.... When you have a league that is majority black players and has always been major majority white things don't "add up". I'm not a check the box person but I'm also not going to pretend that minorities have not been significantly overlooked.
.....
The job of a head coach is vastly different from a job of a player on the field. In order for your argument to hold, there would have to be a consistent and natural pathway from success as an NFL player to success as an NFL coach/head coach.
This is a reality in all professions. A great street cop might not make a great Chief Of Police. A great engineer might not make a great project manager. A great surgeon might not make a great Director of Medicine at a major hospital. Sure, you might have a rare Jerry West type, who was successful at two different roles, but how common is that?
What lots of people don't want to talk about is that lots of former players don't want to join the coaching ranks. They are already retired and many are financially set for life. They want to grind 18 hours a day, in a thankless brutal position where they may need to move every year or every few years?
Another issue for former players is many were douchebags in their prime. They were brutal to the press, their franchise(s), the fans, their coaches, the owners, the GMs, the scouts, everyone. So who wants to hire them?
Since I'm good clip older than most here, I can tell you that in my prime, it wasn't uncommon for lots of women to game the maternity leave system. Lots of places riding the edge of the line in terms of survival simply didn't want to hire women.
Over a decade ago, despite being called all kinds of names for saying so, I said one of the major problems with The Rooney Rule is it eliminates the question on whether the person in front of you is a POS or not. Being a POS is independent of race. Also gender. Also religion. Also age. I also pointed out that Amy Trask was, at the time, the ONLY female NFL executive in the entire league and lots of people hated her. She was an abrasive and toxic person by reputation and there's a reason she's didn't rise further in the sport.
No one wants to work with a POS. Mark Jackson had a long and successful NBA career as a player. He had some success as a coach. No one wants to hire him now. You think that's racism? He forced his players into his religion and played all kinds of bizarre mind games with people. It's easy to say the problem is Mark Jackson is black, but it's not so easy to say the guy was not liked and his reputation got tanked for his behavior.
Is there racism out there? Yes, there is racism out in the world. Of that I have no doubt. But if you want to fight actual racism, it can't be done by being lazy and cheap. Screaming racism in sports is far too often very lazy and very cheap because the accusation can only be made when you rob everything of it's complexity, it's context, it's functional logistics and avoiding what drives human behavior beyond race.
Does the math not add up?
Or does the cheap and lazy math not add up?
