The NFL is a microcosm of America. Brian Flores is a reminder of that | Pamela Newkirk

The battle over diversity among NFL coaches mirrors broader struggles for racial justice in the United States

While former Miami Dolphin Coach Brian Flores' lawsuits against the NFL dominate the news, his story is an old one that's as American as football.

The former coach's allegations of league-wide racial discrimination and team interviews with minority candidates conducted in bad faith, sets the NFL's nearly 20-year-old Rooney Rule - which was adopted in 2002 to address the virtual exclusion of minorities from leadership roles - in stark relief. The rule requires teams to interview minority candidates for coaching and other front-office jobs. However, in the nearly 20 years since the rule was conceived, the number of Black coaches increased from one in a single season to a high of eight in 2011, but today again stands at one.

Pamela Newkirk is a professor of journalism at New York University and the author of Diversity Inc: The Failed Promise of a Billion-Dollar Business