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

[Desiderium]

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.

Evidence you say? You don't need evidence when ESPN is blasting out that the NFL is racist. The court of public opinion needs no evidence.

[BrianInPhilly]

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?

I haven't studied the issue enough honestly so I'm not the most informed ... But thinking about it - and again I'm acknowledging I'm ignorant, I'd say these things:

- More analysis/studies into literally "what makes a good NFL coach". This could be an investigative thing from analyzing successful coaches from a personal, game management, football knowledge, psychology standpoint, interviewing past coaches, etc. ... On the surface this wouldn't be related to race, but basically I think this research could lead to owners, higher ups actually having a better idea on what they're actually looking for in a coach. From this, they would be less likely to just pick someone because of "networking" or for silly reasons that have nothing to do with football. Or in other words, they would more likely pick the "best candidate" and from this of course the percentage of non-Black coaches won't be as high as it is right now ... Since networking/personal biases would play less a factor
- Creating better lines of communication between leagues ... I'm talking small ranked high school to big time high school to small time college to division 1 college to NFL assistants to NFL .... Perhaps some system or programs that go across the leagues to better identify successful talent.

So in other words I think the main thing is just precisely figuring out what the "best candidate" actually is & this would naturally assist to have a more even playing field. Again, just brainstorming though. Sure there's other better ideas.

[jokeboy86]

You gotta give Flores credit with his timing. He's essentially taken all the attention away from the biggest sporting event of the year and the NFL's first super bowl in LA in 29 years and the fact that he's willing to go on any media outlet that will have him shows he's willing to keep talking and embarrass the league as much as possible in contrast to Kaepernick who didn't want to talk to anybody.

[Duke4life831]

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

Haha let’s just say this out loud. An owner bribing Hue Jackson to tank…

Ya Hue that is what people call your salary. No one would ever think they would have to pay you extra to lose games. You cover that pretty well on your base salary haha.

[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?

I haven't studied the issue enough honestly so I'm not the most informed ... But thinking about it - and again I'm acknowledging I'm ignorant, I'd say these things:

- More analysis/studies into literally "what makes a good NFL coach". This could be an investigative thing from analyzing successful coaches from a personal, game management, football knowledge, psychology standpoint, interviewing past coaches, etc. ... On the surface this wouldn't be related to race, but basically I think this research could lead to owners, higher ups actually having a better idea on what they're actually looking for in a coach. From this, they would be less likely to just pick someone because of "networking" or for silly reasons that have nothing to do with football. Or in other words, they would more likely pick the "best candidate" and from this of course the percentage of non-Black coaches won't be as high as it is right now ... Since networking/personal biases would play less a factor
- Creating better lines of communication between leagues ... I'm talking small ranked high school to big time high school to small time college to division 1 college to NFL assistants to NFL .... Perhaps some system or programs that go across the leagues to better identify successful talent.

So in other words I think the main thing is just precisely figuring out what the "best candidate" actually is & this would naturally assist to have a more even playing field. Again, just brainstorming though. Sure there's other better ideas.

Yeah. I have no ideas of my own, well above my paygrade, but I appreciate you offering up something.

How much do you think PR or public perception matters when new coaches are hired?

[xAIRNESSx]

As with some things in life there is no good solution to this problem.

I don't think it's a fair statement to say because x percent of players are black, there should be more black head coaches. It would probably be more accurate to look at the proportion of the US population by ethnicity that are avid football fans.

One of the biggest problems in this debate is that it's hard to quantify the value of an average to good coach so the topic becomes subjective. And I get why black coaches would be upset if they feel they are being discriminated against. The NFL and I guess NCAA basically have a monopoly on lucrative football coaching opportunities, so it's not like a free market where you can show your value and get paid accordingly. There are very limited opportunities.

The favoured solution by most seems to be to create a more diverse ownership group, which sounds great but in practicality how do you force an NFL owner to sell their franchise? The owners own the league. Unless you have concrete evidence that there are discriminatory practices coming from the ownership level to force someone out, it will have to take time for team ownerships to change.

[azcatz11]

I'm still not understanding this. So if he would have gotten the Giants job - he wouldn't have filed the lawsuit and exposed Ross? Or if he didn't get any of the other 3 jobs he interviewed for?

And now all of a sudden he's playing the victim? Come on...

[Pharmcat]

I'm still not understanding this. So if he would have gotten the Giants job - he wouldn't have filed the lawsuit and exposed Ross? Or if he didn't get any of the other 3 jobs he interviewed for?

And now all of a sudden he's playing the victim? Come on...

If AB paid his chef he wouldn’t have ratted him out on his fake vax card. Obviously people react when slighted

[AbeVigodaLive]

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.

Well...

The Rooney Rule was changed in 2020 so that TWO external minority candidates must be interviewed. Graham was an internal candidate so he didn't check the box.

[Pharmcat]

They'd have to have a time machine to pull that off.

Daboll has a strong resume, much stronger than Flores really. I'm not even sure how Flores got a head coaching job in the first place. He goes from linebackers coach to head coach? Dude is 40, never been a coordinator, has spent basically 10 years as a coach in the NFL And he's supposed to be a serious candidate? The fact that the Dolphins hired him when they wanted to lose says everything about how legitimate a candidate he is. He has a really weak resume.

So yeah obviously they wanted Daboll and they interviewed this guy just to satisfy a requirement. And? Have you looked at his resume? Have you looked at Daboll's? Daboll has been an offensive coordinator about as long as Flores has been a coach. Flores is a terrible candidate but he met a mandatory requirement. Who shows up to some mandatory work thing excited?

Daboll has a bit more experience as a coordinator than Flores. But Flores does have an advantage in being an actual head coach. That's not nothing.

We can quibble about how Flores was a "terrible candidate" or he wasn't a "serious candidate" or how "weak his resume is" for the Giants gig... but check this out... Flores had 2 winning seasons in 3 years in Miami. The Dolphins had 1 winning season in the previous 10 years.

Not saying that he's a better hire than Daboll or even a good coach... but it seems odd for you to downplay it so much.

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.

Flores called the defense for Pats in 2018 even tho they never gave him title. It seems like you are not aware of his work history and qualifications by your posts

[MoneyTalks41890]

I'm still not understanding this. So if he would have gotten the Giants job - he wouldn't have filed the lawsuit and exposed Ross? Or if he didn't get any of the other 3 jobs he interviewed for?

And now all of a sudden he's playing the victim? Come on...

I imagine if he had gotten to interview before they had already told third parties they hired someone, that might make the situation different.

[Pharmcat]

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.

When was the last time we had a black gm and black coach pairing? I’d have to look that up. But it seems like black people in authority position don’t help other blacks out in the nfl. Look at tomlin and how little diversity he had on his coordinators. I wonder if they feel like they will get blowback so they don’t do it, but is something else to consider.

[Dirk]

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.

When was the last time we had a black gm and black coach pairing? I’d have to look that up. But it seems like black people in authority position don’t help other blacks out in the nfl. Look at tomlin and how little diversity he had on his coordinators. I wonder if they feel like they will get blowback so they don’t do it, but is something else to consider.

The Dolphins did. Brian Flores was hired by Chris Grier.

Ironically, Flores was fired most likely over a power struggle with Grier. Flowers wanted more power. The owner kept the GM and fired Flores.

[NotaHypeJob]

I'm still not understanding this. So if he would have gotten the Giants job - he wouldn't have filed the lawsuit and exposed Ross? Or if he didn't get any of the other 3 jobs he interviewed for?

And now all of a sudden he's playing the victim? Come on...

Yes, I think if the Giants were an equal opportunity employer instead of conducting token interviews for minorities he would not have sued

[Dubnation]

i have a lot of thoughts/opinions about the rooney rule which i'm not going to write out but really those texts "from" belichick just seem really fake.

If they were fake, his lawyers wouldn't take the case and put their watermark on those text messages.

I'm of the mind to think BB did this on purpose.

Now this would be tantamount to playing 3D Chess. BB is smart enough.

[Duke4life831]

I'm still not understanding this. So if he would have gotten the Giants job - he wouldn't have filed the lawsuit and exposed Ross? Or if he didn't get any of the other 3 jobs he interviewed for?

And now all of a sudden he's playing the victim? Come on...

Yes, I think if the Giants were an equal opportunity employer instead of conducting token interviews for minorities he would not have sued

The Giants had 6 coaches lined up for interviews

3 white coaches
3 black coaches

Leslie Fraizer (Black) and Brain Daboll (White) were the two that got multiple interviews.

So ya they didn’t need to interview Flores for him to be a token minority to pass the Rooney Rule.

Maybe just maybe they really liked Daboll from his interview (with he had prior to their scheduled one with Flores).

[SK21209]

Employment discrimination cases are extremely tough to win in court for the exact reasons we're seeing here; even if an owner/front office executive fully decides to hire a white person instead of a black person because they do not like black people, its not like they're going around announcing that to the staff. No one other than the person with ultimate discretion over a hiring decision has any actual idea why person X was hired instead of person Y. Also, lets not pretend that its uncommon for employers to already have made up their mind on their preferred candidate before interviewing someone else as a courtesy/for future purposes. That happens literally every single day in every sector of the economy.

Maybe the owner of the Giants wanted DaBoll instead of Flores because DaBoll is white, maybe he wanted DaBoll instead of Flores because an offensive coach like DaBoll, who helped to shape a really rough prospect in Josh Allen into one of the Top 3ish QBs in the league, is a better fit for the current Giants roster that has a decent defense but a mess of an offense headlined by big, fairly athletic, but turnover QB in Daniel Jones. None of us have any idea and, frankly, neither does Flores. That's why its so annoying to see the sports media all over Twitter/TV with the "Flores is highlighting what everyone already knew" takes. They don't know ****. All they see is "70% black players, only one black coach, must be racism" when there's no real reason why those two figures should correlate. Unfortunately these god-of-the-gaps type arguments are becoming more and more common.

Ironically, the most damning charge in Flores's suit, that Ross tried to pay him under the table to lose games, is getting lost in the discrimination discussion. That is a huge no-no and could very likely result in Ross being forced to sell the team.

[BlazersBroncos]

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.

When was the last time we had a black gm and black coach pairing? I’d have to look that up. But it seems like black people in authority position don’t help other blacks out in the nfl. Look at tomlin and how little diversity he had on his coordinators. I wonder if they feel like they will get blowback so they don’t do it, but is something else to consider.

Uhmmm... are you aware that Brian Flores had a black GM... who hired him?

Ironically, Flores was fired most likely over a power struggle with Grier. Flowers wanted more power. The owner kept the GM and fired Flores.

Ya, this makes the already pointless litigation even funnier.

[SaveTheHens]

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?

I haven't studied the issue enough honestly so I'm not the most informed ... But thinking about it - and again I'm acknowledging I'm ignorant, I'd say these things:

- More analysis/studies into literally "what makes a good NFL coach". This could be an investigative thing from analyzing successful coaches from a personal, game management, football knowledge, psychology standpoint, interviewing past coaches, etc. ... On the surface this wouldn't be related to race, but basically I think this research could lead to owners, higher ups actually having a better idea on what they're actually looking for in a coach. From this, they would be less likely to just pick someone because of "networking" or for silly reasons that have nothing to do with football. Or in other words, they would more likely pick the "best candidate" and from this of course the percentage of non-Black coaches won't be as high as it is right now ... Since networking/personal biases would play less a factor
- Creating better lines of communication between leagues ... I'm talking small ranked high school to big time high school to small time college to division 1 college to NFL assistants to NFL .... Perhaps some system or programs that go across the leagues to better identify successful talent.

So in other words I think the main thing is just precisely figuring out what the "best candidate" actually is & this would naturally assist to have a more even playing field. Again, just brainstorming though. Sure there's other better ideas.

The issue with figuring out the 'best candidate' is that it depends on who's perspective. It's a very subjective thing, only proven objectively once in a while by championships but even those rely on a lot of luck & dont tell the full story. It could be possible that the white people in charge may only see the strengths that a certain subset of white people value, the strengths/values within another culture may not be as easily understood based on lack of familiarity. Even scarier it would be if white people who were slave owners in the past passed down their slave-owner mentalities to their kids, as well as their wealth, and their descendents today still have similar wealth & similar slave-owner values that they operate on.
Even the very 'rule' of having to interview a black coach can be a very white-culture (or even white-slave-owner-culture) related thing. Slave owners liked rules, they didnt want to spend time on the plantations, they didn't want to connect themselves to what was produced they just wanted the abundance & excess that was produced, theyd rather have general rules to guide an executive or manager to take care of things than have to deal with it themselves. Rules remove people from the intricacies of that moment, the nuance that that moment requires. It promotes this faking of interviews just to satisfy the rules. Instead if we learned to better understand/see the strenghts of other cultures, if culturally we celebrates other cultures strengths and embraced those strengths, it'd be much easier for coaches from all cultures to get in. If you have an **** that has to deal with rules they can easily deal with those rules and still act like an **** & do as they like, if you show people how to not be **** then they may naturally do as the rule wants them to do without actually having the rule in place.

[NotaHypeJob]

I'm still not understanding this. So if he would have gotten the Giants job - he wouldn't have filed the lawsuit and exposed Ross? Or if he didn't get any of the other 3 jobs he interviewed for?

And now all of a sudden he's playing the victim? Come on...

Yes, I think if the Giants were an equal opportunity employer instead of conducting token interviews for minorities he would not have sued

The Giants had 6 coaches lined up for interviews

3 white coaches
3 black coaches

Leslie Fraizer (Black) and Brain Daboll (White) were the two that got multiple interviews.

So ya they didn’t need to interview Flores for him to be a token minority to pass the Rooney Rule.

Maybe just maybe they really liked Daboll from his interview (with he had prior to their scheduled one with Flores).

Like mentioned above, Rooney Rule is for two external minority candidates. They did use Flores to check the box.