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“Johnnie Cochran Wants Dallas Cowboys to Lose Draft Pick for Hiring a White Coach”

rv581

By rv581
in 2003 Archives Forum

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rv581

rv581

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http://www.townhall.com/columnists/richlowry/rl20030106.shtml

Racial parody in the NFL

The Dallas Cowboys want to win so much that they have just hired one of the top coaches in the game, and for that they should pay the price -- because the coach is white.

At least according to superlawyer Johnnie Cochran and other leaders of a group protesting the NFL's hiring practices. They want the Cowboys to lose a highly prized draft pick because their next coach will be Bill Parcells, whose career record is 138-100, but whose melanin count is low.

So pervasive is racial quota-mongering that it has now seeped even into the nation's weekend passion, where it will feature its usual futility and absurdity.

Cochran's group, threatening a lawsuit, managed to get the NFL in December to agree that every team with a coaching vacancy "seriously" interview at least one minority candidate, as a step toward redressing the racial balance in its coaching ranks (only two head coaches are black).

It's hard to find a more cutthroat meritocracy than today's NFL, or -- one would think -- a poorer playing field for bean-counting notions of racial justice. Seventy percent of NFL players are black. Where are all the whites, the Hispanics, the Asians, the Inuits?

A better question: Who cares? The best players are on the field every Sunday, because winning is everything. So why wouldn't Cowboys owner Jerry Jones hire Parcells?

The quota-mongers are upset that Jones met with Parcells twice in person and only talked on the phone once with Dennis Green, the black former head coach of the Minnesota Vikings. This supposedly constitutes a violation of "the spirit" of the NFL's new hiring policy.

But Parcells has taken every team he's coached to the playoffs by the second year of his tenure. Green got fired a year ago by the Vikings after losing control of the team to the prima donna wide receiver Randy Moss.

Whom should Jones hire? And what if -- as is likely -- Jones intended to hire Parcells months ago, no matter who he met with or talked to, black or white? Did he then commit a racial thought crime?

College football had two high-profile black coaches this year. One, Tyrone Willingham, has been a success story at Notre Dame and occasionally seemed almost worthy of former NFL coach Bum Phillips' compliment about legend Bear Bryant: "He can take his'n and beat your'n, then turn around and take your'n and beat his'n." The other, Bobby Williams, was fired from Michigan State after a 3-6 season.

Is Notre Dame pro-black? Is Michigan State racist?

The next step of the Cochran policy, logically, would be not just to encourage teams to hire blacks but to discourage teams from firing them. If this seems outrageous, just consider former University of Arkansas basketball coach Nolan Richardson, who is suing the school on grounds that his firing last March was racially motivated, even though the once-mighty team was 13-13.

The remedy for the paucity of black coaches isn't to make Jones pretend to be interested in hiring Green. That's just useless symbolism. Nor is it to condemn NFL owners as racist. That's just poisonous accusation.

The remedy is time. For many reasons, head coaches both in the NFL and at the college level have tended through the years to be white -- meaning that white coaches are the ones already in the long pipeline for high-profile jobs.

Today, talented blacks are probably looking at someone like Willingham, saying "I can do that," and undertaking the hard coaching slog, from underachieving player (stars don't make good coaches), to years of high-school coaching and assistant jobs, then, finally, to a chance at the top.

Years from now, some of those men will be added to the ranks of black head coaches in the NFL. It won't have anything to do with Cochran, nor will it have anything to do with race. It will be because they can win -- exactly as it should be.

Rich Lowry is editor of National Review, a TownHall.com member group.

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Skins57

Skins57

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This is just crazy. I think Cochran is losing credablitliy more and more everyday. Why is it there is no starting white HB in the league(That I can think of) what if some started a group to get more whites as starting halfbacks. Sounds crazy doesn't it, well maybe Johnnie should think about it. The best people at every position (including coaches) will rise to the top anyway

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Riggo-toni

Riggo-toni

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Originally posted by Henry

:doh: You'd think someone as shrewd as Cochran would realize he's hurting his cause rather than helping it.

His cause is to generate publicity for himslef and make $$$. This is probably a bold move for him along those lines. Gee, what did you think his real cause was....:rolleyes: :rolleyes:

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Brave

Brave

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Disgusting!

If the NFL caves to this it will be a travesty! Hell, it's ALREADY a travesty with what the league has agreed to so far. Where will it end?

Since 70% of the players are black, I wonder if Cochran will fight just as hard to make sure that in the future at least 30% of the running backs in the league are white. And 30% of the CBs. And WRs. And, hey, let's see that 70% of the punters are black while we're at it.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

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goldenster95

goldenster95

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The sad part about all this is that Cochran may have a better -- but not necessarily meritorious -- case than some folks think.

One theory he may pursue is disparate impact employment discrimination. Unlike disparate treatment -- which is a garden variety employment discrimination theory that involves an employee or applicant claiming he or she was, as an individual, discriminated against and which requires a showing of intentional discrimination -- disparate impact only confers on a plaintiff the burden of showing that he or she belonged to a class that was systemically discriminated against by a policy or practice maintained by an employer. (Note: there's a third theory of employment discrimination called pattern-and-practice which is a species of disparate treatment.)

The burden a plaintiff carries under this theory is simply to make a statistical showing that a policy or practice disparately discriminated against African Americans. (Remember, a plaintiff need not show intentional discrimination under this theory, simply numbers indicating a disparate result.) The burden of proof then shifts to the employer -- another difference from disparate treatment where a plaintiff always carries the burden of proof -- to explain that there was a substantial justification for the disparate impact that occurred. This burden is very high and employers often fail to carry this burden when confronted with it.

Having said all this, this theory poses certain problems for Cochran & Company. He will, for instance, have a problem identifying a particular policy or practice the league or a team has used that resulted in a disparate impact on African Americans. Some courts, though, may not strictly require this. If not, he's gonna have to prove which African Americans were eliminated from consideration. That may also be hard. (Note: the fact that the NFL's percentage of African American head coaches mirrors that of the general population or the population in any given geographical area is not a defense for the NFL. The key issue is the proportion of African Americans eliminated from consideration vis-a-vis whites.) If he indeed makes his prima facie showing of discrimination, the NFL, as the article above suggests, is indeed a "cut throat meritocracy." Given that fact, which can be proven up with expert testimony at trial, the NFL may very well be able to satisfy its burden of proof. There are, of course, other problems he'll face. But these are just come of them.

Bottom line: the case may sound like and be horsesh!t, but it's not as horsesh!t as it sounds.

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Gamebreaker

Gamebreaker

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For one, this guys column didn't make any type of quote from Cochran's people at all saying they wanted Dallas to give up a draft pick, nor can I find anywhere where else this was stated. So for now, I'm simply consider this author's own personal bias on the subject to be the reason for his blame.

As far as I know, the NFL's own committee which is monitoring these new hiring policy were the ones putting pressure on Jerry Jones, not Cochran. They were upset because just a week after the decision was made, Jones' phone conversation with Denny Green was a weak attempt at playing by the rules. Granted, I don't feel Jones needed to abide by this new rule because he was courting Parcells before the decision was made to go through with this. So it really wasn't needed for him to interview a minority candidate when he was already negiotating with another coach.

Cochran's arguments are valid. I have yet to hear a legitimate reason why Art Shell never got another HC opportunity. Besides his last season coaching the Raiders, he made the playoffs every single season. Some people his team's were undisciplined. Yeah, ok. Well I can name a few coaches who got more than one opportunity and rarely made the playoffs. Dom Capers ring a bell?

It has always been a NFL custom that high profile offensive and defensive coordinators get Head Coaching opportunities. Brian Billick had one or two great seasons in Minnesota and he's coaching the Ravens, Norv Turner wins some championships in Dallas and he gets his chance here. Yet how many African American coordinators who've been successful at their jobs, have been given that opportunity to move up? Ray Rhodes is the only one I can think of at this time. Regardless of how people percieve Marvin Lewis, it should not have taken him this long to get a HC position. Especially considering how he coached the best statistical defense in NFL history. I think the source of Lewis' frustration and need for anger management is the fact that two years removed from his best coaching season, he's still a defensive coordinator. John Fox's defenses haven't come anywhere near as good as Lewis has coached his, but Fox has a HC position in Carolina. The problem is so clear, and I some of you can't be this blind that you don't see it.

The Bears' DC, his name I can't recall at this time, has been quoted in saying he feels he'll never get a HC job. And considering how DC's of other ethnicity has been given the opportunity for less than what he's done, he might be right.

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