I said Ignorance (i.e. lack of knowledge or understanding ) not stupidity.
On ignorance:
History of the Rooney rule:
The rule is named after
Dan Rooney, the former owner of the
Pittsburgh Steelers and former chairman of the league's diversity committee.
It was created as a reaction to the 2002 firings of head coaches
Tony Dungy of the
Tampa Bay Buccaneers and
Dennis Green of the
Minnesota Vikings, at a time when Dungy had a winning record and Green had just had his first losing season in ten years.
Shortly afterwards, U.S. civil rights attorneys Cyrus Mehri and Johnnie Cochran released a study showing that black head coaches, despite winning a higher percentage of games, were less likely to be hired and more likely to be fired than their white counterparts. Former NFL players
Kellen Winslow and
John Wooten then put together a self-described "affinity group" of minority scouts, coaches, and front-office personnel, to advocate for the rule's creation.
[6]
Its purpose was to ensure that minority coaches, especially
African Americans, would be considered for high-level coaching positions. Until 1979, when
Tom Flores was hired by the Raiders,
Fritz Pollard was the only minority head coach in NFL history (which was during the league's early years in the 1920s)
[7] and by the time the rule was implemented, only
Tom Flores,
Art Shell,
Dennis Green,
Ray Rhodes,
Tony Dungy, and
Herman Edwards had ever held head coaching jobs (only Dungy and Edwards were actively head coaching at the time of the rule's implementation, though Shell and Green would later return to head coaching).
[8] Dungy in particular had struggled for years before getting a head coaching job; he was often promoted as a head coaching candidate by
Chuck Noll when Dungy was an assistant under Noll in the 1980s with the Steelers, but he would not become a head coach until 1996 when he took over the
Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Another former Steelers assistant,
Marvin Lewis, also struggled to find a head coaching position despite immense success as the
Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator and would not find a head coaching position until being hired by the
Cincinnati Bengals in 2003, the year the Rooney Rule went into effect.
[9]
So, basically, the Rooney rule was to correct systemic discrimination which kept QUALIFIED A-A coaches from ever being considered for coaching positions.
The rule does not require anyone to interview unqualified candidates.
Personally, I don't go around screaming "don't hire a man" (maybe you should back off the bad moonshine if these hallucinations persist).
The issue that has been frequently discussed on this board is the inequity of men being considered for women's DI coaching but high caliber women's coaching not having the same consideration on the men's side.
So, the call is don't hire men but let me women also compete on both sides.
Get informed before you get angry.
