The NFL is in the midst of a coaching diversity crisis.
, who are overwhelmingly white, have either consciously or unconsciously devalued coaches who played professionally. And in some ways, this devaluation of NFL and NBA playing experience frees up owners and executives to hire other white men as coaches, particularly white men within their professional circles.
The devaluing of players as potential coaches plays out in another important way. Remember that the typical NFL head coach gets his first posting before turning 50. If you make it to the NFL, though, you are playing football when nonplayers have already started their coaching careers. If you are a good player, you might be playing into your 30s, when other people your age are becoming coordinators.
Longtime veteran players can expedite the process some; Tennessee head coach Mike Vrabel essentially took this route over the course of just seven seasons, and former Cowboys coach Jason Garrett was in charge of a team within six years of retiring as an NFL QB. But as a counter-example, Lynn toiled as an assistant and coordinator for 17 seasons between retiring as a player at age 32 in 2000 and getting hired as the Chargers’ coach at age 48 in 2017.
Diversifying the ranks of coaches is not going to be easy for the NFL. The coaching world is an unmeritocratic system, with a lot of advantages going to white people who are tied into that system. But the mostly white people who control that system have probably convinced themselves that it is a meritocracy.
The story with candidates like Bieniemy is probably a bit more complicated than the NFL simply being biased against black coaches. Bieniemy isn’t from a family plugged into the NFL, is an ex-player, became an NFL offensive coordinator when he was 48 and is now 50. We’re not sure if Bieniemy would be a great head coach — it’s virtually impossible to predict that.
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