NFL to institute Rooney-type rule for women in executive positions
It has been a banner year for women in the NFL.
We had our first female referee, Sarah Thomas. We had our first coaching intern, Jen Welter, and now we have our first full-time assistant coach, Kathryn Smith.
And now it appears that more women will get the chance to be considered for high-level NFL positions.
For those unaware with the NFL’s “Rooney Rule,” it requires NFL teams to at least interview one minority candidate for any head-coaching or general manager (or whatever a team’s top personnel position is called) opening before making a decision.
The NFL has tried to combat its public perception as being a male-driven league, one with 32 member teams and a group of owners sometimes mockingly called the Billionaire Boys Club. That perception further worsened during the 2014 season with the slew of high-profile domestic violence cases, including those with Ray Rice, Greg Hardy and Adrian Peterson.
“We are going to make a commitment and we’re going to formalize that we as a league are going to do that for women at all of our executive positions,” Goodell said.
In the past, the league has received sub-par grades from the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports on its practice of hiring women, and Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti lamented the lack of female voices in executive positions at both the club and league level in 2014 when he and the league were battling perceptions in the wake of the initial Rice discipline that went over poorly.
All this proposed rule would force teams to do would be interview female candidates for these executive positions; they are not bound to hire any of them. Critics of the Rooney Rule say that clubs get around the requirements by bringing in “token” minorities for interviews for jobs they’ll never get. Proponents point to the increase of minority head coaches and GMs — including Carolina Panthers head coach Ron Rivera, who is of Hispanic descent — as proof that the rule has worked.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a noted football fan who once said it was her goal to be the commissioner of the NFL, was introduced by Goodell and said that the pool of candidates for executive positions in the league needed expanding.
“They keep looking in the same channels, but they keep finding the same people,” Rice said.
Will this make a dent in the largely male league and introduce new perspectives to the league? We shall see, but it is clear that even with vast progress with women infiltrating the league, there still is room for improvement.
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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Eric_Edholm
