Roger Goodell Says NFL Will Evaluate Possible Rooney Rule Changes, Could Eliminate It

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said Wednesday that the league office is reviewing the Rooney Rule and will consider making changes to the mandate, or even eliminating it altogether. 

"What we're going to do is step back and look at everything we're doing today, reevaluate that," Goodell said. "Everything from looking at the Rooney Rule and seeing what changes should be made to that, if any changes. Or should it be removed, which some people have suggested."

The Rooney Rule requires that NFL teams interview at least two external candidates from historically excluded groups for every head coach opening and one from those groups for all coordinator, senior football operations and general manager positions. 

The NFL currently has just five head coaches of color out of 32 available positions, and this offseason only saw two candidates from historically excluded groups hired as head coaches out of a possible nine openings, Mike McDaniel with the Miami Dolphins and Lovie Smith with the Houston Texans. 

They joined the New York Jets' Robert Salah, the Washington Commanders' Ron Rivera and the Pittsburgh Steelers' Mike Tomlin. 

The most head coaches of color the NFL has ever had is eight in 2017, or a quarter of all available positions. Meanwhile, about 70 percent of the league's players are Black. 

"However well-intentioned, the effect of the Rooney Rule has been for team decision makers to regard interviews with candidates of color as an extraneous step, rather than an integral part of the hiring process," the chief executive of the National Urban League, Marc Morial, told Ken Belson of the New York Times. "The gravity of the situation is long past the crisis point."

Goodell's comments at his Super Bowl press conference came not only against that backdrop but also a week after former Dolphins' head coach Brian Flores sued the NFL and its teams alleging racist and discriminatory hiring practices. 

One criticism of how Goodell and the league's owners have handled their hiring practices is that the commissioner has relayed a similar message in the past, only for little to change. His detractors argue that he is simply serving as the shield for a group of owners disinterested in changing their ways. 

The Rooney Rule has gotten more coaches of color into the room for interviews, but Flores' lawsuit has once again raised the concern that many of those interviews are just teams checking off a requirement rather than seriously considering candidates from historically excluded groups. 

For critics of the Rooney Rule, that is one of the major ways it falls short.