This is the season for hiring NFL coaches. The head coaches get all the press, but there are plenty of vacant assistant and coordinator positions are open as well.
The Dems have also decided it is time to send Justice Breyer to greener pastures and fill his position with a like-minded individual before the ominous-looking midterm elections later in the year.
There are almost no similarities between and NFL team and the Supreme Court — and that’s probably a good thing. But apparently, their hiring practices or at least the pressure to hire a certain demographic appear to be related.
Joe Biden turned his campaign around in South Carolina. I think he was the least offensive option to a Democratic party who needed to handle the Bernie Sanders problem. But in his wooing of the state’s electorate, he promised that if the opportunity presented itself that he would appoint a black woman as a Supreme Court Justice.
The NFL in all its wisdom claims it has a black problem in its coaching ranks as well. The ratio of black to “other” players is approximately 7:1. There are numerous reasons for this that have nothing to do with athletic ability, but the ratio is what it is, and doesn’t appear to be changing. However, the coaching and administrative ranks of NFL teams are loaded with whites in an inverse proportion. That appears to be a problem for the NFL who as any big business is concerned with optics. In response to the “problem”, there are requirements to interview minority coaches.
Both of these scenarios are wrong — really wrong. Hiring or appointing based on race is discrimination. There are laws against that.
Plenty of black women with brilliant legal minds deserve consideration for the high court. And maybe it’s time there was one. There are also plenty of Asian men, Latino women, and probably a sprinkling of LBTQ+++ people out there who are qualified. To eliminate everyone else based on their race is discrimination. According to an ABC News poll, 76% of those surveyed believe that Biden should consider all possible nominees and not limit his search to one Demographic.
Right man, right job (substitute any gender you’d like) is the right way to hire.
In sports, great players don’t always make great coaches. Just because the majority of athletes are of a certain race doesn’t mean they are qualified to coach or even want to. Every (I hope) NFL owner wants a winning franchise and to do that you need to hire the best available talent. Coaching is a profession, not a retirement route for players. This is borne out by statistics that show only about 20% of current coaches are former players.
Personally, I think the larger problem facing NFL coaching is nepotism, but that only emphasizes how tight a community it is. The culture needs to change, not the requirement to interview minority coaches.
This isn’t the first time Joe Biden has promised forced diversity. He did the same with his Cabinet, announcing that there had never been as diverse a group of individuals serving. For him, I think it is about both legacy creation and pressure from the party. Neither is the right way to manage a country and wrong for many of its qualified citizens.
The last and maybe biggest problem with “filtering” applicants by race is that it becomes a slippery slope. A “one of everything” approach takes hold in striving for diversity. Next time it’s this, the time after it’s that. It doesn’t take long to reach the fringes and start appointing or hiring the fringes of our society. As I wrote in my post Why Politics I pointed out why this is bad for everyone.
The NFL has its Rooney Rule, requiring teams to interview minority candidates, maybe POTUS should have the Biden Rule.
The Supreme Court is infinitely more important than the NFL, but the similarities here are hard to dismiss
