I’ve written more than 10,000 columns and stories over the past 36 years in this business.
And I can honestly say I’ve never written these words: Great job, Roger Goodell.
It’s been that difficult, that long, that frustrating for anyone to truly understand what most minorities in often-impenetrable professional fields want.
We don’t want quotas. It makes us look like tokens. We don’t want forced hires. It sets us up to fail. We don’t want companies, or in this case professional sports organizations, to be rewarded for bringing us in. It commands resentment among our peers.
We want to learn. Pay dues.
We want to get a foot in the door, earn an equitable wage and be treated like everyone else in every way, especially when it comes time to climb the professional ladder. And when that time comes, we want to know we are every bit as prepared as anyone else interviewing for the job.
And this is where Roger Goodell and the NFL blew the doors off all previous attempts to fix the league’s problem with minorities in head coaching and general manager positions.
With Tuesday’s announcement that the NFL will reward teams with compensatory third-round draft picks for developing head coaches and general managers, they finally got it right. Rather than forcing teams to offer token interviews to minorities, it incentivized them to look outside comfort zones and familiar circles and actually teach and develop coaches of every ilk.
If minority coaches among them develop into something special, the team benefits in the short term and the league benefits long term.
The dearth of minorities in head coaching and general manager positions will go away. There is no downside.
As is the case anytime the term, “minority hire” is mentioned, there has been a bit of naïve criticism, along the lines of, why help an already-good team with another draft pick?
Why?
Because if you don’t hire a talented, prepared candidate that can help you win, then someone else will.
The most relevant example currently is Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bienemy, a presumed candidate for the vacant Texans head coaching position.
Should the Texans ultimately hire Bienemy, the Chiefs would get a third-round pick. Should they not, they still would get the pick, because Bienemy definitely will be hired. The only difference is, the Texans might wind up with a lesser talent leading the team.
It’s a strategy every industry should want, in every way. And I’m looking specifically at my brethren in the sports media, who cover professional sports and often criticize the lack of diversity.
The media, especially, should look in the mirror.
Across the country, the go-to move in sports media when it comes to entry-level opportunities for broadcasters and journalists is the unpaid internship. Sometimes, the part-time hourly on-call job is offered. In other words, if you can afford to put in the time and effort to work long hours for free or meager pay, plenty of media outlets will gladly take you.
But what demographic, exactly, figures to be able to do that?
While there always are exceptions, my experience has been largely white youngsters living with mom and dad -- with benefits, of course. That’s just not the case for so many aspiring journalists and broadcasters talented enough to make the grade, but simply cannot afford it.
Minorities in every field want to learn and do the dirty work. Minorities want to climb the ladder and not skip a single step on the way up, especially in the media field. But without paid internships and perhaps eventual full-time entry-level positions, opportunities often are short-lived.
For years, media has collectively done a lot of hand-wringing and finger-pointing over how the NFL needed to figure out a way to develop minority talent. They finally have.
They’ll be paying and developing talent, pushing them into positions where they can move into head coaching and general manager positions, and then reap the rewards.
What a concept. A lot of hand-wringers should take their cue from the NFL for a change.