Former New York Giants defensive end and Super Bowl champion George Martin on Wednesday said that Brian Flores will become “the Rosa Parks of the NFL” after the ex-Miami Dolphins head coach filed a lawsuit against the league and several football teams for racial discrimination in hiring practices.
Martin told CNN’s John Berman that it “took an inordinate amount of courage” for Flores to bring the lawsuit against the NFL.
“With this lawsuit, it’s obvious Brian is going to become the Rosa Parks of the NFL and rightly so,” Martin said, saying Flores was standing up “against one of the largest corporations in the world [to] talk about the fact there is less opportunity for people of color than there are otherwise.”
Flores brought the lawsuit just weeks after he was fired from the Miami Dolphins and then experienced what he called a sham interview with the New York Giants, a team he says had no intention of hiring him and only gave him an interview because of the league’s racial diversity guidelines.
The ex-coach is claiming violations of federal civil rights laws as well as antidiscrimination laws in New Jersey and New York.
Martin, who is Black, played for the Giants as a defensive end from 1975 to 1988. He criticized the league for having one Black head coach, Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers, while 70 percent of the players are Black.
“There’s no way to justify that kind of inequity,” he said. “And that’s something that African American players have had to deal with for years now.”