Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay may think he’s just one NFL owner who needed to solve a desperate problem with his team. He had a coaching void to fill, so he filled it by hiring Jeff Saturday, one of his favorite former Colts. But Saturday had no coaching experience in the NFL or college.
Jim Irsay says he wants to be a leader. He doesn’t act like it.
This should not be the way one of the most elite jobs in American sports gets filled, but Irsay did things his way — just like every other NFL owner. Although the league’s mandate that teams must consider minority coaches has existed for almost two decades, it lacks the power to create real and substantive change.
For the league’s owners, the Rooney Rule is just a box to check. They use it to clear the low hurdle of interviewing at least two candidates of color — and then choose their handpicked guy. Irsay telegraphed just that during a Monday news conference that temporarily propelled the Colts to the top of the NFL leader board for Most Chaotic Franchise.
“I couldn’t be more thrilled to be here tonight. Yes, it’s an interim coaching job. It lines up with the Rooney Rule,” he said. “At the end of the season, there will be a full process of reviewing [a] permanent head coach, which we will have an interview process for, and go from there. You know, this is for eight games and hopefully more.”
The future candidates for this gig, as well as their agents, should remember that last part: hopefully more. This offseason, when the Colts abide by the Rooney Rule — it doesn’t apply to in-season interim hires such as Saturday — Irsay must meet with at least two minorities. He might even leave those interviews impressed. But when the owner himself is the interim coach’s biggest cheerleader and the one who hopes he will coach longer than the eight games remaining this season, it creates more than just a perception of partiality.
Irsay’s decision to hire Saturday seems more complicated than just a Black and White issue. Irsay has previously hired two Black coaches, and he incessantly name-dropped Tony Dungy and Jim Caldwell while defending his decision. To its credit, Irsay’s team has employed infinitely more minority head coaches as the 13 NFL franchises that still have not employed a full-time Black head coach.
With Saturday, Irsay appears to have chosen a close confidant, someone he trusts. During the Colts’ latest loss, a Sunday afternoon of sadness that resulted in only 121 yards of offense and three whole points, Irsay reached out to Saturday to ask for his thoughts about the underachieving offensive line.
No man of color has received the kind of opportunity that was gift-wrapped and given to Saturday. He becomes just the eighth NFL head coach since 1990 to get his first job without having experience in the league. All those men have been White.
And unlike the other current interim coach in the league, Saturday has the backing of his billionaire buddy. Last month when Steve Wilks, a Black coach, took over the Carolina Panthers, he received a tepid endorsement from David Tepper, the team’s owner.
“He’s in a position to be in consideration for that position,” Tepper said. “I had a talk with Steve. No promises were made, but if he does an incredible job, he has to be in consideration.”
Tepper and Irsay have the right to hire whomever they want to lead their teams. However, they are punting on the chance to act like the societal leaders they claim to be.
Just a few weeks ago, Irsay was the brave one, remember? Or at least the opportunistic one who recognized the easy mark named Daniel Snyder. And so last month at the NFL’s fall owners meeting, Irsay searched out the closest cameras and tape recorders and constructed a bully pulpit so he could have a proper launchpad to dunk on Snyder.
We praised Irsay because he said the obvious — that there’s merit in removing Snyder as owner of the Washington Commanders. Uhhh, yeah. There has been “merit” for years now. Still, at least Irsay stood up as the only team owner to say so publicly. But during this performative news conference and later while taking more victory laps for virtue signaling, Irsay expressed how the Snyder drama reflected poorly on the owners and their reputations. He said it was their responsibility — the owners’ — to decide Snyder’s fate.
“That’s not what we stand for in the National Football League. And I think owners have been painted incorrectly a lot of times by various people and under various situations. And that’s not what we’re about,” Irsay said when referencing the collegiality within the community of owners.
Also, as owners, Irsay dropped this: “I think, again, it pains me because it’s not something personal. It’s something in the interest of the National Football League and what we’re about and how we’re represented as leaders in the world, quite frankly.”
After almost two decades of the Rooney Rule, these “leaders in the world” continue to run their billion-dollar enterprises like corner store shops. Maybe the owner of a mom-and-pop can get away with hiring their neighbor’s best friend as manager. The owner of an NFL franchise, however, shouldn’t make the same whimsical decision and therefore bypass rigorous vetting and interviewing to find talent.
And yet these very wealthy and mainly White bosses don’t seem to own any personal responsibility in fixing their hiring practices and diversifying 32 of the most coveted jobs in professional sports. There are three Black full-time coaches — the same total as in 2003, when the Rooney Rule was introduced — in a league in which the majority of the players are Black.
“There is no problem or perception, except some of you guys make a problem or perception,” Irsay said when asked how his hire looks to outsiders. “We’re following the Rooney Rule to a T. I really look forward to the interview process at the end of the season.”
Irsay didn’t have to interview a minority candidate after he fired Frank Reich this week. And he certainly will comply and interview multiple candidates once the Colts’ tank marches boldly toward a high draft pick. He will follow the Rooney Rule, and that’s the problem.
Simply checking a box isn’t being a leader. Neither is relying on a distant past of Dungy and Caldwell to justify his team’s hiring practices. Jim Irsay believes bringing in Jeff Saturday will solve his franchise’s problems. But he needs to understand that his personal decision will only make the league’s problems worse.
Source: WP
