Does football's cult of coaching hold back Black candidates?
Chuck Klosterman has me thinking.
In a recent appearance on "The Bill Simmons Podcast," the pop culture author dug into a minor - or major, depending on your level of Bostonian fandom - aftershock of Tom Brady's retirement announcement. The seven-time Super Bowl champion failed to mention the Patriots, the city of Boston, Bill Belichick, or any of his countless New England teammates in the Instagram post that made his retirement official.
Maybe, Klosterman opined, Brady felt he'd already thanked the Patriots and Boston fans enough when he left the organization in the spring of 2020.
Or maybe - just maybe - it was a calculated parting shot at those who continue to debate whether Brady or Belichick was most responsible for New England's unprecedented success during the Brady years; whether it was equal parts Brady and Belichick, or some slight swing of the pendulum toward one or the other. At the very least, the thinking goes, they were both integral.
Brady ultimately shared a short message later that day thanking the Patriots and Patriots Nation, but Klosterman had moved the debate forward to a less petty and more thought-provoking conversation: In such scenarios, do athletes need to thank teams and coaches anymore? Is it merely a tired tradition that feels forced and hollow in the era of increasing player empowerment?
Would Brady, Klosterman pondered, have had an equally successful career had he been drafted by another franchise? Does talent win out regardless of coaching and organizational stability?
You can bet Tom Brady thinks so - he knows so. And so maybe - just maybe - Klosterman wondered if Brady remains a tad insulted; irked that the debate over Brady and Belichick's co-ownership of New England's success is even a debate at all. Especially after he left the franchise and immediately won a ring with a new coach in Tampa Bay.
Chuck Klosterman has me thinking.
But now it's about racism. About the Cult of Coaching in American pro football, a league with one Black head coach, as of early February 2022, and where roughly 70% of the players are Black.
Item 1: In what can't be a welcome story for the NFL ahead of Super Bowl week, ex-Dolphins coach Brian Flores is suing that franchise, two others, and the league over alleged racist hiring practices for coaches and general managers. It should be noted that none of the league's 32 principal owners are Black.
The esteem bestowed upon football's all-time great coaches has nearly no parallel in other North American sports. The Super Bowl trophy is named after coach Vince Lombardi, after all. Then there's Don Shula. And George Halas. And Paul Brown. And Chuck Noll. And Bill Walsh. And Tom Landry. And John Madden. And Bill Parcells. The representation of Black players in the league increased dramatically in the decades following the sport's reintegration in the mid-'40s. However, what did not change is the overwhelmingly white composition of the head coaching ranks nor coaches' perceived importance to reaching the highest levels of achievement.
Lately, youth has been in vogue when selecting NFL coaches. However, even though the really old guys (think 60-plus) are becoming increasingly rare, the average new hire is still somewhere in their mid-to-late 40s.
On Feb. 13, Rams coach Sean McVay, 36, and Bengals coach Zac Taylor, 38, will square off in what will be the youngest coaching matchup in Super Bowl history. Score one for Gen Y! (Oddly enough, last year's big game featured the oldest coaching matchup in history.)
But McVay and Taylor, like the recent head coaching hires in Las Vegas (Josh McDaniels), New York (Brian Daboll), Denver (Nathaniel Hackett) and Chicago (Matt Eberflus), are white.
Meanwhile, the percentage of assistant coaches of color increased from 35.6% in 2020 to 40.9% in 2021, an all-time high, according to TIDES' 2021 Racial and Gender Report Card. Yet those coaches aren't being promoted to top jobs in the same numbers.
Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy is one of those coaches. His name has been tossed around over multiple offseasons as a head coaching candidate and his situation is cited specifically in Flores' lawsuit. As the suit states, the architect of Kansas City's high-powered offense has not been extended a head coach offer "despite being interviewed for approximately 20 vacant positions over the last five years."
Item 2: An encyclopedia's worth of ink can be spilled on the origins and stubborn persistence of racial stereotypes in football, not only in coaching - and I won't attempt to get to the root of those challenges here. I'd recommend this work from Jason Reid and Jane McManus for The Undefeated as a good place to start.
There's a similar throughline in basketball. Where would Jordan and Pippen - and to a lesser extent, Shaq and Kobe - have been without the "Zen Master," Phil Jackson? Think about which coaches we regard as all-time greats: Red Auerbach. Gregg Popovich. Pat Riley. Larry Brown. Don Nelson. Jerry Sloan. All of them, white. The outlier would be Lenny Wilkens, a Black man and former NBA player, who sits second on the all-time coaching wins list and was named NBA Coach of the Year in 1994. He also switched benches seven times.
Historically, though, the narrative in basketball has been white men guiding Black men. Only now that might be changing. Thirteen Black head coaches manned the bench to start the 2021-22 season, one off the all-time high in 2012-13. Seven of the eight head coaching vacancies following last year's regular season were filled by Black coaches. Roughly 74% of NBA players are Black.
That's not to say "problem solved," however. Within three years of that 2012-13 high point, the number of Black coaches in the league had dropped by half. And the percentage of coaches with NBA playing experience is trending in the wrong direction, as noted by ESPN's Kevin Pelton: Since the merger, "81% of Black NBA head coaches played in the league, as compared to just 39% of all other head coaches."
Why does that matter? It's a double standard that adds an additional barrier for Black coaches.
Being Canadian, I'm drawn to compare these North American sports to hockey, the little brother of the Big Four. The NHL is more than 95% white and has only had one Black head coach in its history: Dirk Graham, who helmed the Chicago Blackhawks during the 1988-89 season. What interests me is not comparing the NFL or NBA to the NHL when it comes to diversity - at least not here - but the way in which hockey fans and analysts generally correlate on-field success with expert coaching.
All-time great coaches of the past 50 years such as Scotty Bowman, Joel Quenneville, Ken Hitchcock, Barry Trotz, Al Arbour, and Mike Babcock, to name a few, accomplished a tremendous amount; however, they're widely considered to have been parts of the puzzle. They were stewards who offered the wisdom of experience, helped soothe egos, and made the necessary adjustments that oftentimes separate close wins from losses come playoff time.
With all due respect to Bowman, a nine-time Stanley Cup champion as a head coach, who's more responsible for the Red Wings' back-to-back Cups in '97 and '98: Brendan Shanahan and Steve Yzerman and Nicklas Lidstrom, or Bowman?
The unspoken rationale is that those players - white men coached by white men - didn't necessarily need a puppet master to succeed. And neither did Tom Brady. But considering the degree to which Belichick is revered, and so often placed on equal footing with Brady, it's clear that many believe Brady's Black teammates did. And still do.
Belichick on Wednesday released a statement via the Patriots anointing Brady as "the best player in NFL history." Brady responded in kind by naming Belichick "the greatest coach in NFL history." You're the best! No, you're the best! So I guess it's water under the bridge, or something like that.
But across morning shows, living rooms, stadiums, message boards and social media platforms, the Belichick/Brady argument rages on, as though Brady didn't put it to rest with his seventh title in Tampa, in a league where elite quarterback play has never been more essential to winning.
The man could conceivably be named MVP - at age 44! - on his way out, to boot.
Not even Brady can surmount the colossal myth-making that permeates football coaching. Perhaps meaningful progress - more Black hires and the dismantling of systemic barriers that keep Black head coaches out of the NFL - will only be possible when we take white football coaches off their pedestals and make room for others.
Chuck Klosterman has me thinking.
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