GregR said:
Look I get where you coming from. But the thing you've got to understand too is that just going with what you feel initially is also what reinforces unconscious bias
I'm not saying that having other, prior knowledge of someone isn't helpful or should be ignored. I'm saying that people are going to gravitate towards knowing, and liking, that which they feel most comfortable with. That is the unconscious bias. It is going to have played a role in why we ended up liking someone unless we give ourselves a chance to challenge it and give others a chance.
No one seems to be discussing "positional value" in this equation.
Something I brought up in a Rooney Rule thread in the Shark Pool over a decade ago was that a team who hires a defensive minded coach with an established defensive pedigree will need to get someone to run the offense. If they get a rising star who can play call and run good schemes and handle the QBs on the roster, then that coach is likely to get poached away as fast as possible by some other franchise. Then you have to start all over again. Which is bad for QB1s, especially young ones, to have so much turnover in coordinators/QB coaches/scheme in a short period of time ( i.e. the Alex Smith / 49ers Problem)
It makes much more sense to hire an offensive savant or QB guru or someone who seems like they can weaponize a middle QB2 prospect into something better. And then if you have success, you can keep continuity on your offense, and with your QB1, and you can keep rotating the defensive coaching until you find something that works. The league's trends and rules are heavily leaned toward benefiting the offensive side of the ball.
If you want more black head coaches, you need more black offensive coordinators and black QB1 coaches who are seen as rising stars. If you want to be a MLB head manager, you have a distinct advantage being a former catcher. Especially a non elite one. You know how to handle a pitching staff and you understand injury management and the offensive side of the game. Mike Scoscia and Bob Brenly and Joe Girardi had a far different pathway than a Bud Black to a top job. If you want to be an NBA head coach, it helps to be a former point guard. Again, especially a non elite one. You run the offense and by default you are seen as a team leader. You have a wide responsibility to know where everyone is on the court and why they need to be there to do your job.
If you have more black coaching prospects with the background of a Ken Dorsey, then you'd see more black head coaches. It's not like Dorsey's career was some kind of cakewalk. He entered SF right at the end of the last remnants of the old 49ers 1994 dynasty edge team. Then he had to suffer in Cleveland and had to prove his worth with Chris Weinke at the IMG Academy. Then he had to suffer through Cam Newton and yet he's still plugging away.
Something Steve Kerr brought up when he was the Suns GM and before his storied Warriors run was that lots of retired players just don't want the grind of coaching and the kind of life commitment that it takes. Does it matter what color skin when Ray Rhodes passed out from exhaustion because he spent so much time at work? Does it matter if Charlie Weis is white or black when he nearly died from lap band surgery to make himself more "marketable" when the trend was to hire young photogenic energetic coaches like Jon Gruden types?
I made three practical suggestions in a Rooney Rule thread over a decade ago.
1) There should be a week long offseason symposium where all owners must attend and they get to mingle and get to know all the coaching staffs of other teams. ALL OF THEM. It's a good time to have league wide coaching development classes/seminars/counseling, etc, etc. I recognize franchises don't want to expose their best cap guys, best scouts, rising stars, etc, etc but it's certainly better than this Flores mess cropping up again and again.
2) There should be an intensive coaching school paid for by the NFL itself and hiring retired coaches to mentor/counsel and train all new coaches existing in the NFL system during the offseason. I think it would be instructive for young coaches to learn from a Mike Shanahan or before he passed away, a Jim Fassel, or hear what Rex Ryan has to say. How to better interview, how to handle a difficult owner, how to manage elite players, how to get the best out of fringe roster guys.
3) There should be an effective head count done of actual coaching interviews given. When the Cowboys have a coaching opening, how many interviews does Jerry Jones give out? If the average is 5, then make it 7. You don't win hearts and minds by robbing opportunity. That's exactly what happens when a sham interview happens. It eliminates a possible interview from someone who might have had a chance at the job. The idea that the owners are giving out infinite number of interviews is not realistic. But it's a gross assumption almost always made during a Rooney Rule discussion.
I looked Flores lawsuit. It's idiotic. That's independent of race or how I feel about Ross or the Dolphins or Bullygate or MOP terrorizing a Walgreens rank and file manager over Swedish Fish or anything else. I'm not saying Flores' general concerns are idiotic, I'm saying the arguments presented are scattershot and give him no chance to actually achieve anything positive long term for black coaches. ( I'm not even going to say minority coaches since no one ever cared about Norm Chow. And let's not pretend the Fritz Pollard Alliance ever gave a single damn about Amy Trask)
Rosa Parks at the back of the bus was thought out, planned, strategic. If you want change, you need to treat your activism like a job, and like the Patriots way - Do Your Job Right. If Flores wanted to do black coaches in general a favor, he should have gotten his ducks in a row first, then come heavy or not at all.
I've said this for 15 years in these forums, if you want solutions, you need a practical logistical fix first. This is the problem the NBA had when they boycotted games over social justice. They actually stopped playing. They demanded things "get better" What does that even mean?
Saying we need additional training by law enforcement using these kind of training methods for this duration and taught by these experts is some kind of logistical solution. Then they say we as NBA players will do fundraising to help raise money to pay for it, we can cover 75 percent of those training costs if cities can budget out the other 25 percent. A three week full time training course for all police officers on use of force taught by X and Y and Z experts from Quantico and SAS contractors and defensive tactics training from the MMA world and on and on and on.
That sounds like some kind of discussion at a solution. NBA players ranting about everyone needing to be better without a plan or a framework or some kind of end goal is insane.
Talking about feelings and how people feel has it's place. But I've never seen hug-a-thon kumbaya festivals ever fix the world's real problems.
You want people to drive down a certain path, you need to build them a road first.
Ask yourself what the NFL and the college ranks can do to get more black offensive coordinators and more black QB1 coaches and black offensive side strategists/gurus into all football systems. I'm talking about a functional framework, not a demand for some random people to "do better". Virtue signaling is not strategy. It's not logistics. It's not an effective pathway.
