The Sad Side of Sports

The NFL is disappointed. This past season, the NFL had 6 BLACK head coaches. Since three of them were fired, they only have three now. Their disappointment was that no new Black head coaches were hired with the eight openings available.

According to the U.S. Census bureau, 13.1% of the U.S. population is Black. The NFL has 32 teams. That means IF you don't want racial disparity, you need to have a little less than 4 Black head coaches in the NFL to meet the general population ratio. 3 would be a tad too little. 4 would be a tad too much. The six they had this year was 18.75% of the league's total. By any measure of fairness, that was too many...

Obviously, I'm playing with numbers and joking here to make a point. IF racial parity is your goal, then these types of numbers should mean something BOTH ways. If you want a really good head coach, skin color really shouldn't matter. If you want to FIRE your head coach, skin color shouldn't really matter.

I've watched the movie "The Help" just like everybody else. Though fictional, it did show how bad discrimination was in America, especially in the South, as late as the sixties. I'm willing to bet that discrimination still exists in most of America today. BUT being disappointed that an NFL team didn't hire a Black head coach this season isn't a big deal. YET. I'll be more concerned if the growing trend is that NONE are hired the next couple of seasons as well. The Rooney Rule that requires teams to at least interview one minority candidate for every GM or head coaching job has been working great for about a decade. Don't get all excited when it suddenly lays an egg ONE season. That's not a trend. It's an event.

And I'm still wondering why Kansas City hired Andy Reid as soon as he was avaiable, or why Rex Ryan is still the head coach of the Jets. I don't find that disappointing. I find that disturbing.

In other disturbing NFL news, Michael Crabtree, the sensational receiver for the San Francisco 49ers was questioned by police yesterday about a sexual assault that allegedly took place Sunday morning after the Niners destroyed the Packers.

Though Crabtree has not been arrested or detained at this time by police,  this is not a good situation. I won't be commenting until more news is available.