NFL
By: Zachary Draves
Former NFL coach Brian Flores took a bold and courageous step when he filed a class-action lawsuit against the league alleging racial discrimination in its hiring practices.
While nothing has been proven yet, it is not far-fetched to see this as reality given the NFL’s complete lack of racial diversity in coaching, front office, and ownership and how it continues to constantly avoid their long-overdue racial reckoning through routine window dressing.
Flores, who had coached the Miami Dolphins for the last three seasons after being fired last month, accused the league of systemic racism in hiring for head coaching positions and specifically called out the Dolphins, Denver Broncos, and New York Giants.
According to the lawsuit, in 2019, Flores was scheduled to be interviewed for the head coaching job for the Denver Broncos and then-Denver Broncos GM John Elway and other team executives showed up ‘completely disheveled’ to the interview meaning that they were likely intoxicated.
Furthermore, Flores claims that New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick had sent him text messages congratulating him on obtaining the head coaching position for the Giants when it turns out that Belichick meant to send the texts to the eventual Giants coach Brian Daboll.
It turns out Daboll was hired three days before Flores was to be interviewed.
Then, Flores says that Dolphins owner Stephen Ross offered him $100,000 to essentially throw games during the 2019 season in an attempt to better the position of the Dolphins to get a top draft pick.
He also claims that Ross urged him to violate the league tampering rules and to do so with a “prominent quarterback” after Flores refused, Ross set up a meeting on a yacht in the winter of 2020 with Flores and said, quarterback.
Who was the “prominent quarterback”? Apparently Tom Brady.
It should also be noted that Ross is the same man who’s one of the founders of the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality (RISE) that engages athletes on racial equality and sits on the NFL’s social justice committee because trying to put a black coach in a compromising position for your own personal benefit is very much in keeping with principles of equality and justice.
The lawsuit specifically takes aim at the Rooney Rule, the league directive that requires NFL owners to interview at least one “minority” candidate during the hiring process, as a performative mechanism that hasn’t produced any real results when it comes to racial diversity.
That sentiment does scream legitimacy especially considering that out of the 32 teams in the league, there is currently only one black head coach, four black offensive coordinators, eleven black defensive coordinators, three black quarterbacks, six black general managers, and no black majority owner.
So while the future of the lawsuit remains uncertain, the credibility of Brian Flores’ claims are pretty solid.
In the context of the Rooney Rule and the text messages, it really paints a picture of Flores being tokenized and that these teams never had any real interest in him as a head coach.
He was also destined to be the fall guy in the event the Dolphins got caught violating league rules.
If this can happen to him who’s to say this hasn’t happened to other black coaches or is still happening?
This has all the potential to finally blow the lid on the NFL and their checkered past to put it kindly when it comes to issues of race.
After all, this is the league that conspired to blackball Colin Kaepernick for taking a knee in protest of racial injustice while protecting Aaron Rodgers for his dangerous misinformation about COVID vaccines and questioning the outcome of the 2020 election.
This is the same league whose owners financially contributed to the previous US president who openly chastised black players for following Kaepernick’s lead and called them “SOBs”.
This is the same league that just last year ended the practice of “race norming” when it came to how black players were treated for CTE.
The same league that let former disgraced Las Vegas Raiders Coach Jon Gruden scrape on buy after years of racist, sexist, and homophobic behavior.
The very same league that partners with Jay Z and will put on what is sure to be a memorable halftime show at the upcoming Super Bowl featuring Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, and Kendrick Lamar to “embrace” black culture, music, style, and aesthetic while simultaneously denigrating, delegitimizing, and devaluing the lives of black people at a time when hard-earned rights are being stripped away (e.g. Voting Rights, Educational Rights, Police Violence, etc.)
A league that routinely puts out PSAs on matters of racial equality when they really should be called BSAs.
Then of course there are the numbers listed above.
Brian Flores is certainly a profile in courage to stand on principle and fight not only for himself but for others.
The statement he put out speaks to that:
God has gifted me with a special talent to coach the game of football, but the need for change is bigger than my personal goals. In making the decision to file the class action complaint today, I understand that I may be risking coaching the game that I love and that has done so much for my family and me. My sincere hope is that by standing up against systemic racism in the NFL, others will join me to ensure that positive change is made for generations to come.
The question is will others join him?
As Frederick Douglas said, “without struggle, there is no progress”.
