It only took a few hours after the Chicago Bears and the Indianapolis Colts advanced to this year’s Super Bowl before the e-mails began flying around touting the “Soul Bowl.”
Professional football fans, particularly African-Americans, were instantly ecstatic that for the first time two National Football League teams led by Black coaches will be facing each other in the nation’s most popular annual sporting event.
It even caused Cyrus Mehri, a Washington, D.C. civil rights attorney, to smile.
“It was a joyful feeling, that history was made by two people who are not only great coaches, but great people,” Mehri says.
Merhi co-authored a 2002 study with famed late attorney Johnnie Cochran that took the NFL to task for its historically dismal record of hiring Black head coaches. At that time, only five Black men had held head coaching positions in the league’s modern history.
Their study suggested ways to make sure minority coaches could be developed and trained. More importantly, it helped form and implement the “Rooney Rule,” which was named after Pittsburgh Steelers president Dan Rooney, who headed a league committee looking into the issue. The rule requires NFL teams to interview at least one minority for each NFL head coaching opening. Not doing so will result in heavy fines from league officials.
Since then, several Black head coaches and administrators have been hired for various positions throughout the National Football League.
