Sports

NFL Rams Through Race-Based Compensation Plan That Could Shake Up League's Future

By Samantha Chang November 24, 2020 at 10:28am

The ugliness of affirmative action has infested the National Football League, fueling concerns about how it will affect the competitive nature of the sport.

Sports Illustrated reported that under a newly passed diversity measure, an NFL team will be rewarded with draft picks if another organization hires away a minority staff member in a key role.

“Teams will receive third-round compensatory picks in each of the two drafts that follow if they have a minority staffer hired to be a head coach or general manager of another team,” SI reported.

“They’ll receive third-round compensatory picks in the next three drafts if they have people hired into both roles in the same year.”

Here’s the full language of the NFL’s new diversity rule, as it was proposed to owners in an internal memo. Again, teams that HCs/GMs are hired FROM get rewarded.

And the reward is significant. pic.twitter.com/Xd6EtACnN2

— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) November 10, 2020

The purpose of the initiative is to promote the recruitment of minority coaches and front office personnel — not to improve a team’s competitive ability to win games or championships. That undermines the major purpose of competitive sports.

Predictably, there’s no such measure in place to promote greater racial diversity among NFL players, 70 percent of whom are black.

ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that “[m]ultiple sources who are people of color” said there were, “at best, mixed feelings” about the league’s new diversity hiring plan.

Do you think it's a bad idea to reward teams with draft picks if other teams hire minorities from their organization?

“This will affect all of us, and we wanted to be involved in the process,” one source said. “We don’t know whether it’s lip service or real, and we just want to be judged on our own merits.”

Another groused that the league was acting too late and should have instituted the affirmative-action plan years ago.

“It’s counterintuitive,” the person said. “They’re rewarding you for doing something that you should have been doing already.”

The report pointed to one of the many potential problems with the new plan: “One executive wondered whether the Dolphins would have been willing to hire Brian Flores away from the Patriots if it meant division rival New England would be compensated with two extra third-round picks.”

Black sports commentator Jason Whitlock slammed the NFL’s new diversity policy, saying it will “blow up in the league’s face.”

“Black assistant coaches don’t feel like this rule is benefiting them,” Whitlock said on Fox Sports Radio. “This is going to blow up in the league’s face. This rule makes NFL owners look racist. What are you paying [NFL Executive Vice President of Football Operations] Troy Vincent for? To make up rules that make you look bad?”

Whitlock continued: “It’s a bad rule. Black head coaches aren’t on board with it, and they complained to Adam Schefter about the rule.”

Meanwhile, NFL viewership has tumbled, thanks in part to the invasion of left-wing activism into the sport.

People watch sports to get away from divisive politics and don’t want to be lectured by clueless athletes whose main job is to entertain fans, not set public policy.

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