Since the beginning of the National Football League (NFL) in the 1920s there has been
an underrepresentation of minority head coaches around the league. In 2002, the NFL established the Rooney Rule, which requires teams to interview minority candidates for their head coaching positions. It was created in order to create an atmosphere of racial equality and fairness when relating to hiring practices (Welker 2011).
The rule is named after Dan Rooney, former Pittsburgh Steelers owner and chairman of the NFL’s diversity committee. Since the implementation of the rule, there has been a rise in the number of minority head coaches around the league and in 2006, minority hiring went up 22% (“No Hate Zone” 2009).
Although the rule has not entirely changed the landscape of diversity head coaches, media coverage has grown around the topic in a large way. It has been a major question whether NFL teams are only interviewing minority coaches because they need to, and not with intent to actually hire them.
Research Question:
What effect has the implementation of the Rooney Rule in the NFL had on the representation of minority head coaches in USA Today news?
The independent variable of the study is the Rooney Rule, looking at the amount of hires among minority coaches in the NFL since 2002. This topic is relevant after the end of every football season when teams begin the search for a new coach. This rule has increased the amount of minority coaches before the rule but has it been stagnant since? The dependent variable will be how USA Today represented the topic of minority coaching in the league. I will assess the way minority coaches were represented and examine the differences in years.
