with the Dolphins. They set him up for failure, he left there with a 24-25 record and that didn't do him any favors. There's also the Tua situation which is a whole other can of worms. The thing is, I'm not defending the Dolphins handling of this at all. I'm simply saying that Daboll is a really solid candidate and blaming a team for wanting to hire Daboll doesn't really make sense.

To go one step further, when Alabama was considering Mike Shula or Sylvester Croom I felt Croom was the most deserving candidate. He had the better resume and Shula was getting the job because of who his father was. As it turns out neither seemed to be very good as head coaches, but my position has always been you try to get the guy with the best resume.

Actually, I don't think the issue is which guy was the better candidate.

I don't care about that part at all.

I was just refuting some of your takes that obviously champion the guy you favor... while casually dismissing the other guy. Just some odd reasoning... like pushing the NCAA college championship as a coordinator over a guy overachieving as an actual NFL head coach.

Personally, I hope the Giants continue to suck balls, with Daboll, with Flores. Don't really care.

[dhsilv2]

Can someone please pinpoint where/when the discrimination took place?

I’m not saying it didn’t. I just haven’t seen it.

Because the Giants chose a candidate before interviewing Flores?

That may violate the Rooney Rule but I don’t see how it is discrimination. Maybe they just actually really really liked the other coach.

Is there more I haven’t seen?

If they had already chosen the other guy and interviewed Flores only to meet the conditions of the Rooney rule, do you not see how that's an issue?

Flores has good reason to believe that he was only interviewed to check off a box and that he was never a serious candidate for the position. Now, if he'd been interviewed prior to the other guy, you could at least make an argument that the Giants actually took Flores seriously as a candidate.

What were they supposed to do?

Let's say there's a rule that says you have to consider a minority woman before you marry. This is a rule, it's mandated. You have to date a minority before you can marry. Alright?

Well, let's also say you are already in love and want to get married. You have to go through the motions then don't you? It doesn't make you a racist, it just means you're in love. In this case, a team had a head coach picked out because you know... they wanted that head coach! It doesn't make it racism, but the rule says it doesn't matter, you still have to go through the motions. So, they did.

Sorry honey, but by law I have to "sleep" with the Asian girl from down the street before we can get married. It's not me...it's the law!

Sounds all good until the alternative comes up....

[DowJones]

People are really missing the significance of this. By coming public with clear evidence of just what a mockery teams are making of hte Rooney Rule(something we've know forever but now he's forcing things), its showing the whole rule is worthless and that white owners are going to keep hiring white coaches they feel comfortable with which is denying opportunities to potentially qualifed candidates.

And the irony of the Rooney Rule coming from the Steelers owners who interviewed a black man seen as underqualified at the time but who blew them away and has now been their head coach forever and his next losing season will be his first one....

But you can see it itt, lots of white people simply don't believe the most qualified candidate can be a black man or that they deserve an actual opportunity to be considered instead of just a token check box.

Flores is going to lose, becaue too many people make too much money off the NFL and when you challenge the shield you lose. But he, like Kap is a good man for sacrificing his career for something bigger than just him. This will have an impact, especially if as this is a class action he can get others to join. Guys like Caldwell or Lewis or Dungy whose coaching careers are probably over anyway certainly have their own stories about being the token interview. As do countless assistants of course but many of them will be loathe to because it will derail their career.

This is real, and its a problem. It's not just oh we love this one coach. Access matters.

Were you aware that the New York Giants fulfilled their Rooney rule obligation prior to interviewing Brian Flores? Are you aware that the New York Giants interviewed three separate African-American candidates for the job? Facts need to matter. They need to be out there. New York Giants were not obligated to interview Brian Flores. They clearly had respect for the man and wanted to give him an interview, and for that respect they are now getting sued. Obviously they would have been better off just ignoring Brian Flores.

[NZB2323]

The Texans hired Jack Easterby, a youth pastor with no football background to be executive Vice President of football operations. He has burned the team to the ground.

They’re about to hire Josh Mccown to be the next Texans head coach. He has zero coaching experience.

It’s kind of a slap in the face of black coach/executive candidates, that a white person with no experience can basically cut the line in front of them.

The Texans are the worst run team in the NFL where a pastor has the ear of the owner. They’re not a professional organization and the way they’re run doesn’t reflect how the other teams are run. They’re like King Tommen who has the High Sparrow in charge.

The Bears haven’t been the best when it comes to football operations, but the Bears just hired a black GM who hired a white coach. Did racism play a favor in hiring the white coach?

It’s difficult to say, and the best coach the Bears have had in my lifetime is Lovie, and I disagreed with firing him but I don’t think bringing him back now is the right now.

[SSUBluesman]

The Texans hired Jack Easterby, a youth pastor with no football background to be executive Vice President of football operations. He has burned the team to the ground.

They’re about to hire Josh Mccown to be the next Texans head coach. He has zero coaching experience.

It’s kind of a slap in the face of black coach/executive candidates, that a white person with no experience can basically cut the line in front of them.

Is it about being white though or being a former QB? Point guards in the NBA do it all the time. How did Chauncey Billups, Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, Doc Rivers, or Ty Lue earn their stripes to be a head coach? When Nash got hired with no experience people were up in arms but when Billups and Kidd were hired no one cared about skin color.

I'm not saying there isn't a racial aspect to the hiring process in all fields but the NFL is concerned with two things: Winning games and making money, and not necessarily in that order. GM's are hiring the guy they think can win the most games for them. It's why Ray Rice never got re-signed but Tyreek Hill and Kareem Hunt still have jobs. Rice couldn't help them win anymore.

Hiring someone to be an NFL HC who has zero head coaching experience at either the NFL/College/HS levels is unheard of in the modern NFL. The last time something happened was when the Packers made Bart Starr their head coach. Given how long ago that was (1975), the fact that Starr was a franchise icon, and at least had a little bit of NFL coaching experience should indicate how absurd it is for McCown to be a viewed as a viable candidate.

To expand on what Ocelot said the Texans were looking at McCown as the coach last season as well and are owned by a failson who followed in daddy's footsteps of making racist comments. Good ole boys club indeed.

Well to be honest I'm more familiar with Daboll since I'm an Alabama fan. He helped Alabama win a championship as the offensive coordinator there.

You said something though, you said: "Daboll has a bit more experience as a coordinator than Flores". Flores has never been a coordinator, ever, and was hired from linebacker coach to head coach. That was a massive reach, an enormous one and Flores actually revealed why that occurred. He was hired to lose games, he says that. So the Dolphins wanted to lose some games, they hired a guy unqualified for the job and that was that. I will admit that he overachieved relative to being completely unqualified for the job, but his resume is still very weak.

Just so everyone knows usually you go from assistant, to coordinator, to head coach. It's extremely rare to make the leap from assistant to head coach without being a coordinator. The reality here is a guy who was hired for a position he was not qualified for, in order to lose games, is upset he's not being taken seriously. Now, might he in fact turn out to be a great head coach? Who knows, he's so busy burning bridges right now we might never find out.

As for job titles... it brings up a good question. Is it more important to have the title of "coordinator"... or be the one to actually call the plays? While Flores still had a brief history as a coordinator, apparently he was calling the plays for a team that won the Super Bowl. Again, that's not nothing.


[Note: Again, not saying Flores > Daboll. I have no idea. I'm just trying to follow your reasoning. Whether you think Flores was an unjustified hire or not for the Dolphins, we can't just ignore that he actually proved to be decent at the gig he was interviewing for with the Giants.]

I'm saying Daboll has a much better resume. 8 years as a coordinator (coached under arguably the two greatest football coaches of all time), success with the Bills, championship at Alabama, plus he has a similar pedigree to Flores with the Patriots. Being mad because the team wanted Daboll just doesn't make sense to me.

It sounds like Flores real gripe is with the Dolphins. They set him up for failure, he left there with a 24-25 record and that didn't do him any favors. There's also the Tua situation which is a whole other can of worms. The thing is, I'm not defending the Dolphins handling of this at all. I'm simply saying that Daboll is a really solid candidate and blaming a team for wanting to hire Daboll doesn't really make sense.

To go one step further, when Alabama was considering Mike Shula or Sylvester Croom I felt Croom was the most deserving candidate. He had the better resume and Shula was getting the job because of who his father was. As it turns out neither seemed to be very good as head coaches, but my position has always been you try to get the guy with the best resume.

You're (possibly intentionally) missing the point. The point isn't that Daboll got the job and Flores didn't, it's that Daboll was given the job BEFORE Flores even interviewed. There's been speculation of scenarios like this happening before thus making the Rooney Rule pointless, with this being a seemingly documented instance of it occurring.

[Pharmcat]

Is there racism there? How can you say no? They’re so bad they force teams to interview black coaches and still there is currently one black head coach. It’s hilarious people are even asking this question when I’m old enough to remember black QBs being controversial in this league.

Having said that, Flores won’t win his case. NFL just has too much money and power and I don’t see how he’s going to be able to prove that racism was behind his firing and lack of work.

They should start requiring interviews of Indian, Chinese, Korean, Russian, etc. coaches as well because I don’t think there any of those in the NFL.

Actually Eugene Chung interviewed and was discriminated against too: “ The NFL is reviewing comments allegedly made to former player and coach Eugene Chung, who said an interviewer told him he isn't "the right minority" for a coaching position.”. The nfl is a good old white boy club and has been for decades

[Pharmcat]

I mean, on a micro level, if I was at a workplace and 31 out of 32 (Ron Rivera I guess isn't white but whatever) of my managers were white and around 60% of the staff were black, I'd find it bull that those were all the "best candidates". There is definitely an issue even if people hire for best fit/best candidate.

Don’t forget Robert Saleh, so there’s like 3 total minority coaches . People hire others who look and act like them and considering most owners are white men they hire other white men

[Nate505]

The Texans hired Jack Easterby, a youth pastor with no football background to be executive Vice President of football operations. He has burned the team to the ground.

They’re about to hire Josh Mccown to be the next Texans head coach. He has zero coaching experience.

It’s kind of a slap in the face of black coach/executive candidates, that a white person with no experience can basically cut the line in front of them.

It's a slap in the face to any candidate that a person with no experience can cut the line in front of someone with it. That's kind of a universal feeling.

[Pharmcat]

The Rooney Rule is dumb. Most of the time, teams know who they want to hire before they interview them.

If people don't want to be interviewed just so the team can follow a rule, the issue is the rule not the teams following it. It's wasting everyone's time and giving false hope to some of the candidates who aren't actually candidates.

I personally find it degrading and humiliating that I am just there to check a box . Imagine if that’s your son or daughter in that situation. The whole hiring practices of nfl need to be looked at again , maybe do away with Rooney rule because it doesn’t seem to be working

[righterwriter]

People making the short posts: This is clearly racism. I know because there aren't enough black head coaches and the owners are white.

People making the long posts: Let's explore and dig deeper into all of the circumstances of the allegations. That's where we'll find a closer version of the truth.

The side you choose to go with says a lot about your intellect and programming.

[Pharmcat]

People are really missing the significance of this. By coming public with clear evidence of just what a mockery teams are making of hte Rooney Rule(something we've know forever but now he's forcing things), its showing the whole rule is worthless and that white owners are going to keep hiring white coaches they feel comfortable with which is denying opportunities to potentially qualifed candidates.

And the irony of the Rooney Rule coming from the Steelers owners who interviewed a black man seen as underqualified at the time but who blew them away and has now been their head coach forever and his next losing season will be his first one....

But you can see it itt, lots of white people simply don't believe the most qualified candidate can be a black man or that they deserve an actual opportunity to be considered instead of just a token check box.

Flores is going to lose, becaue too many people make too much money off the NFL and when you challenge the shield you lose. But he, like Kap is a good man for sacrificing his career for something bigger than just him. This will have an impact, especially if as this is a class action he can get others to join. Guys like Caldwell or Lewis or Dungy whose coaching careers are probably over anyway certainly have their own stories about being the token interview. As do countless assistants of course but many of them will be loathe to because it will derail their career.

This is real, and its a problem. It's not just oh we love this one coach. Access matters.

Lol don’t lump tony dungy in with the rest , that dude is a pawn (a sell out ) of the nfl they trot out to smooth over a controversy( see him defending gruden on snf).

[Lockdown504090]

People making the short posts: This is clearly racism. I know because there aren't enough black head coaches and the owners are white.

People making the long posts: Let's explore and dig deeper into all of the circumstances of the allegations. That's where we'll find a closer version of the truth.

The side you choose to go with says a lot about your intellect and programming.

right, theres a decent case, but there isnt enough info for the long winded convo in this thread, i dont even think theres enough to have a thread on yet.

[Gusto1903]

Lol, now Hue Jackson comin out and tells the media, he got money for tanking. Dude must be a secret billionaire then

[BrianInPhilly]

The Rooney Rule is an interesting thing though. The NFL is one of the few workplaces that have requirements for race when interviewing someone - maybe the only one actually, usually it's the opposite that you shouldn't consider race at all. I think people getting on people critiquing the "Rooney Rule" are extremely silly considering it is more of an outlier than anything to have a rule like that. The NBA, other sports league, practically every sector of society doesn't have race requirements. There are no rules that a certain X number of white players need to try out for a team, or say a certain # of Black people need to audition for a comedy show. Mandates like that just encourage token candidates actually. In fact, Flores seems to be criticizing the Rooney Rule if anything so to just discount people criticizing it as some out of touch poster/person is pretty illogical.

Personally, I think have any sort of race-based mandates is extremely backwards, regressive, and also doesn't solve root issues that may persist. It puts a "bandaid" very literally over real issues, since it tries to solve the external (For example "Black coaches not getting jobs enough") instead of the internal (Why Black coaches are not getting hired, racial discrimination at lower level, etc.).

[mtron929]

At the end of the day, I think networking is a key component when it comes to a lot of these high profile managerial positions. And those who networked from earlier on tend to have spent more times with the higher-ups, the owners, etc. which becomes a key advantage when it comes to procuring these positions. Unfortunately, the United States is designed that for the most part, people of the same races feel more "comfortable" around themselves (whites with whites, blacks with blacks, Asians with Asians). As such, we see these kind of distributions stay in tact even if there isn't a blatant racial discrimination as people's own comfort levels can snowball into huge disparity in networking connections.

[matt6715]

Personally, I think have any sort of race-based mandates is extremely backwards, regressive, and also doesn't solve root issues that may persist. It puts a "bandaid" very literally over real issues, since it tries to solve the external (For example "Black coaches not getting jobs enough") instead of the internal (Why Black coaches are not getting hired, racial discrimination at lower level, etc.).

This is probably the most reasonable take that anyone will find in this thread. The root cause of these issues runs far deeper than anything that a rule like this could fix.

[AbeVigodaLive]

Personally, I think have any sort of race-based mandates is extremely backwards, regressive, and also doesn't solve root issues that may persist. It puts a "bandaid" very literally over real issues, since it tries to solve the external (For example "Black coaches not getting jobs enough") instead of the internal (Why Black coaches are not getting hired, racial discrimination at lower level, etc.).

Fair enough.

A lot of people probably agree.

So what's the solution?