Dan Pompei

If you want a rule that forces minorities to be hired as head coaches in the National Football League, you won’t like the Rooney Rule.

That’s not what the Rooney Rule has done, and that’s never what the Rooney Rule was intended to do.

When the rule was established in 2003, the hope was that forcing NFL teams to interview minority candidates would open avenues for minorities that might not have previously been open. And that has happened.

There are six minority head coaches in the NFL, compared with two before the rule was put in place.

Minorities have raised their profiles because teams have been forced to interview them, and they have been able to advance their careers, even if they haven’t always been hired as head coaches.

A good example is one of the men coaching in the Super Bowl. When Jim Caldwell was the quarterbacks coach of the Colts, he was interviewed for at least four head coaching jobs, but got none of them.

However, the process enhanced Caldwell’s standing with his own team.

“In two separate cases, I got direct feedback from people who did not hire him but said he was No. 2 on their list,” Colts president Bill Polian said. “They said, ‘You really have a gem there, I want you to know if so and so wasn’t available, we would have hired him.’ Aside from my own evaluation of him, and (Tony Dungy’s) evaluation, that meant a lot. So when it came time to put a succession plan in place, if other people thought that highly of him, why wouldn’t we hire him? He would not have gotten those kinds of glowing recommendations from others, which I know meant something to Mr. (Jim) Irsay, without the Rooney Rule.”

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The Rooney Rule has come under scrutiny this year because it appeared that the Redskins and Seahawks went into the hiring process knowing they would hire non-minorities. In the case of the Redskins, it was Mike Shanahan. With the Seahawks, it was Pete Carroll. But they had to interview minorities anyway.

Was it a waste of the minorities’ time? Not necessarily. It’s possible talks with Shanahan and/or Carroll could have broken down.

Although the Fritz-Pollard Alliance reportedly had no issues with how the Redskins and Seahawks handled the situation, Dungy was critical of how the process played out, saying the spirit of the rule was violated.

It’s hard to tell the owner of an NFL team he can’t hone in on a candidate before talking to others, however. Polian puts it this way.

“The intent of the rule was to make sure minority candidates who had the qualifications to be considered for supervisory roles on or off the field would have the opportunity to be exposed to upper management and ownership and be part of the process,” he said. “It was never assumed that everyone or even anyone would necessarily be hired, but that in the process, people who might have been otherwise overlooked would come to the fore.”

Some think Vikings defensive coordinator Les Frazier might have been used to fill a quota when he interviewed with the Seahawks. However, Frazier, who has been interviewed for seven head coaching vacancies without being hired, is not critical of the Rooney Rule.

“It has done what it is supposed to do, which is get some minorities some interviews that in the past they would probably not have gotten,” he said.

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And although Frazier has not been hired yet, it just seems like it’s a matter of time, as he has impressed executives including Bill Parcells of the Dolphins, Tod Leiweke of the Seahawks and Billy Devaney of the Rams.

Then again, he has a lot more than the Rooney Rule going for him.