The Sports Curmudgeon®

Instead of trying to turn the Detroit Lions’ hiring of Steve Mariucci into some kind of monumental historical decision that may be a fulcrum for societal change in the US – which it is not – allow me to look coldly at what transpired. Let’s look at the fine levied against Matt Millen for what it is.

In order to avoid a lawsuit claiming racial prejudice and discrimination in hiring head coaches, the NFL adopted a rule that says that any team with a head-coaching opening has to consider minority candidates and that “consideration” has to include an interview. The idea here is that with more interviews comes more exposure for minority coaching candidates to the people who make the hiring decisions and with more exposure will come more minority coaches because some will “blow the owners away” during the interviews. Sounds great. In fact, it sounds so perfect that I get that uneasy feeling that it is just like all the other great sounding “process defining answers” to problems. All of them sound great and in the end most of them don’t amount to a pinch of pigeon poopie.

By the way, let’s cut through one of the ever so correct veils surrounding this rule and say directly that “minority candidate” in this case equals “African-American candidate”. I promise you that if a GM has an opening next year and interviews a guy from Afghanistan who used to be a rugby coach, that will not qualify as a “minority interview”. This putative GM might be able to dodge a bullet temporarily if he interviewed Sonny Sixkiller for the job, but that loophole would get closed quickly. This rule is not about inclusion for all people; this rule is about hiring Black head coaches in the NFL. I find this type of procedural rule very ironic in light of Martin Luther King’s dream where a man would someday be judged by the content of his character and not the color of his skin. This procedural rule has nothing to do with the character – or competence – of the people to be interviewed; it has only to do with the color of their skin.

Matt Millen violated the rule because he did not interview any minority coaches before he hired Steve Mariucci. According to reports, he tried to interview more than a few minority candidates but they turned him down. Why?

What Matt Millen is guilty of – more than anything else – is having the integrity to say truthfully what was on his mind. He wanted to hire Steve Mariucci for the Lions’ job; in fact, he had wanted to hire Steve Mariucci for the Lions’ job a couple of years ago when Millen was named the GM for the Lions. When Mariucci was canned in San Francisco, Millen needed a new coach to replace the underwhelming incumbent coach, Marty Mornhinweg. At that point, Millen made his error and let it be known that he was going to offer Mariucci the job.

Then he called around to the minority coaching candidates who had been on the interview circuit and asked them to come and talk to him. They declined. He hired Mariucci and he is now out $200K. And to show his commitment to this process, Paul Tagliabue has let it be known that any future violations of this rule will bring larger fines.

There is no question that Matt Millen broke this rule. There is also no question that he and Lions’ owner William Ford can hire whomever they want to coach their football team. The problem here was that because he was honest in saying what he really wanted to do, Matt Millen created a situation where no minority candidates would talk to him in what amounted to a sham interview setting. And you really can’t blame them for that either.

So what is the lesson to be learned here? If you have a coaching opening and you really want to hire someone who is available and that person happens to be a white male, you have to keep your mouth shut and lie to the press and everyone else about how you haven’t made up your mind about who your next coach ought to be. That’s right; it is in your own personal best interest to lie. That way, when you call up some minority candidates for interviews, they will not realize that they are heading into a sham interview setting; and therefore, you will have fulfilled your obligation to interview minority candidates and so you will not get fined when you hire the white guy you had in mind all along.

When I got back to the US from vacation and had a 6-hour layover to kill in Miami International Airport, I went out to buy a New York Times to try to begin to catch up on what had been going on. What I found was a column on this subject by William C. Rhoden and I knew where he was going to come out on the subject about two lines into the column. Rhoden uses Dennis Green as his example of someone who should have been interviewed and considered for the Lions’ job. Rhoden says:

“The Lions – a franchise that has not won a championship in more than four decades – owe it to themselves and their fans to hear what Green has to say.”

Excuse me, but no they do not. It is true that the Lions have not won a championship in more than four decades; it is equally true that Dennis Green has not won a championship in - - ever. It is true that the Lions have not had a coach in the last twenty years that has ever coached another NFL game after the Lions fired them; they have been spared a lot of scorn as a franchise only because of the even greater ineptitude of the Cincinnati Bengals. However, Dennis Green’s NFL résumé includes a threat to sue his former owner, charges of sexual harassment in the team front office, the death of a player in training camp and a marked lack of team discipline. Oh, and Green never won anything either – did I mention that?

In fact, Dennis Green’s most obvious qualification for the Lions’ job is that like all their coaches for the past 20 years, he too has never coached an NFL game since he was fired. But then again, if the Lions hired him, he would lose that qualification. Hmmm…

Let me be clear here. I have no idea if all of those “problem areas” are directly and uniquely the responsibility of Dennis Green. But if Mr. Rhoden is going to dismiss Matt Millen’s honesty as a bad excuse for not interviewing Dennis Green and other minorities, you might expect Mr. Rhoden to be a bit more honest about his poster child interview candidate, no? It’s about character content and not skin color, remember?

I understand why the fine had to be levied. I understand why there has to be a threat of larger fines in the future. I understand why this procedural rule has to be couched in terms of universal inclusion. I understand that the underlying objective behind this procedural rule is a worthy objective to pursue. Having said all of that, I also understand that this is a triumph of form over substance – as is the case with the vast majority of process solutions to real problems.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…