Former Pittsburgh Steelers free safety Ryan Clark thinks the Rooney Rule has become a complete joke. That was made evident with the New England Patriots bringing in Pep Hamilton and Byron Leftwich for interviews, only to hire Mike Vrabel days later. Hamilton and Leftwich were just used to meet a quota.
"I think this kind of puts a light on the Rooney Rule, which, to me, the New England Patriots made a mockery of," Clark said on Inside the NFL . "To interview Pep Hamilton and Byron Leftwich, two coaches who aren't even in football right now, just to fulfill a quota. The Rooney Rule was put in place, so some of these minority coaches could get opportunities to get in front of some of the executives and some of these owners, that truly were looking to give the job to the best person.
"Now, I want to make it clear: I believe we have moved to a point where organizations will hire the best person they feel for the job. But let's not make coaches, who have worked their entire lives for this opportunity, be the token interview."
Clark added on X that NFL teams are entitled to hire who they feel is best for the coaching job. He also believes Vrabel is the right person for the job, but the hiring practices need to be fixed by the NFL.
"It's time to create better resume & career building opportunities for minority to combat nepotism," Clark wrote. "The entire football world knew Jerod Mayo was fired so Robert Kraft could hire Mike Vrabel. Vrabel is an excellent choice, but the hiring process made a complete mockery of the Rooney Rule. I know it, the Patriots know it, the NFL certainly knows… but more importantly the very coaches it was intended to help know it. I don't believe the Patriots need to change, but the NFL needs to."
Former executive director of the National Football League Players Association DeMaurice Smith also wants to eliminate the Rooney Rule . The Rooney Rule was put in place in 2003 to enhance diversity in the hiring process for key positions in the league, but Smith and Carl Lasker, a Yale law student and teaching assistant to Smith, believe that the Rooney Rule has failed to serve its purpose.
"The NFL's system is broken," Smith and Lasker wrote, via Yahoo Sports, who obtained the 100-page paper in July of 2023. "To fix it, owners need to abandon the Rooney Rule and replace their unchecked discretion with comprehensive requirements to eliminate discrimination, ensure fairness, improve diversity and build an equitable, transparent and accountable system."
The number of Black head coaches was two when the Rooney Rule was implemented in 2003. The number is just four at the end of the 2024 season — the Steelers' Mike Tomlin, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers ' Todd Bowles, the Houston Texans ' DeMeco Ryans and the Atlanta Falcons ' Raheem Morris. The Miami Dolphins ' Mike McDaniel identifies as biracial and the Carolina Panthers ' Dave Canales is Hispanic.
The Rooney Rule was implemented in good faith, but it's been often criticized over the last 20 years. As Clark mentioned, a lot of Black coaches have felt like they were just a token interview or a checking-a-box requirement for owners.
"The system is broken from the inside out and outside, and any effort to affect it that didn't obligate NFL owners to adherence or reform was doomed from the start," Smith told Yahoo Sports.
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