Roger Goodell won’t be laughing after he reads DeMaurice Smith’s latest project.
Smith, the outgoing executive director of the NFL Players Association, has co-authored an article that will appear in the next edition of the Yale Law and Policy Review. The article calls for the NFL to declare the Rooney Rule a failed experiment and to scrap it, with other specific measures implemented to improve hiring practices for coaches and other high-level employees.
The Executive Summary of the article makes some blunt but accurate points regarding the NFL’s unique ability to avoid any real consequences for decades of failing to entrust key positions to qualified minority candidates. That’s not a debatable point; NFL executive V.P. of football operations Troy Vincent has admitted it.
But there’s still little that can be done to truly change it. Smith’s article (written with Carl Lasker, a rising third-year student at Yale Law School) explains that, even with significant governmental benefits (including billions in taxpayer money for stadiums), the league faces little governmental oversight. Without it, change can come only through litigation.
And when lawsuits are filed, the league’s first move is to try to force the claims into its secret, rigged, kangaroo court which will: (1) more likely lead to a favorable outcome for the team/league; and (2) keep any evidence of wrongdoing concealed.
“The NFL faces neither shareholder nor consumer accountability,” Smith and Lasker write. “There is no public board of directors, there are no public compliance or audit reports, there are virtually no federal or state mandated public disclosures, nor government operational oversight. All of this should be surprising — and profoundly troubling — given the tax benefits, special antitrust treatment, stadium funding, and other publicly enabled benefits that the NFL and its member teams have enjoyed for generations.”
There’s another way to force change. Smith and Lasker mention the possibility of “aggressive concerted action by NFL players.” It sounds great in theory, but if players won’t make sacrifices for their own interests, it’s hard to imagine them doing it for the interests of non-players.
The article makes specific suggestions. First, admit the Rooney Rule doesn’t work and abandon it. Second, adopt a “consistent, fair, transparent, and lawful system” for hiring and retention. Third, eliminate any rules requiring coaches to seek permission from the owners of their current teams to apply for jobs with other teams. Fourth, appoint an outside monitor to audit hiring processes and publish an annual report on progress of lack thereof.
Fifth, develop league-wide job descriptions with objective guidelines for all key positions — coach, G.M., president, or CEO. Sixth, adopt strict punishment processes for teams that fail to comply, with massive fines for any offense. Seventh, utilize uniform and consistent evaluation guidelines. Eighth, devise rules limiting nepotism.
Ninth, require all key jobs to be posted and held open for 30 days. Tenth, make every effort to help coaches get experience. Eleventh, pre-screen interested candidates on a league-wide basis, which will make it harder for teams to simply ignore clearly qualified applicants. Twelfth, embrace the concept of coaches unionizing.
That last one will never happen. While it’s not impossible for coaches to form a union, the NFL will never welcome it. The NFL has no reason to. Especially when the coaching contracts already include arbitration clauses that prevent independent resolution of disputes and authorize the Commissioner to pass judgment on whether one of his employers violated the law.
Unfortunately, the NFL likely won’t rush to adopt any of these proposed changes, until it has to. And it won’t have to unless and until a relevant governmental body — or a massive verdict in open court — forces the kind of dramatic and sweeping change that is long overdue.
Hopefully, efforts like Smith and Lasker’s article will nudge someone with the power and the willingness to use it to compel meaningful change when it comes to the NFL’s hiring practices for coaches, General Managers, and other key executives.
