The National Football League is now being hailed as the best-run, most-fun professional sports league in America, and its dedication to diversity is a major reason for this.
According to a University of Central Florida study, racial diversity within NFL coaching staffs and front offices is improving while its players’ union continues to excel, according to Richard Lapchick.
Lapchick is director of UCF’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport. He gave the NFL grades of B for race and a D-plus for gender, although the league has a higher percentage of woman executives at the very top than the other major men’s sports leagues. Two years ago, those grades were, respectively, B-minus and D-minus.
The NFLPA maintained A-pluses for race and gender, the best among the professional players unions reviewed. Almost two-thirds of the positions on the NFLPA’s board is African-American, including Executive Director Gene Upshaw. The racial makeup of league’s players is 69 percent black.
For those sports fans n and business people n who don’t believe that anything can be done to truly improve diversity in the workplace, the NFL proves them wrong.
According to the study, in 2002 the NFL enacted a policy requiring teams searching for a head coach to interview at least one minority candidate. The next year the Detroit Lions were fined $200,000 for failing to comply before hiring Steve Mariucci.
At the time, there were two black head coaches. There are now six.
A 300 percent increase in black coaches is proof that the problem of diversity can be approached in a structured way and improvement can result.