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6/15 Roundtable - Is A Rooney Rule Needed?
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Buffalo head coach Turner Gill
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CollegeFootballNews.com
Posted Jun 15, 2009
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Does college football need a Rooney Rule? It's the Monday topic in the CFN Daily Roundtable Discussion.
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CFN Daily Roundtables
 June
15
Should college football have a Rooney Rule
in place?
Over the next several weeks, as part of the CFN 2009 Preview, we'll
examine some of the key questions going into the year with a
daily discussion of the big topics.
Pete
Fiutak,
CFN
Yes, I'm part of
the problem. You can check me out at
twitter.com/CFN_Fiu and find
out future roundtable topics and other random musings.
Q:
Should college football have an official Rooney
Rule, the NFL rule that requires teams to interview minority head coaching candidates?
A: Would it hurt anyone? No, and the
Rule certainly helped the cause in the NFL, so if there needs to be a
check and balance to make sure minorities are getting a look at the head
coaching jobs after being all but shut out over the long history of the
sport, fine.
However, there are a few things
to keep in mind when it comes to the problems college football has had
in its woeful lack of head coaching diversity. First, at this point in
the game, to accuse a college administration of being racist, which is
what's being insinuated any time there's a hubbub over a minority not
getting hired, is wrong, cheap, lazy, and worst of all, dangerous.
Auburn hiring Gene Chizik over Turner Gill might have been strange
on the surface, especially considering where the SEC was at when it came
to integration around 40 years ago, but does anyone with a brain
really think skin color had anything to do with the decision?
Hiring Gill, at the very least from a PR standpoint, would've been the
easy thing for Auburn to do. At the most basic element, jobs and careers
are on the line with this out-of-the-box hire of Chizik, a coach who did
nothing at Iowa State, and self-interest alone would've made it obvious
that the powers-that-be would want to save their own paychecks by hiring
the guy they thought was the best candidate. And that's the flip-side in
the Rooney Rule discussion; maybe the minority candidate was interviewed
and didn't nail it (which was the inside rumor coming from the Gill
interview). Maybe Auburn thinks Chizik has the potential to be far better in a
different setting (remember, it's not like Bill Belichick was a genius
at Cleveland).
And then there's the second part of the discussion.
Maybe the non-minority candidate is a slam-dunk choice. Colorado got a
in a little hot water a few years back after going through the motions
in the coaching search when it knew Dan Hawkins was going to be the hire
all along. If a program is going to hire a coordinator with no head
coaching experience to run the program, that's one thing, but if the
desired hire is a coach like Hawkins, who appeared at the time to be a
perfect fit for Colorado, then there can't be too much of an outrage
when a program arranges a token interview to satisfy a requirement.
Again, either step up and call the school administrators racist for
choosing a head coach on the basis of skin color, and be able to back it up, or use
logic and reasoning before going with the potentially explosive
innuendos.
So why would a "token" interview help and why is it
needed? Is Hawkins working out at Colorado? Not really, and maybe the
job opening will be there in the near future. While a Rooney Rule
interview might just be window dressing at first, it could mean a
stronger look the second time around and more exposure across the
coaching landscape. Coaches rarely stay at the same school for several
years and there's always plenty of turnover after each season.
It wasn't all that long ago when having an
African-American at quarterback or middle linebacker was considered a
big deal, and soon, skin color won't be in the discussion when it comes
to hiring a college football head coach. Real progress is being made,
measured partly by the lack of fanfare over race when New Mexico State,
New Mexico, Miami University
and Eastern Michigan hired new head coaches. But does that mean the
problem is solved? Hardly, and there's still a place for a type of
Rooney Rule in college football just to keep the discussion and the
problem on the front-burner. It's a fair way to address the issue,
even if it might have an undesired side-effect of calling attention to
skin color when the overall goal is to erase the distinction from the
equation.
Richard
Cirminiello,
CFN
Q:
Should college football have an official Rooney Rule, the NFL rule that
requires teams to interview minority head coaching candidates?
A:
No. Listen, like most any sane individual, I don’t have any tolerance
for racism or exclusionary hiring practices. I saw it in action at the
very early stages of my career, and it’s ugly and the height of
ignorance. However, I’m not a supporter of anything that resembles
affirmative action, which the Rooney Rule approaches by requiring
organizations to interview at least one minority candidate or else
suffer a significant fine.
To properly answer this question, you
first have to answer this one: Do you believe specific colleges have
intentionally avoided hiring minority head coaches? If there’s proof,
let’s get it out there, whack those schools with sanctions, and force
the violators out. If not, doesn’t the Rooney Rule basically accuse
college football of being racist by suggesting the only way to change
the numbers is through legislation and enforcement? Go ahead and label
me naïve, but I do not believe that to be the case. Has race
ever been a factor in hiring?
I’d imagine so, but I don’t believe it’s a common practice, especially
at institutions typically revered for their open-mindedness and quest
for equity. If the schools are not inherently racist, should we be
mandating them, both public and private alike, to interview minority
candidates? It seems a rather heavy-handed and intrusive to me.
I’ve spoken to BCA executive director Floyd Keith on more than one
occasion. I believe his heart is in the right place, but his blueprint
for progress is flawed. If you want more exposure for some of the best
and the brightest among minority coaches, you’ve got to treat this
situation like a Heisman campaign. Promote, promote, promote. If you
want Mike London, Charlie Strong, Tyrone Nix, and countless other
quality coaches to get more national exposure, making them household
names could be more effective than getting big brother involved.
Back in 1963, Martin Luther King waxed famously that he sought a nation
that no longer judged by the color of skin, but by the content of
character. Regardless of the situation, I wholeheartedly agree.
Matthew
Zemek, CFN
Q:
Should college football have an official Rooney Rule, the NFL rule that
requires teams to interview minority head coaching candidates?
A:
Absolutely.
No one's saying you have to hire a minority candidate, but giving a
minority a legitimate interview opportunity would move the ball forward.
One sports truism can be applied to this discussion: "If we can just
give ourselves a chance to win, that's all we can ask..."
Just give all candidates a chance to snag a job after being ignored in
the past, for whatever reason -- that's all that can reasonably be asked
for.
Sure, many will counter with the reasonable and perfectly valid argument
that it's pointless, even potentially demeaning, to give someone an
interview when you're really not interested in that person. If that
mindset does indeed persist, yeah, there is a certain lack of honesty to
the process. However, the whole point of the Rooney Rule was and is
to get organizations to at least hear out minority candidates in the
first place. If enough minority assistants are listened to in the
offices of athletic directors and school presidents, perhaps the larger
mindset will change in the manner being sought by the Black Coaches
Association.
Jon Miller,
Publisher, HawkeyeNation.com
Q:
Should college football have an official Rooney Rule, the NFL rule that
requires teams to interview minority head coaching candidates?
A:
I guess I'm not one that is fond of quotas, but then again I have always
been a part of the majority; American white male. Perhaps that means my
opinion on this matter comes from a place that can’t possibly understand
the importance of things like the ‘Rooney Rule’, but I guess I still
cling to the notion that the best person is going to get the job. Now,
I will admit that can’t possibly always be the case in a world like
college football. Buddies get AD positions and they can look to bring
in one of their old school, beer swilling fellas from the Pi Kappa Alpha
Days. However, that usually doesn’t work out so well.
If we are
going to have the Rooney Rule for head coaches, why stop there? Why not
make it a requirement that whomever is the head coach has to run the
Rooney Rule for the assistant ranks of the staff? And you keep going,
and going and going. Title IX has been horrible for major college
athletics and I would see something like the Rooney Rule being akin to
Title IX. Let the best man win the job. There are going to be examples
of bias and possibly even prejudice, so someone will always need to be a
watcher on that wall, but keep the Rooney Rule out of college football..
Hunter Ansley,
Publisher,
DraftZoo.com
Q:
Should college football have an official Rooney Rule, the NFL rule that
requires teams to interview minority head coaching candidates?
A: I don’t
think so.
I mean, the premise seems noble enough,
but what has it really done?
I don’t think Auburn would have hired Turner Gill
if the Rooney Rule had been in place.
I don’t think Charlie Strong would be a head coach by now if the
Rooney Rule was in place.
Here’s the deal, programs don’t care all that much
about having to interview an extra candidate.
If these guys didn’t want to hire someone they were forced to
interview, then they probably still wouldn’t hire him.
They’d ask him some questions, pat him on the back, and wish him
well. Then they’d go hire
the guy they wanted from the start.
Then there’s the fact that some of these guys don’t
want to spend the time and money to go interview for a job that they
know they won’t get. When a
team has a clear cut candidate, much like the Detroit Lions did when
replacing Marty Mornhinweg, then what’s the point?
It seems almost insulting to me to be the only minority asked to
interview simply because the team
had to invite you.
I don’t see that the Rooney Rule has done all that much in the NFL.
Sure the numbers are up slightly, but the guy for whom the rule
was named, Steelers owner Dan Rooney, has already stated that hiring
Mike Tomlin had nothing to do with his rule.
Adding this stipulation to the ranks of college football would do
no more good than the sign at the public pool that says “No Running.”
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