The Rooney Rule, named after former Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney, is the rule that states that NFL teams must interview at least one ethnic minority candidate for every head coach or senior football vacancy.
That’s what the rule is officially known as.
Unofficially, it has been described in NFL circles as the rule that introduced black candidates to white owners and general managers who were otherwise reticent about, or even feared, the hiring of black men to be the face of their franchise.
In 2003, before the rule was first introduced in the NFL, 70 percent of the league’s players were black, while only 28 percent of the assistant coaches and six percent of the head coaches were African-Americans.
By that stage, only seven minority coaches had ever held a head coaching job in the NFL’s 83-year history.
After the Rooney Rule was introduced, the number of minority coaches in the NFL jumped from two coaches in 2002 to seven coaches by 2006.
English football is not all that different to the NFL.
BAME (black, asian and minority ethnic) footballers make up 25% of all professional players in England, however, there are only four BAME managers in charge of the Football League’s 72 professional teams, with former Republic of Ireland defender Chris Hughton the only active minority manager in the Premier League.
In November, Sports People’s Think Tank reported that 22 of 482 (4.56%) coaching roles in the top four divisions were held by BAME coaches.
If you think the Rooney rule is ridiculous, look at this list of all BAME coaches in the EFL . That's if you have a spare seven seconds to read through it all.
20% are employed at @QPRFC with 11 others spread across 71 clubs pic.twitter.com/dSP6TCij4Y
— David Fraser (@DavidEFraser) January 9, 2018
The Football Association’s Chief Executive Martin Glenn announced on Tuesday that the Association will be introducing their version of ‘the Rooney Rule’, which means that the FA will now ensure that “at least one BAME candidate will be interviewed for every role as long as such a candidate has applied and meets the recruitment criteria.”
While the news is certainly welcomed, the statistics still make for grim reading.
Nearly all professional football managers have played the game professionally, at some level, as players, and you don’t need to be an actuary to realise that there is something desperately amiss when over 25% of players in a country are from a minority background, yet they are coached by just 4.56% of people from the same backgrounds.
The introduction of the FA’s version of the Rooney Rule should make a significant dent in redressing the correlation between minority players who develop into minority managers, but the rule was introduced in the same week where its American counterpart came under scrutiny following the Oakland Raiders acquisition of Super Bowl winning coach Jon Gruden.
Earlier this week, the Fritz Pollard Alliance, a foundation looking at promoting diversity and equality of job opportunity in the coaching, front office and scouting staffs of the National Football League, called on the NFL to investigate whether the rule on minority interviews was violated by the Raiders when they hired Gruden last week.
“As soon as we learned of the reports, we formally requested that the NFL thoroughly investigate the matter to conclusively determine whether the Rooney Rule was violated — and if it was violated, to impose an appropriate punishment,” their statement read.
They called on a league – that initially issued Ray Rice a two-game suspension for knocking out his then fiancée (now wife) Janay Palmer in an elevator, yet gave Tom Brady a four-game suspension for allegedly under-inflating footballs – to impose an appropriate punishment.
They shouldn’t hold their breath, but neither should Kick It Out, or whomever the complainant may be in the future, if a similar situation arises with the FA, after all, it has only been three months since former England striker Eni Aluko told the the digital, culture, media and sport committee that the FA had withheld half of an £80,000 out-of-court settlement, that would reportedly not be paid in full, until she put out a statement saying that the FA was ‘not an institutionally racist organisation’.
FA chief Martin Glenn refused to say whether the FA would concur with the agreement, citing a Twitter message from Aluko, which he said had breached their settlement, as the reason why the money was withheld.
This is the guy that is going to oversee potential Rooney Rule violations in the FA should they occur?
The man that chose not to read the details of former England women’s coach Mark Sampson’s FA safeguarding report, after he was first made aware of the findings just five months after he took up his post as FA chief.
The person that deliberately chose a black woman (Katharine Newton) to investigate the Sampson race allegations – without apparently realising the FA’s lawyers had already sent a letter to the Guardian warning such a claim was “plainly false”.
The chief executive that never once thought to ask Sampson why he had been under investigation at Bristol, where he had inappropriate relationships with female players while he was manager of Bristol Academy.
A man, who only four days ago, came under fire after claiming that women are less tolerant of ‘banter’ than men.
Glenn has introduced the FA’s version of the Rooney rule, but is he also going to be charged with investigating any violations that emerge?
Will FA chairman Greg Clarke deal with potential complaints as ‘fluff’, or reply via email with a “I’ve no idea why you are sending me this” response?
The FA claim they have introduced a new whistle-blowing policy to avoid a repeat of the Mark Sampson controversy and to further aid player complaints.
The partnership is said to be in conjunction with UK Sport, and has seen recommendations from Aluko taken on board, but ultimately, will it make much of a difference if the brass remains the same?
A better process won’t make a difference in delivering justice if the judges are still incompetent; the ‘you can’t make apple pie with shit’ analogy still applies.
The Rooney Rule is a step in the right direction, and as seen in the NFL, and in English football’s lower leagues, can lead to more opportunities for minority managers and coaches.
But if it goes wrong, and the FA are caught fast-tracking a manager or a former player to a certain position without interviewing minority candidates, who are they going to suspend? Themselves? Hardly.
The NFL will investigate Mark Davis and the Raiders for potential Rooney Rule violations, but who will Martin Glenn and Greg Clarke investigate should a similar situation arise in English football…. Martin Glenn and Greg Clarke?
Rules are only rules if they are enforced, and if there are legitimate consequences for when they are broken.
Otherwise they are just words said at a time when actions need to speak much louder.
- SportsJOE.ie have contacted the FA for comment and they have referred the site to FA press releases.
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