National Post (National Edition)
Owners talk up the Rooney Rule and then give job to a white guy
NOT HIRING BIENIEMY EXPOSES COLLECTIVE MORAL COWARDICE IN NFL
If a young Black man wants to become a head coach in the NFL, he should forget about burnishing his credentials, because those clearly aren't going to do him any good. Instead, he needs to pumice away his pigmentation until white league owners finally adjudge him to be the right “fit,” which presumably means getting a preacher haircut and wearing a dark suit with a white broadcloth button-down shirt that screams technocratic swivel-chair work ethic and signifies a “tremendous football mind.”
He should learn to utter hackish catchphrases with just the right earnest eye bulge that hints at a “football is my religion” compulsion, develop some slick patter about how “complacency is a disease.” His resume should show he played high school football somewhere in Ohio or Pennsylvania at a place named something like St. Peter Paul Bishops Academy of the Holy Divine Child, preferably in a hopeless over-striving role — owners like to see themselves in that. He should wave around a copy of George S. Patton's War As I Knew It, or Sun Tzu's The Art of War, and present a binder thicker than a Vatican Psalter and declare it a “system.”
Follow that advice, and maybe he'll at least get an interview, if not proper consideration for a decent head coaching job. Oh, and it would help if he changed his name to Smith.
There were seven coaching vacancies in the NFL a week ago, and just two remain: the 4-11-1 Philadelphia Eagles and the 4-12 Houston Texans. After all these years in the game, the 51-year-old Eric Bieniemy is said to be a lead contender in Houston, though you might ask, “Who would want that job?”
The Texans are picked to the bone of talent and out of money, US$20 million over the salary cap, with no draft choices in the first or second rounds, and quarterback Deshaun Watson is silently screaming to get out. Still, if Bieniemy wants it, he may get it, though as an aging Black man he probably will have to beat out some nice 31-yearold position coach who reminds owner Cal McNair of his younger self, or one of Don Shula's great grandsons.
It's remarkable how NFL owners' diversity pledges always seem to be followed by vague, unmeetable job criteria that guys such as Bieniemy don't fulfil. In a league in which 69 per cent of players and 35 per cent of assistant coaches are of colour, just two head coaching jobs are filled by Black men.
Meantime, Urban Meyer, who hasn't coached a down in two years and has never been in charge of grown, self-determined men, saunters straight from the Fox Sports TV set to the Jacksonville Jaguars job, quicker than he can turn down the collar of his polo shirt. The owners talk, talk, talk, talk about the Rooney Rule and promoting more Black candidates when all they're really doing, as Rod Graves of the Fritz Pollard Alliance pointed out, is “locking onto a white candidate and hiring him after checking the boxes.”
You would think Bieniemy would be the very first man on any team's wish list — he'll be coaching in his third straight AFC Championship Game as Andy Reid's offensive co-ordinator and has won a Super Bowl ring — but instead he appears to be among the last. Usually, hiring away an assistant from Reid is a good move for an owner — eight of Reid's former employees have led teams into the playoffs.
Yet, somehow, owners are perpetually uncertain about Bieniemy. One rap on him is said to be that he doesn't call the plays. Reid does that. Former underlings John Harbaugh, Sean McDermott, Frank Reich and Matt Nagy never called plays for Reid, either. Yet owners found enough certainty in their hearts to hire them anyway. All of which is to say that Bieniemy has utterly blown the owners' collective cover and exposed their moral cowardice, simply by going to work every day.
Because look here: There is no other “vision” in the NFL apart from winning the Super Bowl. And Bieniemy has won one.
Moreover, he won it at the elbow of Reid, whose success rate at turning out good head coaches is, oh, somewhere around 80 per cent. He's the safest hire out there.
Unless you're an owner of a certain age and disposition, in which case even someone with acne looks safer and more familiar to you.