Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator Anthony Lynn spoke Thursday about the Rooney Rule and the effect it’s had on his career. Notably, he says he’s turned down interviews he thought were offered solely to satisfy the rule, which requires teams to interview at least one minority candidate for head coaching vacancies.
Here’s the video with his comments:
“Sometimes people do that to check the box. I don’t agree with it. I know last year i wouldn’t go to an interview for that reason. It has its pros and cons. If i didn’t do the interview in New York, maybe my name wouldn’t be circulating. I don’t know. I think it’s good to get in front of the decision makers and let them hear what you have to say, but at the same time, I think some people take advantage of it. I’m not for it. Hire the best man for the job. that’s all I want.”
His points are certainly reasonable, and obviously come from the perspective of the very sort of candidate the rule is designed to help. If NFL teams are deciding on a white candidate before they’ve even interviewed a minority coach to satisfy the rule, then it’s not working. For years after the rule was introduced in 2003, coaches like Dennis Green, Jim Caldwell, Mike Singletary, and others were too often brought in for token interviews. Lynn is saying that’s still the case, and it’s hard to argue with his perspective.
He’s not necessarily arguing against the rule itself, though, despite what this ESPN headline would have you believe. He’s saying the rule as it’s currently being applied is not working. Lynn actually says it’s helpful to get in front of executives to get your name out there into the mix for vacancies. And in theory the rule would force teams to take more time to make a decision on a coach, while including minority candidates in the mix. As Tony Dungy says, though, that’s not really the case:
“The good thing about the Rooney Rule was not that you had to interview a minority candidate but that it slowed the process down and made you do some research,” former NFL coach Tony Dungy told ESPN. “But now it seems like in the last few years, people haven’t really done what the rule was designed for. It has become, ‘Just let me talk to a couple minority coaches very quickly so I can go about the business of hiring the person I really want to hire anyway.'”
NFL teams just don’t seem to be that good at hiring head coaches. Famously, the Bears interviewed 13 candidates before settling on Marc Trestman a few years back; of those thirteen, just two were minorities, and one was team legend Mike Singletary, who was not a serious candidate for the position. Teams seem to look at the rule as a hindrance, something to get around, as opposed to an opportunity to seek out candidates they might ordinarily pass by en route to hiring a retread.
After 13 years, if coaches like Lynn feel this way, it’s probably time to try to make the rule more effective.
[ESPN]
