Yahoo Sports host Andrew Siciliano, senior NFL reporters Charles Robinson & Jori Epstein and senior NFL writer Frank Schwab react to the Florida attorney general’s subpoena against the National Football League and how the league is handling it. Check out the full conversation on “Inside Coverage” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
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Video Transcript
The Florida attorney general sending a letter of late to the league office saying that the league and its employment policies violate that, violate Florida’s anti-discrimination laws and could be the subject of civil rights enforcement action.
This, while the NFL brought back its accelerator program this week trying to get coaches, assistant coaches, and GMs for that matter, people in the front office, more opportunities to make the next jump for the big chairs.
Where do we stand after everyone got together in Florida?
Unpack all this for me, please, ’cause you could explain it far better than I just did.
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I, I left Florida being like, wow, so the NFL is simultaneously facing legal action for discriminating too much against minorities and discriminating too much in support of minorities.
Yeah.
‘Cause that’s what the deal is when you look at the Brian Flores lawsuit as well as what’s going on in Florida.
And to clarify, in Florida, AG James Uthmeier had actually not only sent the letter, but now he has subpoenaed the NFL to show up on June 12th at 9:00 A.M.
There’s a 15-page subpoena that I obtained from their office and, they want all sorts of documents related to the Rooney Rule, related to the accelerator program, related to the offensive assistant position they used to have for minorities that for a period of time was mandated.
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and it’s kinda fascinating ’cause I think these cases will continue to play off each other, which is that anything that is said to defend the NFL from Florida or in the Brian Flores case in court could be used to hurt them in the other case.
and really of course who loses in all of this is the really talented minorities who for decades have been discriminated against in the NFL, or at least I should say this, sta- sta- statistically the numbers do not nearly reflect the number of talented coaches and general managers.
I mean, I did crunch some numbers and currently of the 32 NFL head coaches and 32 general managers or de facto general managers, 27 of each are white men, so only 15.6% of the league’s head coaches and general managers are diverse in any regard in terms of race, ethnicity, or sex.
And so, I think you look at this and the league said, “Hey, we still wanna do an accelerator program,” but unlike the six previous versions that were specifically for minorities, this one was half minority, half non-minority, which there are benefits to even the minority candidates were telling me because they felt like, hey, now we get to network with a different pool of candidates.
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Also, they really like that the head coaches and general managers were there at the same time bec- or the up and coming head coach and general managers who are often their coordinators and assistant GMs because they said, “Look, w- when we go to this, we get to meet people across the aisle, and maybe someone’s gonna interview us, and a team owner’s gonna say, ‘Hey, who do you wanna hire to be your partner w- running this team?’
And don’t just give me people you’ve worked with before.”
And now they have a deeper pipeline.
So it’s really complicated.
The NFL is being hit lately by both sides.
I’m not trying to make the NFL out to be a victim here, but I do think that this is so far from over because the legal action is gonna get increasingly tangled.