Bad sports, good sports: Seahawks make a joke of the Rooney Rule

Posted on January 11th, 2010 by Alan Spoll

In 2003, the NFL instituted a policy called the Rooney Rule, that would require teams to interview minority candidates before hiring a new coach or senior front office person. On the face of it, this would seem like a good rule, at least in its intent. The percentage of minority head coaches in the NFL has increased in the years since 2003. This weekend, though, I started to question not the rule itself, but the interpretation of the rule by some teams.

The Seattle Seahawks are poised to hire USC coach Pete Carroll as its new head coach, having dismissed Jim Mora Jr. on Friday. Talk of Carroll’s hiring began as soon as Mora’s firing was announced. The fact that Carroll would leave USC wasn’t a great surprise to me, as things had been turning sour at Southern Cal in the last couple of years, starting with the Reggie Bush scandal and culminating in the Trojans’ subpar 2009 season and the recent allegations of new NCAA violations involving running back Joe McKnight. Perfect time for Carroll to jump ship and leave someone else with the mess.

On Saturday, I spent much of the day in front of the television (so what’s new?), watching SportsCenter and the NFL playoffs. Throughout the day, ESPN was giving updates on the situation with the Seahawks. They kept repeating that Carroll to the Seahawks was virtually a done deal, with only the mandatory interview of a minority candidate standing in the way of the deal being official. Minnesota Vikings assistant coach Leslie Frazier, who is African-American, was in Seattle being interviewed by Seahawks officials. Basically, the team had already decided who it wanted to be its next coach, but had to go through the formality of another interview to satisfy the rule. Seems to me that Leslie Frazier should be insulted. He clearly had no shot to get the job. Why go through with the charade? Let the Seahawks interview Robert Prince, their own Wide Receivers coach, who is also African-American. They could have saved on the airfare. Prince had as much chance to get the job as Frazier, which is none whatsoever. Even better, why not just go outside the team complex and find the first African-American guy they saw walking by and ask him a few questions? Would that have been much different?

Leslie Frazier clearly shares none of the blame here. Supposedly, he was assured by the Seahawks that the job had not been offered to Carroll. Although I am sure he knew better, by attending the interview, he also got his name out there as a viable head coaching candidate for another team. He had nothing to lose by going through with it.

I know that the Seahawks were in a difficult situation. They knew who they wanted, but had to follow the letter of the rule, even if the spirit of the rule escaped them. Affirmative Action is a touchy subject, and my own feelings on the subject are complicated. Do I think that the Seahawks should not have the right to hire the person they want to hire? No, I don’t. I don’t even know that the way this was reported was their fault. Maybe they did everything they could do to make the Frazier interview seem as legitimate as possible. The ESPN television folks certainly made no attempt to hide their beliefs about the situation. In the end, though, Leslie Frazier appears tokenized, and I am pretty certain that was not the intent of the rule.

By the way, Johnette Howard of ESPN wrote a pretty great column about this. You’ll find it here.

Bad sports, continued:

2) A group who is planning to build a new football stadium outside of Los Angeles announced this week that it intends to go after the Buffalo Bills or the Jacksonville Jaguars in its attempt to bring an NFL team to L.A. I know that teams move around, and football is a business like any other professional sport, but to have this group openly state the names of specific teams that it wants to steal away from their fans is pretty shocking. Los Angeles has never proven that its residents have any interest in supporting an NFL team, honestly, which is why it has lost several teams over the years. I am certainly going to root for this group to fail in its attempt.

3) Oakland Raiders quarterback and certified bust Jamarcus Russell just keeps getting worse. Not only is he one of the worst players of all time to have been drafted first overall, he is also apparently not a very good guy. This week, he blew off the end-of-season team meeting to go to Las Vegas. The Raiders need to be rid of this loser.

4) What is it about high school sports in Texas? I have previously reported about ridiculously lopsided basketball scores in the Lone Star State, and we can add another one to the list. In Houston, Yates High School beat Lee High School by a score of 170-35. Yates led 100-12 at the half. I am not saying Yates should have stopped trying, but maybe they could have eased up on the press defense in the second half. Yeesh.

5) Contract holdouts bother me. When a player signs a contract, he should honor it. That might be an old-fashioned belief in 2010, but I don’t apologize for it. Josh Cribbs, running back and kick returner for the Cleveland Browns, cleaned out his locker this week, stating that he was insulted by Cleveland’s offer of a raise. The thing is, though, Cribbs has three full years left on his contract. The Browns don’t need to give him any raise at all, but are offering to do so because of Cribbs’ production over the last couple of years. Instead, he states that it is unlikely that he’ll play for the Browns again. I hope the team holds its ground. If he had played horribly, would he be offering to give some money back? What a joke.

6) Three people were killed and eight were injured when a bus carrying the Togo soccer team was attacked by gunmen in Angola on Friday. The attack appears to be the work of separatists from Cabinda, a region of Angola that wants independence from the country. The Togo team has since left the tournament and returned home.

Good Sports:

1) I guess I could have called this week’s column Bad Sports, Good Sport, as I have only managed to include one good story this week, but a good one it is. David Stillman, a special-needs student from Missouri, has served as his school basketball team’s manager for his whole high school career, got a chance to play this week in the team’s game on Monday night. He started the game and scored six points on two three-point shots, while the crowd chanted his name wildly. The second of his two baskets was scored as time expired in the game. Nice story.

Bad Sports, Good Sports appears every Monday

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Alan Spoll

Alan Spoll is a software quality assurance director from the suburbs of Philadelphia where he lives with his wonderful wife and children. He has spent his entire life as a passionate fan of the Eagles, Phillies, Sixers, Flyers, and Penn State. Recent Phillies success aside, you will understand his natural negativity. Follow me on Twitter - @DocAlan02