Brian Flores is risking his career so future Black coaches might get the most out of theirs
If you've spent any time speaking to Black coaches or front-office personnel in the NFL, if you've spent any time paying attention to the league around hiring season, Brian Flores' racial discrimination lawsuit isn't a surprise.
That does not make the lawsuit he filed any less stunning.
Flores' decision to potentially lose his career as a coach, the thing he said in a statement had been gifted to him from God, at just 40 years old cannot be understated. There are moral stands, and then there is taking on a billion-dollar behemoth, one of the most powerful and profitable entities in this country, in the hopes that it will force change for those that come behind you.
This is how it has always been for Black Americans. It's sacrificing our physical and emotional well-being, sacrificing our jobs, our homes, sometimes even our lives in an effort to force this country to live up to the ideals spelled out in its founding documents, in the hopes that things will get better because of the fight. That what you gave up will not be in vain.
Flores is now one of those fighters, the newest in a long line of men and women who decided they have had enough.
He acknowledged as much in his statement, which read: "The need for change is bigger than my personal goals. In making the decision to file this class action complaint today, I understand that I may be risking coaching the game that I love and that has done so much for my family and me. My sincere hope is that by standing up against systemic racism in the NFL, others will join me to ensure that positive change is made for generations to come."
Colin Kaepernick ended up losing his career when he decided to bring attention to the continued killing of Black citizens at the hands of police and other problems of inequity, but that wasn't his intention. Flores is walking into things eyes wide open. And since Flores enjoyed success, not to mention coaching has no age restriction or shelf life, the sad excuses trotted out to justify Kaepernick's blackballing — "he's been out of the league too long," "he wasn't that good anyway" — can't be used here.
That's not to say they won't, just that they are even flimsier in this situation.
But again: None of what Flores claims in his suit should be a surprise. This is a league that has an actual rule, the demeaning, insulting Rooney Rule it has repeatedly tweaked, to try to get the majority white owner class and largely white management class to hire non-white executives and coaches. It has been flouted and flat-out ignored so often that last year the league resorted to a trinket, a mid-round draft pick, as a reward for teams that develop Black and other non-white candidates who then get hired elsewhere, like a toddler that gets a sticker for using the potty.
The teams that needed new coaches and general managers this year were all too happy to announce on social media that they'd interviewed this candidate or that candidate, usually accompanied by a picture, so anyone following along could see they'd spent some time with a Black man.
They had to make those announcements. They had to do those interviews. That's the rule.
As Flores argues through, alleged text messages with his former boss, New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, and as dozens of other Black men can attest, it's obvious that the vast majority of those interviews are performative box-checking, with no intention of leading to a hire.
One former front-office executive, who is Black, told Yahoo Sports he has had a dozen interviews for general manager openings, but knew 10 of them were shams and he was there only to fulfill the team's Rooney Rule requirements. In at least one case he was contacted by a team, interviewed with the club, and then watched that team announce its new GM, a white man, all in less than two days' time.
This is the game. The abusive, manipulative game. Even when a Black man knows he has no chance of being hired, he has to accept the interview request, because if he doesn't, the already-slim chance of a franchise owner deciding to hire a non-white face to be the face of a team gets reduced to none.
Flores played along. He played it in 2019, when he alleges then-Denver Broncos general manager John Elway and team president Joe Ellis showed up to their interview with him an hour late, "completely disheveled" and likely hungover.
That same hiring cycle, Flores was hired by the Miami Dolphins, the first Black head coach in that franchise's history and just the 20th Black man to be a head coach in league history. To read Flores' lawsuit, the relationship with team owner Stephen Ross seemed fraught from the beginning, with Flores alleging Ross offered him $100,000 for every loss that season, tanking the Dolphins' season for a better draft pick.
He didn't play along then — the Dolphins recovered from a historically bad start, losing their first two games by a combined score of 102-10 and falling to 0-7 only to finish the season 5-11 — and he doesn't appear to be playing along anymore.
The former executive said he understands why Flores took this step.
"You feel helpless," he said. "You talk to any Black coach, Black executive, they've been through this. This is the norm. ...The tough part is [knowing] 'I have to make a living for my family.' I've tried to articulate it as much as possible without being blackballed, but even still you know you are being put in that, 'Oh, he'll start trouble' [category] even though you know that you're not saying everything you can."
What Flores is doing is long overdue and awe-inspiring. He has filed a class-action lawsuit, and there is a hope that other coaches will join him, that he isn't stepping into this breach alone.
Someone had to do it. Nothing was going to change until someone did. Maybe things still won't change.
But Brian Flores isn't willing to sit around any longer and wait to see if they do.
