AI transcript
0:00:02 [MUSIC PLAYING]
0:00:04 In case you somehow didn’t notice,
0:00:07 if you aren’t one of the tens of millions of people
0:00:09 watching on TV or placing some bets
0:00:13 or keeping up with the Taylor Swift news,
0:00:16 the National Football League has begun its new season.
0:00:19 The NFL is the richest sports league in history
0:00:23 and probably the most growth-obsessed as well.
0:00:26 One reason is that many team owners made their money
0:00:30 by building their own businesses– in real estate or oil,
0:00:33 in the HVAC industry, in America’s biggest
0:00:34 chain of truck stops.
0:00:37 That kind of business success requires a strong urge
0:00:39 to expand.
0:00:42 And so, not surprisingly, the NFL
0:00:44 is also driven by expansion.
0:00:46 There are more games per season than there used to be,
0:00:48 played in more places–
0:00:51 this year in England, Germany, and Brazil.
0:00:54 NFL games are distributed on just about every network
0:00:57 and streaming platform you’ve ever heard of,
0:00:58 and some you haven’t.
0:01:01 If you look at the top 100 TV broadcasts
0:01:05 last year in the US, you will see that 93 of them
0:01:06 were NFL games.
0:01:09 Among the others were the Oscars, the Macy’s Thanksgiving
0:01:13 Day Parade, and three college football games.
0:01:17 The NFL did around $13 billion in revenues last year,
0:01:20 and each of the 32 teams are worth, on average,
0:01:22 more than $5 billion.
0:01:25 That is much more than teams in any other sport.
0:01:28 Owning an NFL team has provided a route
0:01:30 for wealthy individuals or families
0:01:32 to become very wealthy.
0:01:35 This creates its own problem.
0:01:37 There can be a lot of taxes to pay when it’s time to sell,
0:01:40 and there just aren’t that many potential buyers
0:01:42 for a $5 billion asset–
0:01:44 at least the right kind of buyers.
0:01:47 The NFL was founded and run for decades
0:01:50 by a relatively small group of families,
0:01:53 and it has remained vigilant about who should be let in.
0:01:55 In Europe, the top soccer leagues
0:01:59 allow their teams to be owned by investment cartels
0:02:01 and oligarchs in Petro States.
0:02:04 The NFL doesn’t, not yet, at least,
0:02:06 although they did recently vote to allow private equity
0:02:09 investors to buy up to 10% of a team.
0:02:13 If they allowed 100%, they would likely
0:02:14 sell out in 10 minutes.
0:02:18 So great are the NFL’s prospects.
0:02:21 There is nothing predetermined about this massive financial
0:02:22 success.
0:02:25 Professional football was, for many years,
0:02:26 barely professional at all.
0:02:29 It was a ragged and violent game,
0:02:32 playing deep in the shadow of baseball and other sports.
0:02:34 But over the past 50 years, the NFL
0:02:37 has turned itself into an entertainment juggernaut.
0:02:40 The football games are, of course, at the center,
0:02:44 but the attendant swarms of media and gambling and merchandising
0:02:48 and eating and drinking are what make the NFL and industry
0:02:50 unto itself.
0:02:54 And it is, for the most part, an extremely well-run industry.
0:02:57 There is a premium put on modern management techniques
0:03:00 when it comes to resource allocation, on-field strategy
0:03:04 and off-field strategy, and personnel decisions.
0:03:06 Most of us, when we watch a game,
0:03:09 we concentrate on the players.
0:03:13 53 per team divided into defensive, offensive, and special teams
0:03:17 and units, each with their own systems and coaches.
0:03:20 The average NFL team has 23 coaches.
0:03:24 There’s the head coach, the offensive and defensive
0:03:26 and special teams coordinators, and then
0:03:29 a lot of position coaches, assistant coaches, quality
0:03:30 control coaches.
0:03:33 And that’s not even counting the training and medical staff,
0:03:36 the logistics people, and so on.
0:03:39 The head coach who sits atop this pyramid
0:03:43 is essentially the CEO of what happens on the football field.
0:03:47 It is an important, difficult, thrilling job
0:03:50 with a hefty turnover rate and an average tenure
0:03:52 of roughly three years.
0:03:55 The most successful teams in the league
0:03:57 excel at identifying talent.
0:03:59 So we thought it might be interesting
0:04:03 to look into how these multi-billion dollar franchises
0:04:07 choose their on-field CEOs, especially because there
0:04:10 is an obvious discrepancy in the NFL.
0:04:13 The majority of the players are black.
0:04:16 The majority of the coaches are not.
0:04:19 Today on Freakonomics Radio, why is that?
0:04:22 We don’t take enough time in the interview process.
0:04:25 We don’t interview enough different candidates.
0:04:27 And if I have to make a decision,
0:04:29 I’m going to make a decision of something
0:04:31 that’s familiar to me.
0:04:33 More than two decades ago, the league
0:04:35 came up with a policy to address this situation.
0:04:37 It is called the Rooney Rule.
0:04:41 We will hear about its history, its successes and failures,
0:04:44 and how the idea has spread outside of football.
0:04:46 They said, oh, George Floyd, that’s bad.
0:04:47 We don’t want to be bad.
0:04:48 We don’t want to be racist.
0:04:50 We’re going to fix diversity.
0:04:52 And has it fixed diversity?
0:04:55 I mean, what people do in the dark, you don’t know.
0:04:57 Those are just some of the questions
0:05:00 we’ll try to answer in this episode and next weeks, too.
0:05:03 Also, questions like this one.
0:05:09 How can I only get to go out and get my bell rung on Sundays
0:05:11 and I don’t get to be on the sidelines
0:05:14 or in the executive suites organizing the game?
0:05:18 This is your welcome to the NFL moment, starting now.
0:05:32 This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that
0:05:36 explores the hidden side of everything with your host,
0:05:37 Stephen Dubner.
0:05:48 Imagine that your dream is to become a head coach
0:05:50 in the National Football League.
0:05:52 How likely are you to make it?
0:05:54 Not very likely.
0:05:56 There are only 32 of these jobs.
0:05:58 And up until now, they’ve always gone
0:06:01 to men of the men who currently hold those jobs, roughly
0:06:04 a third played professional football
0:06:06 and all but one played college football.
0:06:10 And even though the majority of NFL players are black,
0:06:12 for many decades, you weren’t going
0:06:15 to get a head coaching job unless you were white.
0:06:18 For a black former player to become a head coach,
0:06:20 there really wasn’t much of a path.
0:06:22 That is Jeremy Duru.
0:06:25 He’s a law professor at American University in Washington, DC.
0:06:28 And he directs the sport and society initiative
0:06:30 at AU’s Law School.
0:06:34 One reason for that goes back further historically, Stephen,
0:06:37 which is that black players were expurgated from the league
0:06:39 in 1934.
0:06:40 Yeah, talk about that a minute.
0:06:42 What we now know is the NFL began in 1920,
0:06:43 I believe, is that right?
0:06:44 Yes.
0:06:45 And there were black players, not a ton,
0:06:49 but there were black players and coaches as well, yeah?
0:06:52 In the very early days, you had a few black players.
0:06:54 You had one black head coach.
0:06:56 Amazingly, I mean, for those of us
0:06:58 who study American history, you know
0:07:01 how savage the racial discord was at the time,
0:07:04 for there to be a black head coach.
0:07:06 And the NFL was extraordinary.
0:07:10 And the coach, Fritz Pollard, is his name, was also a player.
0:07:12 And it wasn’t rare at the time to have player coaches.
0:07:14 But what’s important to recognize
0:07:17 is these players, they literally were
0:07:19 seeking to protect themselves on the field.
0:07:23 From opposing players, from teammates at practice,
0:07:27 Fritz had this thing where when you got knocked down,
0:07:30 he would as quickly as he could flip on to his back
0:07:31 and stick his feet up in the air
0:07:34 and start swinging them like he’s riding a bicycle
0:07:36 to basically protect himself from getting
0:07:39 crushed by people who were seeking to harm him.
0:07:42 That’s what we’re dealing with at the time.
0:07:44 And so there wasn’t a big black presence.
0:07:47 As of the early 1930s, there was a quote unquote
0:07:50 “gentleman’s agreement” among all owners in the league
0:07:53 to kick out black people all together.
0:07:56 And then Rooney bought in right around that time.
0:07:58 He had, in his previous business dealings,
0:08:00 been pretty even-handed.
0:08:02 One of the more even-handed business people
0:08:03 when it comes to race,
0:08:05 certainly in Pittsburgh, part of the East Coast.
0:08:07 But he went along with this gentleman’s agreement.
0:08:15 – My grandfather followed the ban on black players.
0:08:18 And he talked about that as being
0:08:20 the biggest mistake of his life.
0:08:23 – And that is Jim Rooney, who is now in his 50s.
0:08:25 – I grew up as part of a family business,
0:08:27 which is the Pittsburgh Steelers.
0:08:31 – The Steelers are still majority owned by Rooney’s.
0:08:33 The team president is Art Rooney II.
0:08:36 Before that, it was Dan Rooney, Jim Rooney’s father.
0:08:40 And before that, the original Art Rooney, the team’s founder.
0:08:44 Art Rooney came up as a boxer and a semi-pro baseball player.
0:08:47 And then he worked as a promoter and a professional gambler.
0:08:50 Through this combination of aboveboard
0:08:53 and maybe not so aboveboard work,
0:08:56 Art Rooney became a legend in Pittsburgh,
0:08:59 roguish for sure, if not quite a rogue.
0:09:03 I happen to know all this and much more, way too much,
0:09:06 because I have been a Steelers fan since I was a child
0:09:09 and I have a couple shelves full of Steelers books.
0:09:11 I’ve written one myself.
0:09:14 I now asked Jim Rooney to explain
0:09:17 how the Pittsburgh Steelers first came to be.
0:09:20 – There is a lifelong family debate on this story.
0:09:23 So you’re gonna get Jim Rooney’s version,
0:09:26 my great uncle Jim, had the semi-pro team,
0:09:28 and they were playing all over Western Pennsylvania.
0:09:30 – And we should say this is a time when
0:09:33 every Steel Mill, every little town,
0:09:35 they all had their own football teams, right?
0:09:36 – Yep.
0:09:40 So my grandfather had a good friend named Charlie Bidwell.
0:09:42 Charlie Bidwell owns the Chicago Cardinals,
0:09:44 which are now the Arizona Cardinals.
0:09:47 And the story goes that Charlie and Art Rooney
0:09:51 were running booze across the Great Lakes during prohibition.
0:09:55 And Bidwell says, “Hey Art, we’re putting a team in Philly.
0:09:57 Do you wanna put a team in Pittsburgh?”
0:10:00 And so my grandfather goes to Uncle Jim
0:10:02 and Jim owed Art like $5,000.
0:10:05 It was a lot of money for 1933.
0:10:05 – Wait a minute.
0:10:08 How does one brother end up owing another brother that much?
0:10:12 This is a cut from some project.
0:10:13 – Something went on with Uncle Jim.
0:10:16 Uncle Jim took risks and was always in a little bit of trouble.
0:10:18 So Uncle Jim owes the chief,
0:10:20 as my grandfather was known, $5,000.
0:10:24 And so my grandfather says, “Jim, if you give me that team,
0:10:26 I’m gonna put them in this national football league
0:10:28 and we’ll call it even.”
0:10:30 And so Jim’s response was,
0:10:32 “Art, I could never do that to you.
0:10:35 That national football league is not gonna make it.”
0:10:38 So thank God my grandfather pushed him a little bit
0:10:41 and took the team and put them into the national football league.
0:10:46 – So Pittsburgh got an NFL team in 1933.
0:10:48 They were originally called the Pirates,
0:10:50 same as the city’s baseball team.
0:10:54 But in 1940, Art Rooney renamed them as the Pittsburgh Steelers.
0:10:56 In 1938, they drafted a running back
0:11:00 from the University of Colorado named Byron “Wizard” White.
0:11:03 He led the NFL in rushing yards in his rookie season,
0:11:08 but he quit the Steelers to go back to school at Oxford.
0:11:11 And he eventually became a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
0:11:13 For the Pittsburgh Steelers,
0:11:16 “Wizard” White was one of the few bright spots
0:11:19 in the first 40 years of their existence.
0:11:22 They were generally a terrible team.
0:11:26 The league itself, meanwhile, was starting to evolve.
0:11:31 In 1946, the NFL lifted its ban on black players.
0:11:32 Why?
0:11:34 Here again is Jeremy Duru.
0:11:38 – You get to 1946, the Rams moved to LA
0:11:40 and in order to play in the Coliseum
0:11:43 because of a substantial grassroots movement
0:11:45 headed by the black press out there,
0:11:49 it was determined that you couldn’t have a segregated league
0:11:51 coming into play games in the Coliseum.
0:11:55 So they were forced to bring in a couple of black players
0:11:56 and they did.
0:11:58 And that’s how you had black players come into the league.
0:12:01 – Black players in the 1940s, NFL encountered
0:12:03 the same verbal and physical abuse
0:12:05 that players faced in the ’20s.
0:12:08 And even though the NFL had reintegrated
0:12:10 the best college football programs of the time,
0:12:14 like Alabama, LSU and Texas, remained segregated.
0:12:18 So the best black players often played at HBCUs,
0:12:21 historically black colleges and universities
0:12:25 and were therefore overlooked by NFL scouts.
0:12:27 Black players who did make it to the NFL
0:12:30 often found their options limited.
0:12:33 – In those early days of reintegration,
0:12:36 black players were not permitted to play positions
0:12:39 that are viewed as quote unquote thinking positions,
0:12:43 quarterback, center, middle linebacker.
0:12:46 Black players were relegated to wide receiver,
0:12:48 cornerback, running back.
0:12:51 No, I do not seek to disparage those positions.
0:12:53 But at the time, those are positions that were viewed
0:12:55 as quote unquote brawn positions
0:12:57 and not the brain position.
0:13:00 – Those thinking positions also happen to be the positions
0:13:04 that produce a lot of future NFL coaches,
0:13:06 offensive coordinators, defensive coordinators
0:13:08 and head coaches especially.
0:13:12 So by excluding black players from those positions,
0:13:14 the league was also cutting off their best route
0:13:16 to a coaching future.
0:13:18 But not every team went along
0:13:20 with these unwritten rules around race.
0:13:22 Here’s Jim Rooney again.
0:13:26 – I think my grandfather and then my father in particular,
0:13:29 you know, made decisions with an open view
0:13:33 of morals, scruples and understanding that, you know,
0:13:35 yes, there was a business component.
0:13:38 He didn’t dismiss the business component,
0:13:40 but there was also this human element.
0:13:44 It was Dan Rooney, son of art, father of Jim,
0:13:47 who set this new direction for the Steelers.
0:13:48 By the early 1960s,
0:13:51 he was running the team’s day-to-day operations.
0:13:53 – As Dan took over the team,
0:13:57 he was really intentional and serious about diversity.
0:14:01 He was intentional and serious about making sure
0:14:03 that different perspectives were articulated,
0:14:05 different perspectives were considered
0:14:07 in respect to decisions that were made.
0:14:09 He hired this guy named Bill Nunn,
0:14:12 who was a reporter for Black newspaper in Pittsburgh,
0:14:14 who essentially criticized the Steelers
0:14:17 as talking about interest in diversity,
0:14:19 but not really backing it up.
0:14:23 – My father, he was invited by a parish priest
0:14:24 to march in Selma, Alabama.
0:14:26 He didn’t go.
0:14:28 Bill Nunn, a newspaper writer, said,
0:14:30 “Dan Rooney says he’s open to integration,
0:14:33 but really hasn’t done much more than anyone else.”
0:14:35 And that became the moment that my father sat down
0:14:38 with Bill and said, “Bill, you’re right.
0:14:40 I want to do this differently.
0:14:41 What can I do?”
0:14:44 – And he hired Bill Nunn to come in and scout for the team,
0:14:47 and Bill Nunn diversified the club
0:14:50 by going to HBCUs to look for players,
0:14:52 which few other clubs were doing.
0:14:56 And one, it made the Steelers a more diverse organization
0:14:58 and an organization open to forward
0:15:00 and interesting and progressive thinking about race.
0:15:02 And two, it made them better
0:15:04 because they tapped pools of talent
0:15:06 and nobody else was tapping.
0:15:08 – What were some things that the Steelers were doing
0:15:11 that made black players and coaches at black schools
0:15:13 so comfortable with their players going there?
0:15:16 – I think so much of it was Bill
0:15:19 because Bill didn’t just go and look at tape.
0:15:21 He would spend the weekend there.
0:15:26 He always wanted to see the players’ athletic ability
0:15:30 outside of the arena where things could be managed
0:15:31 by their coaches.
0:15:33 If there was family around,
0:15:35 he would try to talk to their family,
0:15:40 really try to understand the entire persona of a player,
0:15:43 and then he could make a really strong recommendation
0:15:46 because there was less data.
0:15:48 What he did was amazing.
0:15:50 Bill helped change the NFL.
0:15:53 – What’s the Steelers’ organization doing
0:15:55 once the players get there
0:15:57 to make it a place where they wanna go?
0:15:59 – I think the biggest was hiring Bill,
0:16:02 but after Bill was naming Joe Gilliam
0:16:04 as the quarterback in 1974.
0:16:07 So this was the first time in NFL history
0:16:09 that prior to the start of the season,
0:16:11 a black man was named starting quarterback.
0:16:13 – That’s right.
0:16:15 It took 28 years from when black players
0:16:17 were allowed back into the NFL
0:16:20 until a team announced a black starting quarterback
0:16:22 at the beginning of the season.
0:16:25 But with the Steelers, it went further than that.
0:16:28 Black players on the Steelers were empowered to step up
0:16:30 under this new era of leadership.
0:16:32 There was team president Dan Rooney,
0:16:34 the influential scout Bill Nunn,
0:16:38 and a future Hall of Fame coach named Chuck Knowle.
0:16:42 Knowle did not fit any football coach stereotypes.
0:16:44 He was a deep reader, an intellectual,
0:16:46 and a lover of classical music
0:16:49 who saw himself as more teacher than drill sergeant.
0:16:51 He was always telling his players that football
0:16:54 was just one brief chapter of their existence
0:16:56 and that they had to prepare themselves
0:16:58 for what he called their life’s work.
0:17:01 Keep in mind that players made much less money then.
0:17:03 Most of them had full-time jobs in the off season
0:17:05 to support themselves.
0:17:08 – The decision that Chuck made
0:17:11 to start Joe Gilliam, several of the HBCU players,
0:17:15 told me that that moment meant so much to them
0:17:16 because it said to them,
0:17:19 okay, if they’re willing to start a quarterback,
0:17:22 then I know if I’m the best defensive back
0:17:25 or if I’m the best linebacker, I’m the best tackle,
0:17:27 I’m gonna have an opportunity here.
0:17:29 That decision was key.
0:17:31 Then I think the next big milestone
0:17:34 was Joe Green becoming captain.
0:17:37 – Joe Green, known as Mean Joe Green,
0:17:39 was a defensive lineman who had been scouted
0:17:41 by Bill Nunn out of North Texas State.
0:17:45 He was huge, very physical, and, well, mean,
0:17:47 at least on the field,
0:17:49 especially at the start of his career.
0:17:52 The Steelers had drafted Green in 1969
0:17:54 and he quickly became the foundation of a defense
0:17:57 that was known as the Steel Curtain.
0:18:00 It was clear that Joe was the leader of the team.
0:18:02 He had those two phenomenal qualities in the leader.
0:18:06 He was ferocious and he had that ability to intimidate,
0:18:07 and I’m not saying leaders should be intimidating
0:18:08 all the time, but there’s a time
0:18:12 you have to get a group of people to line up.
0:18:15 But then, once you got Joe’s stamp of approval,
0:18:18 he showed this care for them and their families
0:18:22 that was just the essence of what any locker room would want.
0:18:26 – By the mid-1970s, the Steelers looked markedly different
0:18:28 than most other NFL teams.
0:18:31 More black players, more black leadership,
0:18:34 and an unusual sense of cohesion.
0:18:37 Now, none of this would be remembered today,
0:18:39 except for the fact that this unusual team,
0:18:44 after 40 years of losing, finally began to win.
0:18:45 – It’s all over.
0:18:48 – The Steelers went on one of the most historic hot streaks
0:18:52 in sports history, winning four Super Bowls in six years.
0:18:53 – With his great victory.
0:18:56 They beat the Minnesota Vikings in 1975.
0:18:59 – The Steelers are the Super Bowl champions.
0:19:01 – The Dallas Cowboys in 1976.
0:19:03 – Our repeat champion.
0:19:05 – Cowboys again in 1979.
0:19:07 – Steelers have won it.
0:19:09 – And the Los Angeles Rams in 1980.
0:19:12 – Victoria’s in Super Bowl 14.
0:19:14 – And in the midst of this, in 1977,
0:19:17 the Steelers picked up an undrafted player
0:19:20 whose name you will know if you’re a football fan.
0:19:24 Tony Dungey comes in, is an okay football player,
0:19:27 but Chuck Noll immediately sees how brilliant he is,
0:19:31 and then hires him as an assistant coach.
0:19:35 He becomes, at a very young age, I think he was 29,
0:19:40 he becomes the first black man and youngest person
0:19:43 ever to be named defensive coordinator of an NFL team.
0:19:47 So Chuck saw how talented Dungey was,
0:19:50 and then Tony goes on to have the amazing career he’s had.
0:19:52 – By now, other teams had taken notice
0:19:55 of the Steelers’ success with black talent,
0:19:57 and they began to copy the scouting strategy
0:19:59 established by Bill Nunn.
0:20:03 In 1959, before Nunn joined the Steelers,
0:20:05 only 12% of NFL players were black.
0:20:09 By the 1990s, around two-thirds were.
0:20:11 And how about coaches?
0:20:15 Through the 1950s and ’60s and ’70s and most of the ’80s,
0:20:18 Fritz Pollard remained the only black head coach
0:20:19 in NFL history.
0:20:22 But that finally changed in 1989,
0:20:24 when Oakland Raiders owner, Al Davis,
0:20:26 named his former lineman, Art Shell,
0:20:28 as the team’s head coach.
0:20:32 Dan Rooney, who came from a long line of Irish Catholics,
0:20:35 was a soft-spoken consensus builder.
0:20:38 Al Davis, from a Brooklyn Jewish family,
0:20:42 was more aggressive and more willing to go off on his own.
0:20:45 – You know, Al Davis was very different than my father,
0:20:49 but both Al and Dan had this fundamental respect
0:20:52 for people and were interested
0:20:55 in overcoming these barriers.
0:20:57 – To Jim Rooney, the late ’80s were a time
0:20:59 when a lot of barriers were coming down.
0:21:02 – In 1989, you had Art Shell hired,
0:21:05 you had what was going on in the world,
0:21:08 where the Berlin Wall was coming down,
0:21:10 Russia was starting to fall apart.
0:21:12 You had this sense of great change,
0:21:16 and the NFL was in a massive change era as well.
0:21:18 You got a new commissioner.
0:21:21 Paul Tagliaboo was a young, up-and-coming person
0:21:24 who had a very open world view.
0:21:27 You had the sense then that things were moving
0:21:29 and were going to only move in that direction.
0:21:34 – So did things keep moving in that direction in the NFL?
0:21:36 That would be a no.
0:21:37 – This is outrageous.
0:21:39 How can a guy like Dungey get fired?
0:21:40 – That’s After the Break.
0:21:42 I’m Stephen Dovner, and you are listening
0:21:43 to Freakonomics Radio.
0:21:45 I hope you will spread the word about this show,
0:21:49 maybe give it a review or rating in your podcast app.
0:21:52 Those are great ways to support the shows you love.
0:21:53 We will be right back.
0:21:59 (dramatic music)
0:22:05 In 1997, National Football League commissioner Paul Tagliaboo
0:22:07 appointed Harold Henderson as the league’s
0:22:10 executive vice president for labor relations.
0:22:12 This made Henderson one of the highest ranking
0:22:16 black executives in professional sports.
0:22:18 Given all the momentum we were hearing about
0:22:20 before the break, you might think that a lot
0:22:24 of NFL teams by now would have hired a black head coach.
0:22:27 After all, across the league’s 32 teams,
0:22:29 more than half the players were black
0:22:32 and many head coaches are former players.
0:22:35 But the decision to hire a coach is a team decision,
0:22:39 not a decision made by some executive in the league office.
0:22:42 And the team owners were white.
0:22:45 Here again is the legal scholar Jeremy Duru.
0:22:47 – The easiest way to think about it
0:22:51 is that the NFL is like an umbrella organization.
0:22:55 And under that umbrella, you have 32 different clubs
0:22:57 that are their own businesses.
0:23:00 They’ve got their own owners, they’ve got their own presidents,
0:23:03 they’ve got their own culture, they’ve got their own policies.
0:23:07 The umbrella seeks to organize them in a way
0:23:09 such that they can have competitive games
0:23:13 against each other and a league in which to play.
0:23:17 I think that the casual observer would view the commissioner
0:23:19 as in charge of this whole thing.
0:23:22 And the commissioner is the head of the league.
0:23:26 But who hires the commissioner, the owners.
0:23:27 The owners hire the commissioner.
0:23:30 The owners have the power to not renew
0:23:32 the contract of the commissioner.
0:23:35 At the end of the day, these are individual businesses
0:23:37 and it’s very important to understand that.
0:23:41 And so each team, specifically the owner of each team,
0:23:43 someone who is accustomed to operating
0:23:46 as the master of his personal universe,
0:23:50 he is free to adopt whatever hiring policy he wants.
0:23:53 But by the end of the 2000 NFL season,
0:23:57 there had only been five black head coaches in league history.
0:23:59 If nothing else, the optics were not good.
0:24:02 – Football, it is a collision sport.
0:24:04 There is violence in the sport.
0:24:09 And the idea of a team is predominantly black
0:24:14 being sent out into essentially sport related combat
0:24:18 by a group of people who are entirely white,
0:24:22 who are standing outside on the sidelines looking on.
0:24:23 It’s a painful picture.
0:24:27 It harkens back to the days of battle royales
0:24:29 and other exploitation of black athletes.
0:24:32 And so I think inside those org–
0:24:34 – I mean, to say nothing of slavery, let’s be honest.
0:24:35 – Yeah, right.
0:24:39 It was painful for athletes in those organizations.
0:24:40 I don’t think they’re saying,
0:24:43 hey, listen, we need all of the coaching staff to be black.
0:24:45 But there’s gotta be a thought,
0:24:48 well, how can I only get to go out
0:24:51 and get my bell rung on Sundays
0:24:53 and I don’t get to be on the sidelines
0:24:57 or in the executive suites organizing the game?
0:24:58 – Whether it’s wins and losses
0:25:03 or the spirit and camaraderie
0:25:06 or friction, et cetera, of a team,
0:25:08 talk about the ways in which a team
0:25:12 that may be 60 or 70% black players,
0:25:16 how it’s different under a black head coach or coordinators
0:25:18 or a white head coach or coordinators.
0:25:20 – For those who don’t follow football,
0:25:22 I mean, one way to look at it is the head coach
0:25:24 is like the CEO of this team.
0:25:26 They are making the decisions.
0:25:27 They are running things.
0:25:29 They are the model at the top.
0:25:33 They’re the one who gives a last word before a game.
0:25:34 They’re the one who decides
0:25:36 what sort of schedule we’re gonna have.
0:25:39 It’s all in the head coach’s purview.
0:25:42 The black head coaches and their white head coaches
0:25:44 who have been deeply successful
0:25:49 on the interpersonal level with black players.
0:25:52 But I think there’s something important
0:25:54 for a black player to recognize
0:25:57 that there’s at least some black representation
0:25:58 on the coaching staff.
0:26:02 I’m responsible for that player’s wellbeing.
0:26:03 Head coach, or otherwise.
0:26:06 – Frustration around the absence of black coaches
0:26:10 seemed to hit a peak around the 2001 NFL season
0:26:13 when two black head coaches, two of only five in history,
0:26:14 were fired.
0:26:16 They both had winning records
0:26:18 and had both taken their teams to the playoffs
0:26:20 multiple times.
0:26:21 Those are the kind of accomplishments
0:26:25 that tend to not get you fired as an NFL head coach.
0:26:27 One of the fired coaches was Dennis Green
0:26:29 of the Minnesota Vikings.
0:26:32 The other was Tony Dungey of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
0:26:35 Dungey, you will remember, got his start with the Steelers
0:26:38 as a player and then as a very young coach
0:26:41 handpicked by Chuck Knoll.
0:26:44 The firing of Tony Dungey now caught the attention
0:26:47 of Dan Rooney, the Steelers’ owner and president.
0:26:50 Here again is his son Jim Rooney.
0:26:52 – So Dungey comes into the Steelers in ’77.
0:26:56 He and my father build a really close partnership.
0:26:58 And my father sees throughout the ’80s
0:27:03 and then the ’90s, he sees and has this ongoing conversation
0:27:07 with Tony about job interviews.
0:27:11 And my father sees the dehumanization.
0:27:13 They both talked to me about this
0:27:17 and the impact that had on my father to see someone
0:27:19 that he knew was better than so many folks
0:27:22 who were getting interviews and getting jobs
0:27:26 and saying, you know, this is just completely wrong.
0:27:28 – But Tony Dungey finally did get his chance
0:27:30 with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers
0:27:33 only to lose his job after six seasons.
0:27:36 Jim Rooney remembers his father’s reaction.
0:27:39 – I remember him just being really disillusioned.
0:27:40 You know, this is outrageous.
0:27:43 How can a guy like Dungey get fired?
0:27:44 There’s these different moments in life
0:27:46 where bad things happen
0:27:48 and they become the catalyst to change.
0:27:52 – Let me say two things here.
0:27:56 The first is that Tony Dungey did get another chance
0:27:58 with the Indianapolis Colts
0:28:01 and Dungey led the Colts to a Super Bowl victory.
0:28:04 So happy ending there.
0:28:05 The other thing to say is this.
0:28:10 Jim Rooney is an unabashed fan of his late father, Dan.
0:28:11 He wrote a book about his father
0:28:14 called A Different Way to Win.
0:28:17 Most books written by an offspring, he writes,
0:28:19 fall into one of two categories,
0:28:22 a tell-all or a beatification.
0:28:25 This book falls into the latter.
0:28:27 Jim Rooney argues that his father
0:28:29 was successful with the Steelers
0:28:32 because of the kind of person he was.
0:28:35 Honest, humble, compassionate.
0:28:38 He wasn’t colorful like his father, the chief,
0:28:41 but Dan Rooney cared about building things well,
0:28:43 running things well,
0:28:45 and he didn’t need to get the credit.
0:28:47 These traits also made him valuable
0:28:52 to his fellow NFL owners and to the league itself.
0:28:55 Rooney was heavily involved in labor relations,
0:28:58 league strategy, broadcast negotiations, and more.
0:29:01 He had the ear of other owners when he needed it
0:29:05 and when other owners needed to be broad in line,
0:29:07 it was often Rooney who did that.
0:29:12 And now in 2001, we know that Rooney was steamed
0:29:14 about what had happened to Tony Dungey.
0:29:16 Here’s Jeremy Duru again.
0:29:19 – Tony Dungey got fired by the Buccaneers.
0:29:21 Not only had he been successful,
0:29:25 but he took the organization from pure doormat status
0:29:28 and made them a contender every year
0:29:30 after he was fired and Dennis Green was fired.
0:29:33 This is after the 2001 season.
0:29:38 We now had one coach of color in this league of 32 clubs,
0:29:41 one head coach of color, league of 32 clubs,
0:29:42 and it was just crazy.
0:29:44 – Around this time, Duru was working
0:29:47 for a Washington law firm called Mary and Scallop.
0:29:51 They specialize in employment discrimination cases.
0:29:54 Cyrus Mary is an Iranian-American attorney
0:29:56 who had successfully brought racial discrimination cases
0:29:58 against Coca-Cola and Texaco
0:30:01 and was now suing Johnson & Johnson.
0:30:03 His co-counsel on the Johnson & Johnson case
0:30:06 was the superstar black attorney, Johnny Cochran,
0:30:10 who had successfully defended OJ Simpson on murder charges.
0:30:12 – And so Cyrus and Johnny,
0:30:15 I think during a break from a deposition,
0:30:18 they were working on that case just after Tony Dungey
0:30:20 got fired by the Buccaneers
0:30:23 and Dennis Green got fired by the Vikings.
0:30:25 We’re just talking in the break room.
0:30:28 You guys see what happened and I felt it was ridiculous.
0:30:29 And they were like, you know what?
0:30:31 What we’re seeing there is reflective of the work
0:30:33 that we do in employment discrimination
0:30:35 or civil rights work.
0:30:37 We need to dig into this a little bit.
0:30:39 – And what was the next step?
0:30:43 – They figured, okay, all the anecdotes in the world
0:30:46 may have some impact, but let’s get some stats on this.
0:30:48 So they commissioned a study.
0:30:50 They got someone named Janice Madden,
0:30:53 a labor economist at University of Pennsylvania.
0:30:55 They asked her if she would study
0:30:58 the previous 15 years of the NFL
0:31:00 and see how blackhead coaches
0:31:03 were stacking up to whitehead coaches.
0:31:07 Cyrus and Johnny, they get this report from Janice Madden.
0:31:11 The report indicated that in the first year,
0:31:16 a blackhead coach won 2.7 more games in the whitehead coach.
0:31:18 – Which is a lot in the league of only…
0:31:19 – That’s exactly right.
0:31:20 16 game season, right?
0:31:23 I mean, that is through the roof high.
0:31:27 And in the season of termination, they won 1.3 more.
0:31:28 Overall, they won more.
0:31:30 They went to the playoffs more often
0:31:31 as a percentage matter.
0:31:34 They were, according to the numbers, better.
0:31:37 And the conclusion from the report
0:31:38 was not that black coaches
0:31:41 are somehow inherently better coaches.
0:31:43 The conclusion was that black coaches
0:31:46 had been made to apprentice so long
0:31:49 in assistant positions that when they became head coaches
0:31:51 they were just better as a matter, you know?
0:31:54 And so Cyrus and Johnny had a press conference
0:31:57 releasing the report and they also sent it to the league.
0:31:59 And during the press conference,
0:32:03 Johnny said, “If they don’t negotiate, we will litigate.”
0:32:06 And so essentially in sending it to the NFL,
0:32:08 it was sent with the litigation threat.
0:32:11 – So what would it be like to be an owner in 2002
0:32:13 and hear Johnny Cochran say,
0:32:17 hey, if you don’t negotiate, we’re happy to litigate.
0:32:19 What’s the perspective of the owner there?
0:32:22 – I think a lot of the owners are saying, okay, go get it.
0:32:24 Let’s see what happens if you litigate.
0:32:25 To be quite frank,
0:32:27 I think that is what a lot of folks were saying,
0:32:28 but not everybody.
0:32:30 And here’s where the rubber met the road
0:32:32 in a very interesting way.
0:32:35 The NFL at the time, the league office now,
0:32:38 there is a recognition that they’ve got a problem.
0:32:42 The NFL recognized that the numbers were bad
0:32:44 and the media was telling them about it as well.
0:32:45 So they felt like they had to do something.
0:32:49 And so when this threat came in,
0:32:51 there was a decision made.
0:32:53 Paul Tagliabu was the commissioner.
0:32:54 I’ll give him credit.
0:32:57 Jeff Pash was the general counsel of the league at the time
0:33:00 and still is, I’ll give him credit.
0:33:03 These folks were saying, we’ve got to do something
0:33:06 rather than just bleeding them
0:33:08 with a thousand cuts and litigation,
0:33:09 which they could have done.
0:33:11 The NFL is so highly capitalized.
0:33:14 They could have fought them and probably wouldn’t have won.
0:33:17 They said, why don’t you come in and let’s talk about this.
0:33:20 There were some other key figures getting involved
0:33:21 like John Wooten.
0:33:24 He was a black former NFL player
0:33:27 who had also worked as an executive at a few NFL teams
0:33:29 and came to chair an advocacy group
0:33:31 called the Fritz Pollard Alliance,
0:33:35 named for that first black head coach way back in 1920.
0:33:38 So the NFL was ready to talk.
0:33:40 The advocates were ready to talk.
0:33:42 And how about the team owners,
0:33:46 the ones who actually hire the football coaches?
0:33:48 Among the owners,
0:33:51 you would have found considerably less enthusiasm.
0:33:55 But Dan Rooney of the Steelers was an exception.
0:33:58 Dan Rooney recognized that what these lawyers
0:34:00 were talking about was something
0:34:03 that the league had to engage and embrace.
0:34:06 And Dan Rooney was trying to get other owners in the league
0:34:09 to do something to try to increase equity.
0:34:13 And what was the something then that was decided upon?
0:34:18 So the report that I mentioned was in late September of 2002.
0:34:21 And over the course of the following three months,
0:34:23 the lawyers were brought in to meet.
0:34:27 The owners had their own internal meetings.
0:34:29 They talked to their outside counsel.
0:34:32 There was a great deal of resistance.
0:34:34 But there seemed to be some sort of galvanization
0:34:36 around this idea,
0:34:40 which the lawyers called the Fair Competition Resolution,
0:34:41 which was a requirement
0:34:44 that every club interview at least one person of color
0:34:46 before making a head coach hire.
0:34:50 – So this new idea is to have one minority candidate
0:34:52 be among the interviewees.
0:34:55 Was there also any kind of rule or requirement
0:34:58 about the number of interviewees for an open position?
0:35:01 – No, at the time there was no rule about that.
0:35:04 The idea was just, hey, have one person of color.
0:35:06 And there was a great deal of resistance.
0:35:08 There’s one really interesting meeting
0:35:11 where the NFL brought their outside counsel,
0:35:13 a guy named Tom Williamson,
0:35:16 to talk to the owners at the owners meeting
0:35:18 about why this might be a good idea.
0:35:19 And the owners are saying,
0:35:23 well, you can’t tell me who to hire and this and that.
0:35:27 And Tom says, look, we’re getting crushed in the press.
0:35:29 We have ridiculous disproportionality
0:35:32 between our head coaches and our players.
0:35:34 What better idea do you have?
0:35:39 And all these billionaire owners had nothing to say.
0:35:42 And so out of that meeting came this idea
0:35:44 that you know what, maybe we should try this.
0:35:46 And Dan Rooney worked to get support
0:35:47 from all the other owners.
0:35:52 – My father felt that it was important
0:35:55 that you get a complete consensus.
0:35:57 That again is Jim Rooney.
0:35:59 You had a couple of folks hold out
0:36:00 and you had Al Davis,
0:36:02 who really has been a leader in diversity
0:36:05 holding out for a while saying, I already do this.
0:36:08 I think he was scolding the league a little bit.
0:36:10 But eventually my father said to Al,
0:36:12 well, if you’re doing it, then you’re already in agreement.
0:36:14 And Al kind of nodded to my father and said,
0:36:16 okay, Dan, you win this one.
0:36:19 And then Mike Brown of the Bengals,
0:36:21 my father had a conversation with Mike,
0:36:24 whose father, Paul Brown, really invented modern football.
0:36:28 And Paul Brown’s history with black players is mixed.
0:36:32 So it was getting not just enough consensus
0:36:33 where you had majority,
0:36:35 but really getting to the point
0:36:37 where you had a unanimous vote.
0:36:38 – There were holdouts,
0:36:42 but ultimately Dan Rooney was able to wrangle everybody.
0:36:46 And out of this came this idea,
0:36:50 well, Dan Rooney was the strongest proponent inside for this.
0:36:52 Let’s call it the Rooney Rule.
0:36:58 – And so the Rooney Rule became reality in the NFL.
0:36:59 How did it work out?
0:37:00 After the break,
0:37:03 we speak with one former black head coach.
0:37:06 – In the beginning it was a good rule to put in.
0:37:08 – But it soon got complicated.
0:37:09 I’m Stephen Dubner.
0:37:11 This is Freakin’omics Radio.
0:37:12 We’ll be right back.
0:37:23 (dramatic music)
0:37:25 – Before the break,
0:37:28 we heard the history that led the NFL to adopt
0:37:31 a novel hiring policy called the Rooney Rule,
0:37:34 which mandated that when a team was hiring a head coach,
0:37:37 they had to interview at least one minority candidate.
0:37:38 The goal was to ensure
0:37:42 that qualified minority candidates didn’t get overlooked.
0:37:46 Or as the legal scholar Jeremy Duru puts it,
0:37:49 you know, “Fish the whole pond, fish the whole pond.”
0:37:52 One idea behind fishing the whole pond
0:37:55 in any hiring process, not just the NFL,
0:37:57 is to make sure that your own cognitive biases
0:38:00 don’t overwhelm your search for the best candidate,
0:38:03 that you don’t give in to familiarity
0:38:06 and hire someone who feels right for the part
0:38:11 or someone who, in this case, looks like a football coach.
0:38:13 – One of the things that the Rooney Rule does
0:38:15 is it slows down processes, right?
0:38:18 It forces you to slow down.
0:38:22 We talk a lot about how important it is to slow down
0:38:25 your decision-making process and be more intentional
0:38:27 and deliberate.
0:38:31 When you are grinding in a short period of time
0:38:35 to make a decision, you generally retreat
0:38:37 to what’s comfortable.
0:38:41 And if you are running an organization
0:38:46 and you are white, you generally retreat to whiteness.
0:38:48 You retreat to hiring someone who is like you,
0:38:51 and not even on a conscious level.
0:38:54 But if you take time and you release some of that pressure
0:38:56 and you’re a little more open and intentional
0:38:59 about thinking broadly, then you don’t retreat
0:39:02 into that safety space as much.
0:39:04 And I think you have a better opportunity
0:39:06 to make a decision that’s ultimately better
0:39:08 for you and your organization.
0:39:14 – So what happened in the early days of the Rooney Rule?
0:39:18 – We have one head coach of color after 2001.
0:39:21 The following year, there were three head coaches of color.
0:39:22 The following year was up to five
0:39:24 and in a few years, it was up to eight.
0:39:28 So there really did seem to be progress being made.
0:39:31 – One of those black coaches, Marvin Lewis,
0:39:34 had been hired by Mike Brown of the Cincinnati Bengals.
0:39:37 As we mentioned earlier, Brown had been one of the holdouts
0:39:39 on the Rooney Rule vote.
0:39:43 And yet, Mike Brown, he put together a textbook
0:39:46 interview process in light of the Rooney Rule.
0:39:50 It’s important to note that the time the Bengals were terrible
0:39:55 and there was a sense that, you know, we need discipline here.
0:39:58 Mike Brown went out and one person who was available
0:39:59 was Tom Coughlin.
0:40:02 So Tom Coughlin is a coach who’s had a lot of success
0:40:05 in the league and was known as a disciplinarian.
0:40:07 Seemed like he’d be the perfect solution
0:40:08 to the Bengals problem.
0:40:10 And so Mike Brown interviewed him
0:40:14 but also interviewed Marvin Lewis,
0:40:18 who was defensive coordinator with the Ravens long time.
0:40:20 Even though he didn’t fit what appeared
0:40:22 to be the mold the Bengals wanted,
0:40:26 they went through the process, they interviewed him,
0:40:28 they brought him back for a second one.
0:40:31 They were impressed by him and they hired him.
0:40:34 He turned around the club the next year,
0:40:36 went to eight and eight after I think the club
0:40:38 won two games a year before.
0:40:40 – And he ended up being there forever, yeah?
0:40:42 – Forever, ended up being there forever.
0:40:44 – So when you look back at that incident
0:40:47 with an owner who was not enthusiastic
0:40:48 but went through the process
0:40:50 and ended up hiring a black coach
0:40:51 who proved to be very successful.
0:40:54 I mean, that sounds like the poster boy situation
0:40:55 for your argument, yes?
0:40:57 – Yeah, that was the poster for the argument.
0:41:01 – In the beginning, it was a good rule to put in.
0:41:03 – That is Herm Edwards.
0:41:06 He played in the NFL, coached in the NFL.
0:41:10 And today he is an NFL analyst for ESPN.
0:41:12 I mean pro football, I’ve been in this league
0:41:14 for over 30 years.
0:41:16 – Edwards’ father was a black man
0:41:17 with a long career in the US Army.
0:41:20 He met his wife while stationed in Germany
0:41:21 after World War II.
0:41:24 Herm Edwards has said that being in an interracial marriage
0:41:26 was hard on his parents,
0:41:29 but that there was no bitterness from my mom or dad.
0:41:31 We just marched on.
0:41:35 For Herm Edwards, football was part of that march.
0:41:37 – I’m indebted to the game of football.
0:41:39 And it started for me in high school.
0:41:41 And then obviously from there to college
0:41:43 and professional football as a player
0:41:46 and then as a coach, assistant coach, a scout.
0:41:48 – Edwards had a 10-year career playing cornerback
0:41:51 in the NFL before he moved into coaching.
0:41:54 Tony Dungey is a part of this story too.
0:41:58 – Tony gets hired in Tampa and I go with Tony and become–
0:42:00 – Your defensive backs or DC and Tampa?
0:42:03 – I was a defensive backs, but I was the assistant head coach.
0:42:04 And that was the key.
0:42:06 Tony said, when he brought me down there, he said,
0:42:08 “Look, you can go a lot of places in college
0:42:09 and go be a coordinator.”
0:42:10 He said, “You don’t need to do that.
0:42:12 I’m gonna teach you how to be a head coach.”
0:42:15 And he gave me a lot of responsibility as a head coach.
0:42:17 – You’re the same age, roughly, yes?
0:42:20 – Yes, came into league at the same time, exactly right.
0:42:21 – So what did he do?
0:42:22 What did he show you?
0:42:23 What did he teach you?
0:42:25 – So all the meetings that he would be in
0:42:28 with the general managers, with the owners, the draft,
0:42:30 all those things behind closed doors
0:42:32 where the head coach is involved in it,
0:42:34 I would sit in there.
0:42:36 He would make decisions like training camp.
0:42:37 He’d go down to training camp, schedule in.
0:42:40 And I would ask him, I said, “Now, Tony, why did you do this?”
0:42:42 And he would say, “Well, I did it ’cause this reason.”
0:42:43 – Give me an example.
0:42:44 What’s something he would do?
0:42:45 – You know, something simple.
0:42:47 Why are you giving him an off day here?
0:42:50 And he’d go, “Well, because we’re gonna do this,
0:42:51 this and this.”
0:42:53 And then he looked at me, would tell me this.
0:42:56 He said, “Herm, you might do it different,
0:42:58 but I’m gonna give you knowledge.
0:42:59 You don’t have to follow everything I do
0:43:02 because you gotta look at it out of your eyes
0:43:04 and it’s okay.”
0:43:07 And so I sat there for, I don’t know how long,
0:43:10 for about five years, and this was kind of interesting.
0:43:13 I had chances after my second year there
0:43:15 to go to places to be a coordinator.
0:43:18 And he goes, “You don’t wanna do that.”
0:43:19 And I said, “Because why?”
0:43:21 – Well, because you get stuck.
0:43:23 – Because you weren’t ready or?
0:43:24 – No, Tony said, “No, just stay here.”
0:43:26 He said, “You’re gonna be a head coach.”
0:43:27 – Interesting.
0:43:30 So he was grooming you from the beginning to be a head coach.
0:43:31 – He was grooming me from the beginning.
0:43:34 And it was interesting because I could have went to college.
0:43:36 And he goes, “You don’t wanna do that.”
0:43:38 He said, “You need to be an NFL head coach.”
0:43:39 And he was right.
0:43:41 (upbeat music)
0:43:44 – In 2001, before the Rooney Rule was adopted,
0:43:47 Herm Edwards became the sixth black head coach
0:43:48 in NFL history.
0:43:51 He spent several seasons coaching the New York Jets,
0:43:53 another few with the Kansas City Chiefs,
0:43:55 and eventually he did take a college head coaching job
0:43:57 at Arizona State University.
0:44:00 Edwards did not have a great coaching record.
0:44:02 That’s why he’s a broadcaster now.
0:44:05 But he did get the opportunity.
0:44:08 He recognizes that his path was easier than most,
0:44:12 thanks to the mentorship of Tony Dungey.
0:44:15 So why does Edwards think that the Rooney Rule was,
0:44:17 as he put it, good in the beginning?
0:44:19 – Well, because it slowed guys down
0:44:21 from hiring their buddies.
0:44:22 This is a big job.
0:44:23 When you get ready to hire somebody,
0:44:25 you wanna know some information.
0:44:27 Owners talk, they say, “You interviewed this guy,
0:44:29 “you interviewed that guy, what did it look like?”
0:44:31 Well, he did okay, he didn’t do okay, whatever.
0:44:32 They all speak.
0:44:35 So in the beginning, it forced you to slow down.
0:44:37 Because what used to happen,
0:44:39 the teams had gotten to playoffs,
0:44:40 those are the guys you went after.
0:44:41 When they lost, like some of these dudes
0:44:43 couldn’t even interview when they were in the playoffs.
0:44:45 Really, I had to lose a game to get an interview.
0:44:48 And then sometimes the job would be gone.
0:44:49 Because the time you got out of the playoffs,
0:44:52 it was too late, they wanted to hire somebody.
0:44:54 So I tried to be an optimist about this
0:44:56 because I’ve been in the league for so long
0:44:58 and I’ve watched it grow.
0:45:01 And wherever I’ve been, I’ve been the first black head coach.
0:45:05 The Jets, Kansas City, Arizona State.
0:45:07 So I chuckled because I know that eventually
0:45:10 someone was gonna ask me the question.
0:45:11 When I went to Kansas City, “Hey, you know,”
0:45:13 and I said, “I already know.”
0:45:15 And then when I went to Arizona State, they went,
0:45:17 “I said, I already know, don’t ask the question.”
0:45:22 And so you think in 2024, this shouldn’t be a question.
0:45:26 This should no longer be a question, but it still is.
0:45:29 As it gotten better, it’s gotten a lot better,
0:45:31 but there’s still a lot of work to do.
0:45:34 – What kind of work still needs to be done?
0:45:37 Well, consider those interviews that were required
0:45:38 by the Rooney Rule.
0:45:41 – So in the beginning, it was a good way
0:45:44 of slowing it down and getting interviews,
0:45:48 but then it became almost like, no.
0:45:50 Because the interviews was like,
0:45:52 “Okay, I’m gonna interview some guys,
0:45:53 “but I already know who I’m gonna hire.”
0:45:55 – So were those sham interviews?
0:45:58 – Yeah, I mean, some of them were phone calls.
0:45:59 I interviewed with a guy.
0:46:00 He didn’t even bring in.
0:46:04 – Coming up next time in part two,
0:46:07 the underbelly of the Rooney Rule.
0:46:10 – It wasn’t two weeks after everybody had agreed to the rule
0:46:14 that it was totally flouted by an owner
0:46:15 who just agreed to it.
0:46:17 And then the Rooney Rule started drifting
0:46:20 into corporate America.
0:46:22 This too had its problems.
0:46:23 – It’s no different than saying,
0:46:24 “Oh, you know what?
0:46:25 “I want to run a marathon.”
0:46:30 There is a 42 week process where you like train, y’all.
0:46:32 You don’t just get up and say,
0:46:34 “I’m gonna run 26.2 miles.”
0:46:36 And that’s what people do with their diversity efforts.
0:46:38 – That’s next time on the show.
0:46:40 Until then, take care of yourself.
0:46:43 And if you can, someone else too.
0:46:46 Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio.
0:46:49 You can find our entire archive on any podcast app
0:46:51 or at freakonomics.com,
0:46:53 where we also publish transcripts and show notes.
0:46:56 This episode was produced by Teo Jacobs.
0:46:58 Our staff also includes Alina Kulman,
0:47:00 Augusta Chapman, Dalvin Abouwaji,
0:47:03 Eleanor Osborne, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez,
0:47:06 Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippon, Jasmine Klinger, Jeremy Johnston,
0:47:08 John Schnarrs, Julie Kanfer, Lerick Bowditch,
0:47:11 Morgan Levy, Neil Caruth, Rebecca Lee Douglas,
0:47:13 Sarah Lilly, and Zach Lipinski.
0:47:16 Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune” by the Hitchhikers.
0:47:18 Our composer is Luis Guerra.
0:47:21 As always, I thank you for listening.
0:47:24 – Okay, and then what about Special Teams Coordinators?
0:47:26 – Special Teams Coordinators,
0:47:28 I’m not exactly sure what Special Teams Coordinators are.
0:47:30 – No one pays attention to Special Teams.
0:47:31 (laughs)
0:47:32 We’re just being honest here.
0:47:34 Sorry, Special Teams folks.
0:47:41 – The Freakonomics Radio Network,
0:47:43 the hidden side of everything.
0:47:47 Stitcher.
0:47:49 (upbeat music)
0:47:52 you
0:00:04 In case you somehow didn’t notice,
0:00:07 if you aren’t one of the tens of millions of people
0:00:09 watching on TV or placing some bets
0:00:13 or keeping up with the Taylor Swift news,
0:00:16 the National Football League has begun its new season.
0:00:19 The NFL is the richest sports league in history
0:00:23 and probably the most growth-obsessed as well.
0:00:26 One reason is that many team owners made their money
0:00:30 by building their own businesses– in real estate or oil,
0:00:33 in the HVAC industry, in America’s biggest
0:00:34 chain of truck stops.
0:00:37 That kind of business success requires a strong urge
0:00:39 to expand.
0:00:42 And so, not surprisingly, the NFL
0:00:44 is also driven by expansion.
0:00:46 There are more games per season than there used to be,
0:00:48 played in more places–
0:00:51 this year in England, Germany, and Brazil.
0:00:54 NFL games are distributed on just about every network
0:00:57 and streaming platform you’ve ever heard of,
0:00:58 and some you haven’t.
0:01:01 If you look at the top 100 TV broadcasts
0:01:05 last year in the US, you will see that 93 of them
0:01:06 were NFL games.
0:01:09 Among the others were the Oscars, the Macy’s Thanksgiving
0:01:13 Day Parade, and three college football games.
0:01:17 The NFL did around $13 billion in revenues last year,
0:01:20 and each of the 32 teams are worth, on average,
0:01:22 more than $5 billion.
0:01:25 That is much more than teams in any other sport.
0:01:28 Owning an NFL team has provided a route
0:01:30 for wealthy individuals or families
0:01:32 to become very wealthy.
0:01:35 This creates its own problem.
0:01:37 There can be a lot of taxes to pay when it’s time to sell,
0:01:40 and there just aren’t that many potential buyers
0:01:42 for a $5 billion asset–
0:01:44 at least the right kind of buyers.
0:01:47 The NFL was founded and run for decades
0:01:50 by a relatively small group of families,
0:01:53 and it has remained vigilant about who should be let in.
0:01:55 In Europe, the top soccer leagues
0:01:59 allow their teams to be owned by investment cartels
0:02:01 and oligarchs in Petro States.
0:02:04 The NFL doesn’t, not yet, at least,
0:02:06 although they did recently vote to allow private equity
0:02:09 investors to buy up to 10% of a team.
0:02:13 If they allowed 100%, they would likely
0:02:14 sell out in 10 minutes.
0:02:18 So great are the NFL’s prospects.
0:02:21 There is nothing predetermined about this massive financial
0:02:22 success.
0:02:25 Professional football was, for many years,
0:02:26 barely professional at all.
0:02:29 It was a ragged and violent game,
0:02:32 playing deep in the shadow of baseball and other sports.
0:02:34 But over the past 50 years, the NFL
0:02:37 has turned itself into an entertainment juggernaut.
0:02:40 The football games are, of course, at the center,
0:02:44 but the attendant swarms of media and gambling and merchandising
0:02:48 and eating and drinking are what make the NFL and industry
0:02:50 unto itself.
0:02:54 And it is, for the most part, an extremely well-run industry.
0:02:57 There is a premium put on modern management techniques
0:03:00 when it comes to resource allocation, on-field strategy
0:03:04 and off-field strategy, and personnel decisions.
0:03:06 Most of us, when we watch a game,
0:03:09 we concentrate on the players.
0:03:13 53 per team divided into defensive, offensive, and special teams
0:03:17 and units, each with their own systems and coaches.
0:03:20 The average NFL team has 23 coaches.
0:03:24 There’s the head coach, the offensive and defensive
0:03:26 and special teams coordinators, and then
0:03:29 a lot of position coaches, assistant coaches, quality
0:03:30 control coaches.
0:03:33 And that’s not even counting the training and medical staff,
0:03:36 the logistics people, and so on.
0:03:39 The head coach who sits atop this pyramid
0:03:43 is essentially the CEO of what happens on the football field.
0:03:47 It is an important, difficult, thrilling job
0:03:50 with a hefty turnover rate and an average tenure
0:03:52 of roughly three years.
0:03:55 The most successful teams in the league
0:03:57 excel at identifying talent.
0:03:59 So we thought it might be interesting
0:04:03 to look into how these multi-billion dollar franchises
0:04:07 choose their on-field CEOs, especially because there
0:04:10 is an obvious discrepancy in the NFL.
0:04:13 The majority of the players are black.
0:04:16 The majority of the coaches are not.
0:04:19 Today on Freakonomics Radio, why is that?
0:04:22 We don’t take enough time in the interview process.
0:04:25 We don’t interview enough different candidates.
0:04:27 And if I have to make a decision,
0:04:29 I’m going to make a decision of something
0:04:31 that’s familiar to me.
0:04:33 More than two decades ago, the league
0:04:35 came up with a policy to address this situation.
0:04:37 It is called the Rooney Rule.
0:04:41 We will hear about its history, its successes and failures,
0:04:44 and how the idea has spread outside of football.
0:04:46 They said, oh, George Floyd, that’s bad.
0:04:47 We don’t want to be bad.
0:04:48 We don’t want to be racist.
0:04:50 We’re going to fix diversity.
0:04:52 And has it fixed diversity?
0:04:55 I mean, what people do in the dark, you don’t know.
0:04:57 Those are just some of the questions
0:05:00 we’ll try to answer in this episode and next weeks, too.
0:05:03 Also, questions like this one.
0:05:09 How can I only get to go out and get my bell rung on Sundays
0:05:11 and I don’t get to be on the sidelines
0:05:14 or in the executive suites organizing the game?
0:05:18 This is your welcome to the NFL moment, starting now.
0:05:32 This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that
0:05:36 explores the hidden side of everything with your host,
0:05:37 Stephen Dubner.
0:05:48 Imagine that your dream is to become a head coach
0:05:50 in the National Football League.
0:05:52 How likely are you to make it?
0:05:54 Not very likely.
0:05:56 There are only 32 of these jobs.
0:05:58 And up until now, they’ve always gone
0:06:01 to men of the men who currently hold those jobs, roughly
0:06:04 a third played professional football
0:06:06 and all but one played college football.
0:06:10 And even though the majority of NFL players are black,
0:06:12 for many decades, you weren’t going
0:06:15 to get a head coaching job unless you were white.
0:06:18 For a black former player to become a head coach,
0:06:20 there really wasn’t much of a path.
0:06:22 That is Jeremy Duru.
0:06:25 He’s a law professor at American University in Washington, DC.
0:06:28 And he directs the sport and society initiative
0:06:30 at AU’s Law School.
0:06:34 One reason for that goes back further historically, Stephen,
0:06:37 which is that black players were expurgated from the league
0:06:39 in 1934.
0:06:40 Yeah, talk about that a minute.
0:06:42 What we now know is the NFL began in 1920,
0:06:43 I believe, is that right?
0:06:44 Yes.
0:06:45 And there were black players, not a ton,
0:06:49 but there were black players and coaches as well, yeah?
0:06:52 In the very early days, you had a few black players.
0:06:54 You had one black head coach.
0:06:56 Amazingly, I mean, for those of us
0:06:58 who study American history, you know
0:07:01 how savage the racial discord was at the time,
0:07:04 for there to be a black head coach.
0:07:06 And the NFL was extraordinary.
0:07:10 And the coach, Fritz Pollard, is his name, was also a player.
0:07:12 And it wasn’t rare at the time to have player coaches.
0:07:14 But what’s important to recognize
0:07:17 is these players, they literally were
0:07:19 seeking to protect themselves on the field.
0:07:23 From opposing players, from teammates at practice,
0:07:27 Fritz had this thing where when you got knocked down,
0:07:30 he would as quickly as he could flip on to his back
0:07:31 and stick his feet up in the air
0:07:34 and start swinging them like he’s riding a bicycle
0:07:36 to basically protect himself from getting
0:07:39 crushed by people who were seeking to harm him.
0:07:42 That’s what we’re dealing with at the time.
0:07:44 And so there wasn’t a big black presence.
0:07:47 As of the early 1930s, there was a quote unquote
0:07:50 “gentleman’s agreement” among all owners in the league
0:07:53 to kick out black people all together.
0:07:56 And then Rooney bought in right around that time.
0:07:58 He had, in his previous business dealings,
0:08:00 been pretty even-handed.
0:08:02 One of the more even-handed business people
0:08:03 when it comes to race,
0:08:05 certainly in Pittsburgh, part of the East Coast.
0:08:07 But he went along with this gentleman’s agreement.
0:08:15 – My grandfather followed the ban on black players.
0:08:18 And he talked about that as being
0:08:20 the biggest mistake of his life.
0:08:23 – And that is Jim Rooney, who is now in his 50s.
0:08:25 – I grew up as part of a family business,
0:08:27 which is the Pittsburgh Steelers.
0:08:31 – The Steelers are still majority owned by Rooney’s.
0:08:33 The team president is Art Rooney II.
0:08:36 Before that, it was Dan Rooney, Jim Rooney’s father.
0:08:40 And before that, the original Art Rooney, the team’s founder.
0:08:44 Art Rooney came up as a boxer and a semi-pro baseball player.
0:08:47 And then he worked as a promoter and a professional gambler.
0:08:50 Through this combination of aboveboard
0:08:53 and maybe not so aboveboard work,
0:08:56 Art Rooney became a legend in Pittsburgh,
0:08:59 roguish for sure, if not quite a rogue.
0:09:03 I happen to know all this and much more, way too much,
0:09:06 because I have been a Steelers fan since I was a child
0:09:09 and I have a couple shelves full of Steelers books.
0:09:11 I’ve written one myself.
0:09:14 I now asked Jim Rooney to explain
0:09:17 how the Pittsburgh Steelers first came to be.
0:09:20 – There is a lifelong family debate on this story.
0:09:23 So you’re gonna get Jim Rooney’s version,
0:09:26 my great uncle Jim, had the semi-pro team,
0:09:28 and they were playing all over Western Pennsylvania.
0:09:30 – And we should say this is a time when
0:09:33 every Steel Mill, every little town,
0:09:35 they all had their own football teams, right?
0:09:36 – Yep.
0:09:40 So my grandfather had a good friend named Charlie Bidwell.
0:09:42 Charlie Bidwell owns the Chicago Cardinals,
0:09:44 which are now the Arizona Cardinals.
0:09:47 And the story goes that Charlie and Art Rooney
0:09:51 were running booze across the Great Lakes during prohibition.
0:09:55 And Bidwell says, “Hey Art, we’re putting a team in Philly.
0:09:57 Do you wanna put a team in Pittsburgh?”
0:10:00 And so my grandfather goes to Uncle Jim
0:10:02 and Jim owed Art like $5,000.
0:10:05 It was a lot of money for 1933.
0:10:05 – Wait a minute.
0:10:08 How does one brother end up owing another brother that much?
0:10:12 This is a cut from some project.
0:10:13 – Something went on with Uncle Jim.
0:10:16 Uncle Jim took risks and was always in a little bit of trouble.
0:10:18 So Uncle Jim owes the chief,
0:10:20 as my grandfather was known, $5,000.
0:10:24 And so my grandfather says, “Jim, if you give me that team,
0:10:26 I’m gonna put them in this national football league
0:10:28 and we’ll call it even.”
0:10:30 And so Jim’s response was,
0:10:32 “Art, I could never do that to you.
0:10:35 That national football league is not gonna make it.”
0:10:38 So thank God my grandfather pushed him a little bit
0:10:41 and took the team and put them into the national football league.
0:10:46 – So Pittsburgh got an NFL team in 1933.
0:10:48 They were originally called the Pirates,
0:10:50 same as the city’s baseball team.
0:10:54 But in 1940, Art Rooney renamed them as the Pittsburgh Steelers.
0:10:56 In 1938, they drafted a running back
0:11:00 from the University of Colorado named Byron “Wizard” White.
0:11:03 He led the NFL in rushing yards in his rookie season,
0:11:08 but he quit the Steelers to go back to school at Oxford.
0:11:11 And he eventually became a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
0:11:13 For the Pittsburgh Steelers,
0:11:16 “Wizard” White was one of the few bright spots
0:11:19 in the first 40 years of their existence.
0:11:22 They were generally a terrible team.
0:11:26 The league itself, meanwhile, was starting to evolve.
0:11:31 In 1946, the NFL lifted its ban on black players.
0:11:32 Why?
0:11:34 Here again is Jeremy Duru.
0:11:38 – You get to 1946, the Rams moved to LA
0:11:40 and in order to play in the Coliseum
0:11:43 because of a substantial grassroots movement
0:11:45 headed by the black press out there,
0:11:49 it was determined that you couldn’t have a segregated league
0:11:51 coming into play games in the Coliseum.
0:11:55 So they were forced to bring in a couple of black players
0:11:56 and they did.
0:11:58 And that’s how you had black players come into the league.
0:12:01 – Black players in the 1940s, NFL encountered
0:12:03 the same verbal and physical abuse
0:12:05 that players faced in the ’20s.
0:12:08 And even though the NFL had reintegrated
0:12:10 the best college football programs of the time,
0:12:14 like Alabama, LSU and Texas, remained segregated.
0:12:18 So the best black players often played at HBCUs,
0:12:21 historically black colleges and universities
0:12:25 and were therefore overlooked by NFL scouts.
0:12:27 Black players who did make it to the NFL
0:12:30 often found their options limited.
0:12:33 – In those early days of reintegration,
0:12:36 black players were not permitted to play positions
0:12:39 that are viewed as quote unquote thinking positions,
0:12:43 quarterback, center, middle linebacker.
0:12:46 Black players were relegated to wide receiver,
0:12:48 cornerback, running back.
0:12:51 No, I do not seek to disparage those positions.
0:12:53 But at the time, those are positions that were viewed
0:12:55 as quote unquote brawn positions
0:12:57 and not the brain position.
0:13:00 – Those thinking positions also happen to be the positions
0:13:04 that produce a lot of future NFL coaches,
0:13:06 offensive coordinators, defensive coordinators
0:13:08 and head coaches especially.
0:13:12 So by excluding black players from those positions,
0:13:14 the league was also cutting off their best route
0:13:16 to a coaching future.
0:13:18 But not every team went along
0:13:20 with these unwritten rules around race.
0:13:22 Here’s Jim Rooney again.
0:13:26 – I think my grandfather and then my father in particular,
0:13:29 you know, made decisions with an open view
0:13:33 of morals, scruples and understanding that, you know,
0:13:35 yes, there was a business component.
0:13:38 He didn’t dismiss the business component,
0:13:40 but there was also this human element.
0:13:44 It was Dan Rooney, son of art, father of Jim,
0:13:47 who set this new direction for the Steelers.
0:13:48 By the early 1960s,
0:13:51 he was running the team’s day-to-day operations.
0:13:53 – As Dan took over the team,
0:13:57 he was really intentional and serious about diversity.
0:14:01 He was intentional and serious about making sure
0:14:03 that different perspectives were articulated,
0:14:05 different perspectives were considered
0:14:07 in respect to decisions that were made.
0:14:09 He hired this guy named Bill Nunn,
0:14:12 who was a reporter for Black newspaper in Pittsburgh,
0:14:14 who essentially criticized the Steelers
0:14:17 as talking about interest in diversity,
0:14:19 but not really backing it up.
0:14:23 – My father, he was invited by a parish priest
0:14:24 to march in Selma, Alabama.
0:14:26 He didn’t go.
0:14:28 Bill Nunn, a newspaper writer, said,
0:14:30 “Dan Rooney says he’s open to integration,
0:14:33 but really hasn’t done much more than anyone else.”
0:14:35 And that became the moment that my father sat down
0:14:38 with Bill and said, “Bill, you’re right.
0:14:40 I want to do this differently.
0:14:41 What can I do?”
0:14:44 – And he hired Bill Nunn to come in and scout for the team,
0:14:47 and Bill Nunn diversified the club
0:14:50 by going to HBCUs to look for players,
0:14:52 which few other clubs were doing.
0:14:56 And one, it made the Steelers a more diverse organization
0:14:58 and an organization open to forward
0:15:00 and interesting and progressive thinking about race.
0:15:02 And two, it made them better
0:15:04 because they tapped pools of talent
0:15:06 and nobody else was tapping.
0:15:08 – What were some things that the Steelers were doing
0:15:11 that made black players and coaches at black schools
0:15:13 so comfortable with their players going there?
0:15:16 – I think so much of it was Bill
0:15:19 because Bill didn’t just go and look at tape.
0:15:21 He would spend the weekend there.
0:15:26 He always wanted to see the players’ athletic ability
0:15:30 outside of the arena where things could be managed
0:15:31 by their coaches.
0:15:33 If there was family around,
0:15:35 he would try to talk to their family,
0:15:40 really try to understand the entire persona of a player,
0:15:43 and then he could make a really strong recommendation
0:15:46 because there was less data.
0:15:48 What he did was amazing.
0:15:50 Bill helped change the NFL.
0:15:53 – What’s the Steelers’ organization doing
0:15:55 once the players get there
0:15:57 to make it a place where they wanna go?
0:15:59 – I think the biggest was hiring Bill,
0:16:02 but after Bill was naming Joe Gilliam
0:16:04 as the quarterback in 1974.
0:16:07 So this was the first time in NFL history
0:16:09 that prior to the start of the season,
0:16:11 a black man was named starting quarterback.
0:16:13 – That’s right.
0:16:15 It took 28 years from when black players
0:16:17 were allowed back into the NFL
0:16:20 until a team announced a black starting quarterback
0:16:22 at the beginning of the season.
0:16:25 But with the Steelers, it went further than that.
0:16:28 Black players on the Steelers were empowered to step up
0:16:30 under this new era of leadership.
0:16:32 There was team president Dan Rooney,
0:16:34 the influential scout Bill Nunn,
0:16:38 and a future Hall of Fame coach named Chuck Knowle.
0:16:42 Knowle did not fit any football coach stereotypes.
0:16:44 He was a deep reader, an intellectual,
0:16:46 and a lover of classical music
0:16:49 who saw himself as more teacher than drill sergeant.
0:16:51 He was always telling his players that football
0:16:54 was just one brief chapter of their existence
0:16:56 and that they had to prepare themselves
0:16:58 for what he called their life’s work.
0:17:01 Keep in mind that players made much less money then.
0:17:03 Most of them had full-time jobs in the off season
0:17:05 to support themselves.
0:17:08 – The decision that Chuck made
0:17:11 to start Joe Gilliam, several of the HBCU players,
0:17:15 told me that that moment meant so much to them
0:17:16 because it said to them,
0:17:19 okay, if they’re willing to start a quarterback,
0:17:22 then I know if I’m the best defensive back
0:17:25 or if I’m the best linebacker, I’m the best tackle,
0:17:27 I’m gonna have an opportunity here.
0:17:29 That decision was key.
0:17:31 Then I think the next big milestone
0:17:34 was Joe Green becoming captain.
0:17:37 – Joe Green, known as Mean Joe Green,
0:17:39 was a defensive lineman who had been scouted
0:17:41 by Bill Nunn out of North Texas State.
0:17:45 He was huge, very physical, and, well, mean,
0:17:47 at least on the field,
0:17:49 especially at the start of his career.
0:17:52 The Steelers had drafted Green in 1969
0:17:54 and he quickly became the foundation of a defense
0:17:57 that was known as the Steel Curtain.
0:18:00 It was clear that Joe was the leader of the team.
0:18:02 He had those two phenomenal qualities in the leader.
0:18:06 He was ferocious and he had that ability to intimidate,
0:18:07 and I’m not saying leaders should be intimidating
0:18:08 all the time, but there’s a time
0:18:12 you have to get a group of people to line up.
0:18:15 But then, once you got Joe’s stamp of approval,
0:18:18 he showed this care for them and their families
0:18:22 that was just the essence of what any locker room would want.
0:18:26 – By the mid-1970s, the Steelers looked markedly different
0:18:28 than most other NFL teams.
0:18:31 More black players, more black leadership,
0:18:34 and an unusual sense of cohesion.
0:18:37 Now, none of this would be remembered today,
0:18:39 except for the fact that this unusual team,
0:18:44 after 40 years of losing, finally began to win.
0:18:45 – It’s all over.
0:18:48 – The Steelers went on one of the most historic hot streaks
0:18:52 in sports history, winning four Super Bowls in six years.
0:18:53 – With his great victory.
0:18:56 They beat the Minnesota Vikings in 1975.
0:18:59 – The Steelers are the Super Bowl champions.
0:19:01 – The Dallas Cowboys in 1976.
0:19:03 – Our repeat champion.
0:19:05 – Cowboys again in 1979.
0:19:07 – Steelers have won it.
0:19:09 – And the Los Angeles Rams in 1980.
0:19:12 – Victoria’s in Super Bowl 14.
0:19:14 – And in the midst of this, in 1977,
0:19:17 the Steelers picked up an undrafted player
0:19:20 whose name you will know if you’re a football fan.
0:19:24 Tony Dungey comes in, is an okay football player,
0:19:27 but Chuck Noll immediately sees how brilliant he is,
0:19:31 and then hires him as an assistant coach.
0:19:35 He becomes, at a very young age, I think he was 29,
0:19:40 he becomes the first black man and youngest person
0:19:43 ever to be named defensive coordinator of an NFL team.
0:19:47 So Chuck saw how talented Dungey was,
0:19:50 and then Tony goes on to have the amazing career he’s had.
0:19:52 – By now, other teams had taken notice
0:19:55 of the Steelers’ success with black talent,
0:19:57 and they began to copy the scouting strategy
0:19:59 established by Bill Nunn.
0:20:03 In 1959, before Nunn joined the Steelers,
0:20:05 only 12% of NFL players were black.
0:20:09 By the 1990s, around two-thirds were.
0:20:11 And how about coaches?
0:20:15 Through the 1950s and ’60s and ’70s and most of the ’80s,
0:20:18 Fritz Pollard remained the only black head coach
0:20:19 in NFL history.
0:20:22 But that finally changed in 1989,
0:20:24 when Oakland Raiders owner, Al Davis,
0:20:26 named his former lineman, Art Shell,
0:20:28 as the team’s head coach.
0:20:32 Dan Rooney, who came from a long line of Irish Catholics,
0:20:35 was a soft-spoken consensus builder.
0:20:38 Al Davis, from a Brooklyn Jewish family,
0:20:42 was more aggressive and more willing to go off on his own.
0:20:45 – You know, Al Davis was very different than my father,
0:20:49 but both Al and Dan had this fundamental respect
0:20:52 for people and were interested
0:20:55 in overcoming these barriers.
0:20:57 – To Jim Rooney, the late ’80s were a time
0:20:59 when a lot of barriers were coming down.
0:21:02 – In 1989, you had Art Shell hired,
0:21:05 you had what was going on in the world,
0:21:08 where the Berlin Wall was coming down,
0:21:10 Russia was starting to fall apart.
0:21:12 You had this sense of great change,
0:21:16 and the NFL was in a massive change era as well.
0:21:18 You got a new commissioner.
0:21:21 Paul Tagliaboo was a young, up-and-coming person
0:21:24 who had a very open world view.
0:21:27 You had the sense then that things were moving
0:21:29 and were going to only move in that direction.
0:21:34 – So did things keep moving in that direction in the NFL?
0:21:36 That would be a no.
0:21:37 – This is outrageous.
0:21:39 How can a guy like Dungey get fired?
0:21:40 – That’s After the Break.
0:21:42 I’m Stephen Dovner, and you are listening
0:21:43 to Freakonomics Radio.
0:21:45 I hope you will spread the word about this show,
0:21:49 maybe give it a review or rating in your podcast app.
0:21:52 Those are great ways to support the shows you love.
0:21:53 We will be right back.
0:21:59 (dramatic music)
0:22:05 In 1997, National Football League commissioner Paul Tagliaboo
0:22:07 appointed Harold Henderson as the league’s
0:22:10 executive vice president for labor relations.
0:22:12 This made Henderson one of the highest ranking
0:22:16 black executives in professional sports.
0:22:18 Given all the momentum we were hearing about
0:22:20 before the break, you might think that a lot
0:22:24 of NFL teams by now would have hired a black head coach.
0:22:27 After all, across the league’s 32 teams,
0:22:29 more than half the players were black
0:22:32 and many head coaches are former players.
0:22:35 But the decision to hire a coach is a team decision,
0:22:39 not a decision made by some executive in the league office.
0:22:42 And the team owners were white.
0:22:45 Here again is the legal scholar Jeremy Duru.
0:22:47 – The easiest way to think about it
0:22:51 is that the NFL is like an umbrella organization.
0:22:55 And under that umbrella, you have 32 different clubs
0:22:57 that are their own businesses.
0:23:00 They’ve got their own owners, they’ve got their own presidents,
0:23:03 they’ve got their own culture, they’ve got their own policies.
0:23:07 The umbrella seeks to organize them in a way
0:23:09 such that they can have competitive games
0:23:13 against each other and a league in which to play.
0:23:17 I think that the casual observer would view the commissioner
0:23:19 as in charge of this whole thing.
0:23:22 And the commissioner is the head of the league.
0:23:26 But who hires the commissioner, the owners.
0:23:27 The owners hire the commissioner.
0:23:30 The owners have the power to not renew
0:23:32 the contract of the commissioner.
0:23:35 At the end of the day, these are individual businesses
0:23:37 and it’s very important to understand that.
0:23:41 And so each team, specifically the owner of each team,
0:23:43 someone who is accustomed to operating
0:23:46 as the master of his personal universe,
0:23:50 he is free to adopt whatever hiring policy he wants.
0:23:53 But by the end of the 2000 NFL season,
0:23:57 there had only been five black head coaches in league history.
0:23:59 If nothing else, the optics were not good.
0:24:02 – Football, it is a collision sport.
0:24:04 There is violence in the sport.
0:24:09 And the idea of a team is predominantly black
0:24:14 being sent out into essentially sport related combat
0:24:18 by a group of people who are entirely white,
0:24:22 who are standing outside on the sidelines looking on.
0:24:23 It’s a painful picture.
0:24:27 It harkens back to the days of battle royales
0:24:29 and other exploitation of black athletes.
0:24:32 And so I think inside those org–
0:24:34 – I mean, to say nothing of slavery, let’s be honest.
0:24:35 – Yeah, right.
0:24:39 It was painful for athletes in those organizations.
0:24:40 I don’t think they’re saying,
0:24:43 hey, listen, we need all of the coaching staff to be black.
0:24:45 But there’s gotta be a thought,
0:24:48 well, how can I only get to go out
0:24:51 and get my bell rung on Sundays
0:24:53 and I don’t get to be on the sidelines
0:24:57 or in the executive suites organizing the game?
0:24:58 – Whether it’s wins and losses
0:25:03 or the spirit and camaraderie
0:25:06 or friction, et cetera, of a team,
0:25:08 talk about the ways in which a team
0:25:12 that may be 60 or 70% black players,
0:25:16 how it’s different under a black head coach or coordinators
0:25:18 or a white head coach or coordinators.
0:25:20 – For those who don’t follow football,
0:25:22 I mean, one way to look at it is the head coach
0:25:24 is like the CEO of this team.
0:25:26 They are making the decisions.
0:25:27 They are running things.
0:25:29 They are the model at the top.
0:25:33 They’re the one who gives a last word before a game.
0:25:34 They’re the one who decides
0:25:36 what sort of schedule we’re gonna have.
0:25:39 It’s all in the head coach’s purview.
0:25:42 The black head coaches and their white head coaches
0:25:44 who have been deeply successful
0:25:49 on the interpersonal level with black players.
0:25:52 But I think there’s something important
0:25:54 for a black player to recognize
0:25:57 that there’s at least some black representation
0:25:58 on the coaching staff.
0:26:02 I’m responsible for that player’s wellbeing.
0:26:03 Head coach, or otherwise.
0:26:06 – Frustration around the absence of black coaches
0:26:10 seemed to hit a peak around the 2001 NFL season
0:26:13 when two black head coaches, two of only five in history,
0:26:14 were fired.
0:26:16 They both had winning records
0:26:18 and had both taken their teams to the playoffs
0:26:20 multiple times.
0:26:21 Those are the kind of accomplishments
0:26:25 that tend to not get you fired as an NFL head coach.
0:26:27 One of the fired coaches was Dennis Green
0:26:29 of the Minnesota Vikings.
0:26:32 The other was Tony Dungey of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
0:26:35 Dungey, you will remember, got his start with the Steelers
0:26:38 as a player and then as a very young coach
0:26:41 handpicked by Chuck Knoll.
0:26:44 The firing of Tony Dungey now caught the attention
0:26:47 of Dan Rooney, the Steelers’ owner and president.
0:26:50 Here again is his son Jim Rooney.
0:26:52 – So Dungey comes into the Steelers in ’77.
0:26:56 He and my father build a really close partnership.
0:26:58 And my father sees throughout the ’80s
0:27:03 and then the ’90s, he sees and has this ongoing conversation
0:27:07 with Tony about job interviews.
0:27:11 And my father sees the dehumanization.
0:27:13 They both talked to me about this
0:27:17 and the impact that had on my father to see someone
0:27:19 that he knew was better than so many folks
0:27:22 who were getting interviews and getting jobs
0:27:26 and saying, you know, this is just completely wrong.
0:27:28 – But Tony Dungey finally did get his chance
0:27:30 with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers
0:27:33 only to lose his job after six seasons.
0:27:36 Jim Rooney remembers his father’s reaction.
0:27:39 – I remember him just being really disillusioned.
0:27:40 You know, this is outrageous.
0:27:43 How can a guy like Dungey get fired?
0:27:44 There’s these different moments in life
0:27:46 where bad things happen
0:27:48 and they become the catalyst to change.
0:27:52 – Let me say two things here.
0:27:56 The first is that Tony Dungey did get another chance
0:27:58 with the Indianapolis Colts
0:28:01 and Dungey led the Colts to a Super Bowl victory.
0:28:04 So happy ending there.
0:28:05 The other thing to say is this.
0:28:10 Jim Rooney is an unabashed fan of his late father, Dan.
0:28:11 He wrote a book about his father
0:28:14 called A Different Way to Win.
0:28:17 Most books written by an offspring, he writes,
0:28:19 fall into one of two categories,
0:28:22 a tell-all or a beatification.
0:28:25 This book falls into the latter.
0:28:27 Jim Rooney argues that his father
0:28:29 was successful with the Steelers
0:28:32 because of the kind of person he was.
0:28:35 Honest, humble, compassionate.
0:28:38 He wasn’t colorful like his father, the chief,
0:28:41 but Dan Rooney cared about building things well,
0:28:43 running things well,
0:28:45 and he didn’t need to get the credit.
0:28:47 These traits also made him valuable
0:28:52 to his fellow NFL owners and to the league itself.
0:28:55 Rooney was heavily involved in labor relations,
0:28:58 league strategy, broadcast negotiations, and more.
0:29:01 He had the ear of other owners when he needed it
0:29:05 and when other owners needed to be broad in line,
0:29:07 it was often Rooney who did that.
0:29:12 And now in 2001, we know that Rooney was steamed
0:29:14 about what had happened to Tony Dungey.
0:29:16 Here’s Jeremy Duru again.
0:29:19 – Tony Dungey got fired by the Buccaneers.
0:29:21 Not only had he been successful,
0:29:25 but he took the organization from pure doormat status
0:29:28 and made them a contender every year
0:29:30 after he was fired and Dennis Green was fired.
0:29:33 This is after the 2001 season.
0:29:38 We now had one coach of color in this league of 32 clubs,
0:29:41 one head coach of color, league of 32 clubs,
0:29:42 and it was just crazy.
0:29:44 – Around this time, Duru was working
0:29:47 for a Washington law firm called Mary and Scallop.
0:29:51 They specialize in employment discrimination cases.
0:29:54 Cyrus Mary is an Iranian-American attorney
0:29:56 who had successfully brought racial discrimination cases
0:29:58 against Coca-Cola and Texaco
0:30:01 and was now suing Johnson & Johnson.
0:30:03 His co-counsel on the Johnson & Johnson case
0:30:06 was the superstar black attorney, Johnny Cochran,
0:30:10 who had successfully defended OJ Simpson on murder charges.
0:30:12 – And so Cyrus and Johnny,
0:30:15 I think during a break from a deposition,
0:30:18 they were working on that case just after Tony Dungey
0:30:20 got fired by the Buccaneers
0:30:23 and Dennis Green got fired by the Vikings.
0:30:25 We’re just talking in the break room.
0:30:28 You guys see what happened and I felt it was ridiculous.
0:30:29 And they were like, you know what?
0:30:31 What we’re seeing there is reflective of the work
0:30:33 that we do in employment discrimination
0:30:35 or civil rights work.
0:30:37 We need to dig into this a little bit.
0:30:39 – And what was the next step?
0:30:43 – They figured, okay, all the anecdotes in the world
0:30:46 may have some impact, but let’s get some stats on this.
0:30:48 So they commissioned a study.
0:30:50 They got someone named Janice Madden,
0:30:53 a labor economist at University of Pennsylvania.
0:30:55 They asked her if she would study
0:30:58 the previous 15 years of the NFL
0:31:00 and see how blackhead coaches
0:31:03 were stacking up to whitehead coaches.
0:31:07 Cyrus and Johnny, they get this report from Janice Madden.
0:31:11 The report indicated that in the first year,
0:31:16 a blackhead coach won 2.7 more games in the whitehead coach.
0:31:18 – Which is a lot in the league of only…
0:31:19 – That’s exactly right.
0:31:20 16 game season, right?
0:31:23 I mean, that is through the roof high.
0:31:27 And in the season of termination, they won 1.3 more.
0:31:28 Overall, they won more.
0:31:30 They went to the playoffs more often
0:31:31 as a percentage matter.
0:31:34 They were, according to the numbers, better.
0:31:37 And the conclusion from the report
0:31:38 was not that black coaches
0:31:41 are somehow inherently better coaches.
0:31:43 The conclusion was that black coaches
0:31:46 had been made to apprentice so long
0:31:49 in assistant positions that when they became head coaches
0:31:51 they were just better as a matter, you know?
0:31:54 And so Cyrus and Johnny had a press conference
0:31:57 releasing the report and they also sent it to the league.
0:31:59 And during the press conference,
0:32:03 Johnny said, “If they don’t negotiate, we will litigate.”
0:32:06 And so essentially in sending it to the NFL,
0:32:08 it was sent with the litigation threat.
0:32:11 – So what would it be like to be an owner in 2002
0:32:13 and hear Johnny Cochran say,
0:32:17 hey, if you don’t negotiate, we’re happy to litigate.
0:32:19 What’s the perspective of the owner there?
0:32:22 – I think a lot of the owners are saying, okay, go get it.
0:32:24 Let’s see what happens if you litigate.
0:32:25 To be quite frank,
0:32:27 I think that is what a lot of folks were saying,
0:32:28 but not everybody.
0:32:30 And here’s where the rubber met the road
0:32:32 in a very interesting way.
0:32:35 The NFL at the time, the league office now,
0:32:38 there is a recognition that they’ve got a problem.
0:32:42 The NFL recognized that the numbers were bad
0:32:44 and the media was telling them about it as well.
0:32:45 So they felt like they had to do something.
0:32:49 And so when this threat came in,
0:32:51 there was a decision made.
0:32:53 Paul Tagliabu was the commissioner.
0:32:54 I’ll give him credit.
0:32:57 Jeff Pash was the general counsel of the league at the time
0:33:00 and still is, I’ll give him credit.
0:33:03 These folks were saying, we’ve got to do something
0:33:06 rather than just bleeding them
0:33:08 with a thousand cuts and litigation,
0:33:09 which they could have done.
0:33:11 The NFL is so highly capitalized.
0:33:14 They could have fought them and probably wouldn’t have won.
0:33:17 They said, why don’t you come in and let’s talk about this.
0:33:20 There were some other key figures getting involved
0:33:21 like John Wooten.
0:33:24 He was a black former NFL player
0:33:27 who had also worked as an executive at a few NFL teams
0:33:29 and came to chair an advocacy group
0:33:31 called the Fritz Pollard Alliance,
0:33:35 named for that first black head coach way back in 1920.
0:33:38 So the NFL was ready to talk.
0:33:40 The advocates were ready to talk.
0:33:42 And how about the team owners,
0:33:46 the ones who actually hire the football coaches?
0:33:48 Among the owners,
0:33:51 you would have found considerably less enthusiasm.
0:33:55 But Dan Rooney of the Steelers was an exception.
0:33:58 Dan Rooney recognized that what these lawyers
0:34:00 were talking about was something
0:34:03 that the league had to engage and embrace.
0:34:06 And Dan Rooney was trying to get other owners in the league
0:34:09 to do something to try to increase equity.
0:34:13 And what was the something then that was decided upon?
0:34:18 So the report that I mentioned was in late September of 2002.
0:34:21 And over the course of the following three months,
0:34:23 the lawyers were brought in to meet.
0:34:27 The owners had their own internal meetings.
0:34:29 They talked to their outside counsel.
0:34:32 There was a great deal of resistance.
0:34:34 But there seemed to be some sort of galvanization
0:34:36 around this idea,
0:34:40 which the lawyers called the Fair Competition Resolution,
0:34:41 which was a requirement
0:34:44 that every club interview at least one person of color
0:34:46 before making a head coach hire.
0:34:50 – So this new idea is to have one minority candidate
0:34:52 be among the interviewees.
0:34:55 Was there also any kind of rule or requirement
0:34:58 about the number of interviewees for an open position?
0:35:01 – No, at the time there was no rule about that.
0:35:04 The idea was just, hey, have one person of color.
0:35:06 And there was a great deal of resistance.
0:35:08 There’s one really interesting meeting
0:35:11 where the NFL brought their outside counsel,
0:35:13 a guy named Tom Williamson,
0:35:16 to talk to the owners at the owners meeting
0:35:18 about why this might be a good idea.
0:35:19 And the owners are saying,
0:35:23 well, you can’t tell me who to hire and this and that.
0:35:27 And Tom says, look, we’re getting crushed in the press.
0:35:29 We have ridiculous disproportionality
0:35:32 between our head coaches and our players.
0:35:34 What better idea do you have?
0:35:39 And all these billionaire owners had nothing to say.
0:35:42 And so out of that meeting came this idea
0:35:44 that you know what, maybe we should try this.
0:35:46 And Dan Rooney worked to get support
0:35:47 from all the other owners.
0:35:52 – My father felt that it was important
0:35:55 that you get a complete consensus.
0:35:57 That again is Jim Rooney.
0:35:59 You had a couple of folks hold out
0:36:00 and you had Al Davis,
0:36:02 who really has been a leader in diversity
0:36:05 holding out for a while saying, I already do this.
0:36:08 I think he was scolding the league a little bit.
0:36:10 But eventually my father said to Al,
0:36:12 well, if you’re doing it, then you’re already in agreement.
0:36:14 And Al kind of nodded to my father and said,
0:36:16 okay, Dan, you win this one.
0:36:19 And then Mike Brown of the Bengals,
0:36:21 my father had a conversation with Mike,
0:36:24 whose father, Paul Brown, really invented modern football.
0:36:28 And Paul Brown’s history with black players is mixed.
0:36:32 So it was getting not just enough consensus
0:36:33 where you had majority,
0:36:35 but really getting to the point
0:36:37 where you had a unanimous vote.
0:36:38 – There were holdouts,
0:36:42 but ultimately Dan Rooney was able to wrangle everybody.
0:36:46 And out of this came this idea,
0:36:50 well, Dan Rooney was the strongest proponent inside for this.
0:36:52 Let’s call it the Rooney Rule.
0:36:58 – And so the Rooney Rule became reality in the NFL.
0:36:59 How did it work out?
0:37:00 After the break,
0:37:03 we speak with one former black head coach.
0:37:06 – In the beginning it was a good rule to put in.
0:37:08 – But it soon got complicated.
0:37:09 I’m Stephen Dubner.
0:37:11 This is Freakin’omics Radio.
0:37:12 We’ll be right back.
0:37:23 (dramatic music)
0:37:25 – Before the break,
0:37:28 we heard the history that led the NFL to adopt
0:37:31 a novel hiring policy called the Rooney Rule,
0:37:34 which mandated that when a team was hiring a head coach,
0:37:37 they had to interview at least one minority candidate.
0:37:38 The goal was to ensure
0:37:42 that qualified minority candidates didn’t get overlooked.
0:37:46 Or as the legal scholar Jeremy Duru puts it,
0:37:49 you know, “Fish the whole pond, fish the whole pond.”
0:37:52 One idea behind fishing the whole pond
0:37:55 in any hiring process, not just the NFL,
0:37:57 is to make sure that your own cognitive biases
0:38:00 don’t overwhelm your search for the best candidate,
0:38:03 that you don’t give in to familiarity
0:38:06 and hire someone who feels right for the part
0:38:11 or someone who, in this case, looks like a football coach.
0:38:13 – One of the things that the Rooney Rule does
0:38:15 is it slows down processes, right?
0:38:18 It forces you to slow down.
0:38:22 We talk a lot about how important it is to slow down
0:38:25 your decision-making process and be more intentional
0:38:27 and deliberate.
0:38:31 When you are grinding in a short period of time
0:38:35 to make a decision, you generally retreat
0:38:37 to what’s comfortable.
0:38:41 And if you are running an organization
0:38:46 and you are white, you generally retreat to whiteness.
0:38:48 You retreat to hiring someone who is like you,
0:38:51 and not even on a conscious level.
0:38:54 But if you take time and you release some of that pressure
0:38:56 and you’re a little more open and intentional
0:38:59 about thinking broadly, then you don’t retreat
0:39:02 into that safety space as much.
0:39:04 And I think you have a better opportunity
0:39:06 to make a decision that’s ultimately better
0:39:08 for you and your organization.
0:39:14 – So what happened in the early days of the Rooney Rule?
0:39:18 – We have one head coach of color after 2001.
0:39:21 The following year, there were three head coaches of color.
0:39:22 The following year was up to five
0:39:24 and in a few years, it was up to eight.
0:39:28 So there really did seem to be progress being made.
0:39:31 – One of those black coaches, Marvin Lewis,
0:39:34 had been hired by Mike Brown of the Cincinnati Bengals.
0:39:37 As we mentioned earlier, Brown had been one of the holdouts
0:39:39 on the Rooney Rule vote.
0:39:43 And yet, Mike Brown, he put together a textbook
0:39:46 interview process in light of the Rooney Rule.
0:39:50 It’s important to note that the time the Bengals were terrible
0:39:55 and there was a sense that, you know, we need discipline here.
0:39:58 Mike Brown went out and one person who was available
0:39:59 was Tom Coughlin.
0:40:02 So Tom Coughlin is a coach who’s had a lot of success
0:40:05 in the league and was known as a disciplinarian.
0:40:07 Seemed like he’d be the perfect solution
0:40:08 to the Bengals problem.
0:40:10 And so Mike Brown interviewed him
0:40:14 but also interviewed Marvin Lewis,
0:40:18 who was defensive coordinator with the Ravens long time.
0:40:20 Even though he didn’t fit what appeared
0:40:22 to be the mold the Bengals wanted,
0:40:26 they went through the process, they interviewed him,
0:40:28 they brought him back for a second one.
0:40:31 They were impressed by him and they hired him.
0:40:34 He turned around the club the next year,
0:40:36 went to eight and eight after I think the club
0:40:38 won two games a year before.
0:40:40 – And he ended up being there forever, yeah?
0:40:42 – Forever, ended up being there forever.
0:40:44 – So when you look back at that incident
0:40:47 with an owner who was not enthusiastic
0:40:48 but went through the process
0:40:50 and ended up hiring a black coach
0:40:51 who proved to be very successful.
0:40:54 I mean, that sounds like the poster boy situation
0:40:55 for your argument, yes?
0:40:57 – Yeah, that was the poster for the argument.
0:41:01 – In the beginning, it was a good rule to put in.
0:41:03 – That is Herm Edwards.
0:41:06 He played in the NFL, coached in the NFL.
0:41:10 And today he is an NFL analyst for ESPN.
0:41:12 I mean pro football, I’ve been in this league
0:41:14 for over 30 years.
0:41:16 – Edwards’ father was a black man
0:41:17 with a long career in the US Army.
0:41:20 He met his wife while stationed in Germany
0:41:21 after World War II.
0:41:24 Herm Edwards has said that being in an interracial marriage
0:41:26 was hard on his parents,
0:41:29 but that there was no bitterness from my mom or dad.
0:41:31 We just marched on.
0:41:35 For Herm Edwards, football was part of that march.
0:41:37 – I’m indebted to the game of football.
0:41:39 And it started for me in high school.
0:41:41 And then obviously from there to college
0:41:43 and professional football as a player
0:41:46 and then as a coach, assistant coach, a scout.
0:41:48 – Edwards had a 10-year career playing cornerback
0:41:51 in the NFL before he moved into coaching.
0:41:54 Tony Dungey is a part of this story too.
0:41:58 – Tony gets hired in Tampa and I go with Tony and become–
0:42:00 – Your defensive backs or DC and Tampa?
0:42:03 – I was a defensive backs, but I was the assistant head coach.
0:42:04 And that was the key.
0:42:06 Tony said, when he brought me down there, he said,
0:42:08 “Look, you can go a lot of places in college
0:42:09 and go be a coordinator.”
0:42:10 He said, “You don’t need to do that.
0:42:12 I’m gonna teach you how to be a head coach.”
0:42:15 And he gave me a lot of responsibility as a head coach.
0:42:17 – You’re the same age, roughly, yes?
0:42:20 – Yes, came into league at the same time, exactly right.
0:42:21 – So what did he do?
0:42:22 What did he show you?
0:42:23 What did he teach you?
0:42:25 – So all the meetings that he would be in
0:42:28 with the general managers, with the owners, the draft,
0:42:30 all those things behind closed doors
0:42:32 where the head coach is involved in it,
0:42:34 I would sit in there.
0:42:36 He would make decisions like training camp.
0:42:37 He’d go down to training camp, schedule in.
0:42:40 And I would ask him, I said, “Now, Tony, why did you do this?”
0:42:42 And he would say, “Well, I did it ’cause this reason.”
0:42:43 – Give me an example.
0:42:44 What’s something he would do?
0:42:45 – You know, something simple.
0:42:47 Why are you giving him an off day here?
0:42:50 And he’d go, “Well, because we’re gonna do this,
0:42:51 this and this.”
0:42:53 And then he looked at me, would tell me this.
0:42:56 He said, “Herm, you might do it different,
0:42:58 but I’m gonna give you knowledge.
0:42:59 You don’t have to follow everything I do
0:43:02 because you gotta look at it out of your eyes
0:43:04 and it’s okay.”
0:43:07 And so I sat there for, I don’t know how long,
0:43:10 for about five years, and this was kind of interesting.
0:43:13 I had chances after my second year there
0:43:15 to go to places to be a coordinator.
0:43:18 And he goes, “You don’t wanna do that.”
0:43:19 And I said, “Because why?”
0:43:21 – Well, because you get stuck.
0:43:23 – Because you weren’t ready or?
0:43:24 – No, Tony said, “No, just stay here.”
0:43:26 He said, “You’re gonna be a head coach.”
0:43:27 – Interesting.
0:43:30 So he was grooming you from the beginning to be a head coach.
0:43:31 – He was grooming me from the beginning.
0:43:34 And it was interesting because I could have went to college.
0:43:36 And he goes, “You don’t wanna do that.”
0:43:38 He said, “You need to be an NFL head coach.”
0:43:39 And he was right.
0:43:41 (upbeat music)
0:43:44 – In 2001, before the Rooney Rule was adopted,
0:43:47 Herm Edwards became the sixth black head coach
0:43:48 in NFL history.
0:43:51 He spent several seasons coaching the New York Jets,
0:43:53 another few with the Kansas City Chiefs,
0:43:55 and eventually he did take a college head coaching job
0:43:57 at Arizona State University.
0:44:00 Edwards did not have a great coaching record.
0:44:02 That’s why he’s a broadcaster now.
0:44:05 But he did get the opportunity.
0:44:08 He recognizes that his path was easier than most,
0:44:12 thanks to the mentorship of Tony Dungey.
0:44:15 So why does Edwards think that the Rooney Rule was,
0:44:17 as he put it, good in the beginning?
0:44:19 – Well, because it slowed guys down
0:44:21 from hiring their buddies.
0:44:22 This is a big job.
0:44:23 When you get ready to hire somebody,
0:44:25 you wanna know some information.
0:44:27 Owners talk, they say, “You interviewed this guy,
0:44:29 “you interviewed that guy, what did it look like?”
0:44:31 Well, he did okay, he didn’t do okay, whatever.
0:44:32 They all speak.
0:44:35 So in the beginning, it forced you to slow down.
0:44:37 Because what used to happen,
0:44:39 the teams had gotten to playoffs,
0:44:40 those are the guys you went after.
0:44:41 When they lost, like some of these dudes
0:44:43 couldn’t even interview when they were in the playoffs.
0:44:45 Really, I had to lose a game to get an interview.
0:44:48 And then sometimes the job would be gone.
0:44:49 Because the time you got out of the playoffs,
0:44:52 it was too late, they wanted to hire somebody.
0:44:54 So I tried to be an optimist about this
0:44:56 because I’ve been in the league for so long
0:44:58 and I’ve watched it grow.
0:45:01 And wherever I’ve been, I’ve been the first black head coach.
0:45:05 The Jets, Kansas City, Arizona State.
0:45:07 So I chuckled because I know that eventually
0:45:10 someone was gonna ask me the question.
0:45:11 When I went to Kansas City, “Hey, you know,”
0:45:13 and I said, “I already know.”
0:45:15 And then when I went to Arizona State, they went,
0:45:17 “I said, I already know, don’t ask the question.”
0:45:22 And so you think in 2024, this shouldn’t be a question.
0:45:26 This should no longer be a question, but it still is.
0:45:29 As it gotten better, it’s gotten a lot better,
0:45:31 but there’s still a lot of work to do.
0:45:34 – What kind of work still needs to be done?
0:45:37 Well, consider those interviews that were required
0:45:38 by the Rooney Rule.
0:45:41 – So in the beginning, it was a good way
0:45:44 of slowing it down and getting interviews,
0:45:48 but then it became almost like, no.
0:45:50 Because the interviews was like,
0:45:52 “Okay, I’m gonna interview some guys,
0:45:53 “but I already know who I’m gonna hire.”
0:45:55 – So were those sham interviews?
0:45:58 – Yeah, I mean, some of them were phone calls.
0:45:59 I interviewed with a guy.
0:46:00 He didn’t even bring in.
0:46:04 – Coming up next time in part two,
0:46:07 the underbelly of the Rooney Rule.
0:46:10 – It wasn’t two weeks after everybody had agreed to the rule
0:46:14 that it was totally flouted by an owner
0:46:15 who just agreed to it.
0:46:17 And then the Rooney Rule started drifting
0:46:20 into corporate America.
0:46:22 This too had its problems.
0:46:23 – It’s no different than saying,
0:46:24 “Oh, you know what?
0:46:25 “I want to run a marathon.”
0:46:30 There is a 42 week process where you like train, y’all.
0:46:32 You don’t just get up and say,
0:46:34 “I’m gonna run 26.2 miles.”
0:46:36 And that’s what people do with their diversity efforts.
0:46:38 – That’s next time on the show.
0:46:40 Until then, take care of yourself.
0:46:43 And if you can, someone else too.
0:46:46 Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio.
0:46:49 You can find our entire archive on any podcast app
0:46:51 or at freakonomics.com,
0:46:53 where we also publish transcripts and show notes.
0:46:56 This episode was produced by Teo Jacobs.
0:46:58 Our staff also includes Alina Kulman,
0:47:00 Augusta Chapman, Dalvin Abouwaji,
0:47:03 Eleanor Osborne, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez,
0:47:06 Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippon, Jasmine Klinger, Jeremy Johnston,
0:47:08 John Schnarrs, Julie Kanfer, Lerick Bowditch,
0:47:11 Morgan Levy, Neil Caruth, Rebecca Lee Douglas,
0:47:13 Sarah Lilly, and Zach Lipinski.
0:47:16 Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune” by the Hitchhikers.
0:47:18 Our composer is Luis Guerra.
0:47:21 As always, I thank you for listening.
0:47:24 – Okay, and then what about Special Teams Coordinators?
0:47:26 – Special Teams Coordinators,
0:47:28 I’m not exactly sure what Special Teams Coordinators are.
0:47:30 – No one pays attention to Special Teams.
0:47:31 (laughs)
0:47:32 We’re just being honest here.
0:47:34 Sorry, Special Teams folks.
0:47:41 – The Freakonomics Radio Network,
0:47:43 the hidden side of everything.
0:47:47 Stitcher.
0:47:49 (upbeat music)
0:47:52 you
The biggest sports league in history had a problem: While most of its players were Black, almost none of its head coaches were. So the N.F.L. launched a hiring policy called the Rooney Rule. In the first episode of a two-part series, we look at how the rule succeeded — until it failed.
- SOURCES:
- N. Jeremi Duru, professor of law at American University.
- Herm Edwards, former N.F.L. player and head coach.
- Jim Rooney, author and co-partner of Rooney Consulting.
- RESOURCES:
- A Different Way to Win: Dan Rooney’s Story from the Super Bowl to the Rooney Rule, by Jim Rooney (2019).
- “For ASU’s Herm Edwards, Sports Bubble Helped to Overcome Racism Growing Up,” by Jeff Metcalfe (The Arizona Republic, 2018).
- Advancing the Ball: Race, Reformation, and the Quest for Equal Coaching Opportunity in the NFL, by N. Jeremi Duru (2010).
- “Differences in the Success of NFL Coaches by Race, 1990-2002: Evidence of Last Hire, First Fire,” by Janice Madden (Journal of Sports Economics, 2004).
- EXTRAS:
- “When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee?” by Freakonomics Radio (2023).
- “How Much Does Discrimination Hurt the Economy? (Replay),” by Freakonomics Radio (2023).