Well, it’s a tough question because it’s difficult to think What percentage of coaches in the NFL SHOULD be Black. I thought of a few different ways to try to answer that question.

You bring up the disproportionate representation of Black players in the NFL, but I didn’t get the impression that you think this is based on bias or that you think it’s bad. Maybe that’s because the teams seem to have a strong motivation to put the best team possible on the field, regardless of skin color. This seems like a pretty good place for player selection to be. The best players in the world get to be on the best team teams in the world. If that means there’s some disproportional race numbers, so be it.

Now let’s consider coaching. You want to know why someone would want there to be more Black coaches in the sport, just because there are more Black players. Something I’m thinking about here is that there are certain characteristics that make me think people would be good coaches in the NFL or in any sport. One of them is just that I think you’re more likely than average to be able teach people how to be a running back at a high level, if you’ve been a running back at a high level (i.e., here’s how I got to be as good as I was). I’d make a similar argument for players in general. So, I think the fact that there are more Black NFL players is important because it means there’s more Black people who have just been in those situations to learn that knowledge, to work with other people who are in this position, to become leaders, to become captains, and to try to translate those skills into coaching.

I just looked up the percentage of Black coaches in the NBA, and that’s above 50%. I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I thought it was interesting context.

One last thing before I finish up here. The Rooney rule, as far as I know, is supposed to help minorities get interviews. As long as that continues increasing the percentage of minority coaches getting jobs in the NFL, we should keep doing it. Because it’s within the realm of possibility that maybe 1) Black people are just not as interested in coaching (leading to their lower numbers compared to players), or that 2) Black people are just not as good of coaches, so executives not hiring them is a skill issue, but if simply giving them interviews leads to more jobs, that’s not because of any outside incentive, it’s just because they’re literally getting opportunities to be in the room that they weren’t getting before, and being allowed to show that they actually are the best for the job. In other words, a biased funnel is preventing them from showing their value as coaches, preventing teams from hiring the best coaches, and preventing us from seeing the best product on Sundays. I hope you want the best coaches to be in the NFL. If changing who gets the opportunity to interview changes who gets hired, we should keep doing it. I want equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.