Roger Goodell Is NFL’s $63.9 Million Messenger Of Nothingness Regarding Black Head Coaches

Roger Goodell made it official Wednesday during his yearly State of the NFL Address to reporters: When it comes to league owners turning words into action regarding the hiring of more than just a few token Black head coaches here and there, nothing will happen.

Absolutely nothing.

Well, virtually nothing.

“We believe in diversity,” Goodell said outside of SoFi Stadium, where I sat a few feet away from the NFL commissioner, and through it all, I kept wondering if he was chuckling like crazy behind his straight face.

“We believe (diversity) has made us stronger. People who have come into the league who are diverse have been very successful and made us better, and we just have to do a better job. Is there another thing that we can do to make sure that we’re attracting the best talent and making our league more inclusive? If I had the answer right now, I would give it to you.

“I would have implemented it.”

Uh huh.

Welcome to the NFL serving as a microcosm of America sprinting back toward the 19th century (at least) in so many ways.

Speaking of nothing . . .

When you’re Goodell, and you’re commissioner of a professional sports league that made a record $16 billion after the 2019 season before the pandemic, and your 32 bosses called NFL owners pay you $63.9 million per year to say mostly nothing during controversies, you do so in clever ways.

You also pull on a sad face before a bunch of folks with cameras and notepads pounding you with questions in public about — oh, say — your bosses acting as if they couldn’t care less about former Miami Dolphins head coach Brain Flores filing a lawsuit against the NFL and its teams last week.

Flores is Black, and he said he was fired by the Dolphins for refusing to do several unethical things. In addition, he charged the Denver Broncos and the New York Giants with conducting sham interviews after he applied for their head coaching vacancies in recent years.

Oh, it’s definitely official.

It’s official NFL owners have moved on with the rest of their lives regarding Flores, diversity and anything else along those lines, because the league ended last season with one Black head coach (Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers) despite having 70 percent Black players. It’s official, because out of nine openings heading into this off-season, no Black head coaches were hired until after Flores’ lawsuit when the Houston Texans promoted Lovie Smith from defensive coordinator and the Dolphins signed Mike McDaniel who says he’s multi-racial.

It’s official, because during this sun-splattered afternoon near the site of Sunday’s Super Bowl LVI , Goodell kept saying mostly nothing.

Goodell did so again and again, right through the end of his news conference of maybe 40 minutes that turned into a whole session of his questioners basically saying: “Man, why can’t you just admit your non-Black bosses have zero desire ever to hire African Americans as head coaches unless they’re forced to do so?”

And who’s going to do that?

Not Goodell.

It’s not as if Goodell is Dan Rooney, as in the late owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, as in the founder of the now-toothless Rooney rule of 18 years, as in the guy who tried to give his idea bite until his death in the early spring of 2017 by calling his colleagues often to urge them to do the right thing with Black coaching candidates.

That’s opposed to whatever Goodell said he has done for non-Black players during his 16 years as NFL commissioner.

Here’s a sample of Goodell’s answers Wednesday — you know, as I hoped I wouldn’t get struck From Above by a bolt of lightning heading the commissioner’s way, and not because the Chargers (nicknamed “The Bolts”) share the nearby $5.5 billion stadium with the Rams.

• “I think we have to continue to look and find and step back and say, ‘We’re not doing a good enough job here.’ We need to find better solutions and better outcomes. Let’s find more effective policies. Let’s make sure everyone understands. Let’s make sure that we’re looking at diversity and incentivizing that for everybody in our building.”
• “We’ve made a lot of changes in the last few years to try to try to address things that we thought would be helpful. One of the big things that we discussed, and I think was helpful in the process, was our data base, and developing a data base that had a tremendous amount of information in there for the clubs as they begin the process. We’ve also looked at what aspect of the process we want to formulate through our policies, but that all has to be looked at and what else we can do to make it better.”
• “We won’t tolerate racism. We won’t tolerate discrimination. If there are policies that we need to modify, we’re going to do that. If we’ve seen evidence of discrimination, we will deal with that in a very serious way that will reflect the fact that we won’t tolerate that.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You may laugh openly now, Mr. Goodell.

Like all the way to the bank.