Sale highlights NFL’s needed diversity steps
With the agreement reached last week to sell the Denver Broncos for a record $4.65 billion, per multiple reports, the NFL can check a diversity box. The ownership group headed by Walmart heir Rob Walton includes a Black woman, Mellody Hobson, addressing a goal-in-resolution from the league.
Here’s to progress. Hobson, co-CEO of Ariel Investments and chair of the board of Starbucks, is in the mix. The exact size of her stake is unknown, although it’s apparent Walton didn’t need her cash to consummate an exchange that perhaps will be formally approved by other team owners before the start of the 2022 season. Maybe Hobson will have key influence on the business of the franchise that isn’t typical for limited partners. Or maybe not.
Part of the bottom line is that, with the resolution NFL owners passed in April that declared a goal of increasing diversity in the ownership ranks for prospective owners, the Broncos sale (most lucrative ever for a North American sports franchise and more than double the NFL record $2.275 billion that David Tepper paid in 2018 for the Carolina Panthers) covered the request.
No, the NFL still has never had a Black majority owner, with Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan, a Pakistan native, and Buffalo Bills co-owner Kim Pegula, who is Asian American, having the distinction of being the only minority figures to own an NFL franchise. Hobson is poised to join a small group of minorities with stakes in NFL franchises that includes former NFL players John Stallworth (Pittsburgh Steelers) and Warrick Dunn (Atlanta Falcons), Javier Loya (Houston Texans) and the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena (Miami Dolphins).
And she comes along at a crucial time, with the NFL’s culture under increasing fire as the Brian Flores discrimination lawsuit hangs in the air along with the league’s sorry record for hiring Black head coaches.
There’s certainly a diversity agenda, if you will, being worked by Commissioner Roger Goodell and key senior executives including Troy Vincent, Dasha Smith and Jonathan Beane. During the league meetings in Atlanta in May, the NFL conducted its first “Accelerator Program” – a diversity and inclusion initiative that exposed owners to minorities and women considered to be on track for head coach, GM or other senior executive roles – which coincides with various efforts to aid in the development of minority candidates.
Also, the NFL has altered the interview window during the playoffs for head coaching candidates on playoff teams, prohibiting in-person interviews until after the wild-card round, allowing the prospects – minority or otherwise – to better prepare. And to bolster the pipeline of offensive coaches, the league is now requiring each team to have a minority or female coach in an entry-level offensive assistant position.
Stating in its resolution that prospective NFL owners would be viewed more favorably if the group included minority partners represented another statement (although the three trustees of the Pat Bowlen Trust had a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits with the highest offer). Each of the groups that bid on the Broncos is believed to have had minority representation.
That proved NFL policy could prod such inclusion.
Now, if NFL owners really want to make a statement, they could pass a resolution requiring each of their existing franchises to incorporate minorities as partners.
If it’s good enough to expect that of new owners to the NFL club, why not mandate it for all teams?
Sure, you can imagine the ruckus behind closed doors if Jerry Jones were required to sell a slice of the Dallas Cowboys, or if legacy teams like the Chicago Bears or New York Giants had to peel off a piece of their franchises for some stated goal to increase minority ownership. Talk about putting your money where your mouth is.
Then again, at this point it’s more realistic to expect NFL teams to do more business – which could include construction projects, technology needs, hospitality, security, transportation, etc. – with entities owned by minorities. There are mechanisms already in place on that front, including a supplier diversity plan that proposes each department for each team to allocate 10% of its contract spending to businesses certified as owned and/or operated by minorities or women. It’s unknown how much NFL teams specifically spend with minority businesses and how many have targets established as goals, but it is enough of an issue that the league’s diversity and inclusion committee is pursuing as much. That’s another diversity box the NFL and its teams need to check, over and over again.
Maybe the league’s new diversity advisory committee, with its “outside” experts, will underscore this as a priority recommendation, along with measures to hold teams (especially those collecting public dollars for stadiums) accountable for spending significant dollars with diverse businesses.
Then again, it’s just like the NFL to have a moment marking the inclusion of Hobson contrasted by the foolish, insensitive remarks by Washington Commanders defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio – first on Twitter, then at a news conference, followed by the hard-to-believe apology – to illustrate that there are people in powerful positions in the NFL who are hardly committed to diversity and inclusion.
Del Rio, whose players are largely African American, spewed some serious venom in labeling the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol as a “dust-up” while wiping his feet on the primarily peaceful demonstrations that followed the police killing of George Floyd – prompting the NAACP to call for his resignation or dismissal.
Tough job, trying to advance diversity initiatives and, yes, change attitudes and perceptions in the NFL, when reminders of racist practices and thinking are prone to pop up like clockwork.
Yet, forced or not, the NFL has myriad opportunities to do the right thing in more ways than one.