State of Oregon to adopt NFL’s “Rooney Rule”

The Governor of Oregon has signed legislation that will require all State Universities to interview at least one minority candidate for each head coach, and Athletic Director position that becomes available in the future. In essence Oregon has adopted the NFL’s Rooney Rule that was crafted by Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney.

However this is not really the Rooney rule, this is really the Matt Millen/Marty Mornhinweg rule. When Matt Millen was hired to run the Detroit Lions he hired Marty with virtually no other interviews. Over the next two seasons Marty was only able to achieve a record of 5-27 proving that Millen jumped the gun in hiring him.

Trust me, this was a disgrace of epic proportions not because of race but because of Marty’s ineptitude. As a Life long Lions fan no one knows this better than I.

Now there is a notion that a person’s skin color some how makes them a better football coach of sports administrator. Most reasonable people know that is just crap. When a job becomes open, the employees should be interviewing several qualified candidates, and hire the best one regardless of what color their skin is. In fact to even bring race into the equation seems to be a violation of US federal law, and the equal protection clause of the US Constitution.

Worse than all of that is there is real world proof that this rule doesn’t work. No team has hired more head coaches in the era of the Rooney Rule than the Detroit Lions, and yet not one of them as been an ethnic minority. In fact this rule may be causing harm as teams must hand out token interviews to minority candidates, who often refuse to take part in the process. Dennis Green refused to meet with the Lions on two separate occasions because of this very scenario.