The National Football League (NFL) received an overall grade of ‘B’ on the 2018 Racial and Gender Report Card (RGRC) from The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES). But gender hiring across the league received average to low grades.
In March, the league office will hire a chief diversity and inclusion officer, a new position charged with strategically leading diversity and inclusion initiatives across the NFL.
“The creation of the new position should add impact in the areas of diversity and inclusion by providing additional focus,” said Dr. Richard Lapchick, director of TIDES at the University of Central Florida and author of the RGRC.
“The league does not have the authority to make a team hire a particular person,” he added. “I believe that the commissioner’s voice as well as that of other league leaders can influence what happens on the teams if it is a persistent and convincing one as to why diversity is a business imperative.”
TIDES conducted an analysis of the racial and gender breakdown of general managers, coaches, team upper management, senior administration and professional administration. Among the most notable points in the report card is the disparity between racial hiring and gender hiring. Racial hiring received an ‘A-‘ while gender hiring received a ‘C’. While there has been an increase in gender hiring at the league office, gender hiring for team vice presidents or higher decreased from the 2017 report card as did hiring at the professional administration level.
The report card noted that the 2018 season began with eight head coaches of color. The Rooney Rule, established in 2003 to promote diversity in the hiring of head coaches and senior operations personnel, was strengthened in the 2018 season. Teams are now required to go outside of their own organizations to interview candidates of color, or to interview a candidate who is on the league’s career development advisory panel list. Gender hiring is not impacted by this rule.
“The Rooney Rule now only impacts football operations,” said Lapchick. “I believe having policy mandating diverse pools of candidates for all senior business office positions — which would include a woman and a person of color in the interview process — would be beneficial to any organization, including the NFL.”
