Biden says NFL should be held to ‘reasonable standard’ in hiring minorities

President Biden in a new interview said the NFL should be held to a “reasonable standard” in hiring minorities, after a former head coach sued the league over accusations of racist hiring practices.

Asked by NBC’s Lester Holt during an interview taped on Thursday if the NFL should be held to a higher standard when it comes to issues like diversity in coaching because of its broad influence, Biden said “I think it should be held to a reasonable standard.”

He cited comments made by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who said the league had fallen short of giving minorities head coaching opportunities by a “long shot” during a press conference earlier in the week. 

“The commissioner pointed out, they haven’t lived up to what they committed to, they haven’t lived up to being open about hiring more minorities to run teams,” Biden said.

The clip featuring the president’s comments on the NFL’s diversity-in-coaching debate was released on Sunday.

The NFL came under fire earlier this month when former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores filed a lawsuit accusing the league and three teams of racial bias in hiring practices. 

The former coach cited a 2019 meeting he had with the Denver Broncos was a “sham interview,” claiming that top officials on the team got to the interview an hour late.

The lawsuit also includes text messages from New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick in which he texted Flores congratulations on securing a head coaching job with the New York Giants — a position he did not yet interview for. Belichick later said the text was supposed to be sent to Buffalo Bills assistant coach Brian Daboli, who is white. 

Flores also said Dolphins owner Stephen Ross offered to pay him $100,000 per loss in the 2019 season so the team could have a better chance of getting a top draft pick.

Ross and the Giants both denied the allegations against them, and John Elway, the president of football operations for the Broncos, called the accusations “false and defamatory.”

The “Rooney Rule” was established in 2003, aiming to promote diversity in coaching and top executive roles. Named after former Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney, who chaired the league’s diversity committee, it compels teams to interview candidates of color for head coaching roles. 

Yet as of February, the leagues had only three coaches of color, compared to approximately 71 percent of NFL players being people of color, NBC News reported, citing the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida. 

Goodell in a memo to all clubs last week said the NFL’s continued lack of diversity is “unacceptable.“

Biden noted that Goodell “says they’re gonna take a look at what, whether they can meet the standard.”

He also questioned the notion that a league with so many prominent athletes of color would not have enough qualified African American coaches to lead teams.

“And the standard was set by someone who said this is something we should do. Think about it, the whole idea that a league that is made up of so many athletes of color, as well as so diverse, that there’s not enough African American qualified coaches to quote, ‘to manage,’ these NFL teams, it just seems to me that it’s a standard that they’d want to live up to,” Biden said.

“I don’t know if there’s not a requirement of law, but it’s a requirement I think of some just generic decency,” he added.