NFL owners aren’t hiring enough black coaches wholly or partly due to candidates’ race and/or tangential consequences attributable to their race but having nothing to do with ability to coach however the NFL measures such ability.

Root Cause Analysis

Many problems are due to combination of causes working in concert however most can be distilled into a single root cause if each cause is subjected to enough “why?” queries. Lets assume this is a singular root cause problem.

Possible Root Causes:
A) There aren’t enough black coaching candidates in the first place.
B) The NFL owners are racist.
C) The NFL owners aren’t exposed to qualified black coaching candidates.

Root Cause A: Few candidates
At worst the NFL has no power to fix this at best it can effect slow and indirect change. This root cause unfortunately either has no solution or the solution is so deeply rooted in the same societal issues sometimes attributed to similar problems such as the dearth of black medical doctors. If so the NFL on its own will be hard pressed to make a dent here or evaluate its corrective measures for a generation or more.

Root Cause B: Damn Racists!
Here we address the possibility that a majority of NFL owners are for one reason or another biased against blacks holding head coaching positions. Our mitigation options:
1) Replace the current racist owners with non-prejudiced men and women.
2) Reform the racist owners.
3) Mandate a quota for a minimum number of black coaches.

For (2) there are no reliable tools available to measure the effectiveness of mitigation strategies short of a mind reading device. Therefore, the current Rooney Rule in this respect cannot be called to account for progress on (2) since a truly reformed racist may still hire a white coach even after interviewing a black coach. (1) and (3) are impractical or create less satisfactory outcomes than the status quo.

Root Cause C: Exposure
In this scenario the owners just aren’t aware of the qualified black candidates. Solution? Lets make them aware or in essence address an equality of opportunity problem. Rooney Rule generally tries to do this however untastefully (my opinion). Now since equality of opportunity and equality of outcomes aren’t the same we have no reason to believe the Rooney Rule is not working especially based on the outcomes of one offseason.

Lets take a second look at our presumed problem statement. What are the chances the reason why the proportion of black NFL coaches isn’t to our liking is primarily due to the blackness of the coaches and the establishment’s reaction to said blackness of their skin and/or its emergent properties having nothing to do with coaching ability? 0%? 5%? 50%?

Is even posing this question publicly a symptom of prejudice? Not necessarily.

Yes there is no law of nature holding the root cause of our unsatisfactory reality in conformity with our current tastes in political correctness however it is still possible our problem isn’t one that requires prejudiced white owners or the idea of intellectually inferior blacks to exist. Just as a proof of concept and not a claim of identity consider how the dearth of Latino NFL coaches requires neither racist owners nor inferior Latinos to exist.

By the way so you don’t dismiss this offhand as a biased view of a prejudiced mind, I’m just a Sub-Saharan African observing and applying the problem solving techniques that proves so effective in many works of life to this situation.

He’s white and got a second shot in spite of a lot of signs of burnout over the past couple of seasons.

Counterpoint: he’s 130-93-1 in the regular season, 10-9 in the postseason

He’s white and got a second shot in spite of a lot of signs of burnout over the past couple of seasons.

the argument could be made that he deserved one more year in Tampa.

No, not at all. Lost 10 straight and none of them were close. Team quit on him. He was just a cheap placeholder until Gruden came off the books.

and you know this because?

Reports

Also – Andy Reid.

His relation to this post is unclear

the argument could be made that he deserved one more year in Tampa.

who the fuck is going to make that fucking argument. The guy crashed and burned. he was totally clueless and lost the players. will never be a head coach again.

The real shame is dumbass Raiders firing Hue after going 8-8 with a lousy team.

ha. way to miss the point entirely.

Lovie only wants to be a head coach

and you know this because? Also – Andy Reid.

Dave Wandstedt just got another job and Lovie Smith remains unemployed.

Dave Wannstedt just got a job as a special teams coach, and Lovie Smith has a year of buyout checks to cash.

Hue Jackson, Oakland Raiders (2010)
Regular Season: 8-8

Postseason: N/A

Next job: Assistant to special teams and defensive backs,Cincinnati Bengals. Why couldn’t Jackson get a job on the offensive side of the ball? Jackson’s resume includes 24 years of experience, 12 as an offensive coordinator.

Current Status: Barry Bonds impersonator at baseball card shows.