Fritz Pollard Alliance

Article - January 11th, 2007

Rooney Rule helping minority coaching candidates

By Scott Brown, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

In a Dec. 19 meeting that took place at the NFL's main office in New York, the names of 10 or 11 minorities identified as viable candidates for head coaching jobs were submitted to a group that included Steelers chairman Dan Rooney.

Rooney was in the meeting with the Fritz Pollard Alliance, which promotes minority hiring for NFL head coaching jobs.

Rooney has been at the forefront of the movement to provide more opportunities for minorities -- so much so that the league requirement stating teams with head coaching vacancies interview at least one minority candidate is called the Rooney Rule.

"It's been excellent," Fritz Pollard Alliance chairman John Wooten said of the Rooney Rule. "The most important part of this process is the interview. Get him in the door, and it works."

"We can't say that every team (has) applied it with the same vigor," said Cyrus Mehri, counsel for the Fritz Pollard Alliance. "We know that it was effective in many instances."

That appears to be the case with Marvin Lewis, who interviewed with the Cincinnati Bengals after the 2002 season. To some, it seemed like the Bengals interviewed Lewis just to satisfy the Rooney Rule.

"And guess what? Marvin Lewis knocked their socks off," Mehri said of the former Steelers assistant who just completed his fourth season as the Bengals head coach