COMMISSIONER PAUL TAGLIABUE

INTERVIEWED BY BRYAN BURWELL OF TNT, 8/12/97

BB: You’ve had a series of meetings with the coaches and apparently some NFL decision makers. What are the results of those meetings?

PT: The results are two-fold. One is to recognize that this is a priority for the League. We need to have a deep, diverse pool of coaches. We need to do a better job with respect to creating a pipeline for minority coaches and good coaches in general.

The second thing is that we’re beginning to take some steps that will bring some professional personnel resources to the table when teams are hiring head coaches and coordinators and also when the colleges are doing their hiring. I think that by the time we get to the end of the season we’ll have a different landscape.

BB: What are some of those solutions that you have come up with as a result?

PT: Some of the things are things that we have been doing and reemphasizing those things and expanding them. We’ve had a minority coaching fellowship since the early 80s. I think the main thing is to recognize what the hiring process is for different positions in the NFL and at the college level. Who does the hiring? How can you best do it? How can you guarantee that there is a deep and diverse pool of candidates in the interview process? At the NFL level, the owner is going to be in charge of hiring the head coach. The head coach in turn is going to hire the coordinators. You have to look at the difference in that hiring process. The other thing we need to do is bring some professional personnel resources to the table, and make them available to all of our clubs. When you look at the process you find a couple of things. Number one, hiring a head coach is something that most teams do infrequently. They certainly don’t do it every year. Secondly, they do it under tremendous pressures, time pressures and other pressures. To do it right, you should have some professional services available to you.

BB: What are those professional services?

PT: We’re working with some outside consultants, some search firms. If you were in another business and hiring a chief executive, you’d be using an executive search firm. We’re trying to take those professional services and tailor them to this type of hiring, whether it’s the head coach, whether it’s the coordinator, whether it’s helping the colleges with similar decision making. I think all of those things will be involved during the season and by the time we get to the end of the season we will have some very concrete plans in place.

BB: One of the things that we heard, a theme throughout every one of these interviews, was the idea of familiarity. GMs, coaches, owners talk about how they make decisions based on who they are familiar with, who they are comfortable with and some of the African American coaches are saying that a lot of that familiarity is based on social and cultural handicaps that they can’t overcome. It sounds like this might be a way to overcome that.

PT: I’ve heard this notion of familiarity and when you press people as to what they mean, I think different people mean different things. At bottom, I think what it means is that in an ideal world, you’d like to hire someone you know firsthand and preferable someone you’ve worked with. For this kind of position, you don’t want to hire an unknown, based on someone else’s say-so, especially when you are in a competitive environment. Everyone is competing against each other eventually on the field, with coaching staffs being a big part of that competition. Yes, I think a professional personnel service can get beyond familiarity and can get beyond just networking and it can identify a deep and diverse pool of candidates and identify the good young candidates out there. Who is the Jimmy Johnson of the future? Who is the Dennis Green of the future? That’s a big part of keeping an organization ahead of everybody else in pro football and in college football.

(Repeat of "familiarity" question for television purposes)

BB: Certainly I am aware of head-hunting organizations that go out and look for someone to be the CEO of an organization. I didn’t realize that there was in existence a head-hunting organization for football coaches. How does that work? Who are these people?

PT: Maybe there is not such an organization in existence and maybe we’re going to create it. Maybe it is a service that we are going to make available to our teams for the first time, not to pick their coach but to assist them in the process. This is a hiring process that people only do occasionally and they do it under tremendous pressure in a short period of time. It’s not like selecting players. We do that on a continuous basis, year-round, both college scouting and pro scouting. Hiring a coach is something that most organizations only do occasionally and they do it under tremendous pressure. We will bring resources to the table that can assist the clubs in that respect.

BB: There are two sides to this issue - the decision makers and the coaches. You’ve talked about some of the things that you as decision makers can do a better job of. Let’s talk about what the African-American coaches can do a better job of themselves to make sure that they become candidates?

PT: Two things have been discussed in our meetings. Some of them have been discussed by management and some have been discussed by coaches such as Dennis Green and Jim Fassel and Tony Dungy. The first is to be flexible and to consider opportunities across the board and to recognize that the head coaching position gives you experiences that you won’t get as an assistant. So that if a head coaching slot at the college level becomes available, be flexible, consider it, go for it. The other thing is to recognize that there are opportunities in the League to network. This year we had our head coaches meeting with our referees and we invited our coordinators to attend that meeting. You should go to those kinds of meetings. Seek out the opportunities. Seek out opportunities with people in the media to the extent that they are part of the credibility factor. When a club is hiring a coach, it has to be not only an outstanding person, it has to be a credible person with the public. The media plays an important role in creating that credibility, that acceptance by the fans. So seek out your opportunities, network, and be flexible and open to new opportunities.

BB: I remember when David Cornwall was working for you he told me a story. I think this is a perfect example of things that African-American coaches can do a better job of. Down in Birmingham at the postseason all-star game for college kids, and he walks into the cafeteria where everybody is having lunch. All the black coaches are at two tables. Everyday, same table, same group of guys. Finally, the third day, he walked in and said, "Can any of you guys at this table give anybody else at this table a job? ‘No.’ Then get up and get out there and network." Was that discussed, that attitude, because it seems as though it happens quite a bit?

PT: It’s been discussed, but again, I think the key thing is that people are going to be hiring on the basis of experience. They are going to be hiring on the basis of the kinds of responsibilities individuals have had and have they demonstrated the potential to take it to the next level. I think it would be far more important to be open to that college head coaching opportunity, to get the ability to be a manager of coaches and not just a teacher of players. To get the opportunity to deal with alumni, to be in charge of a recruiting program, to deal with the media in the type of fishbowl that head coaches have to deal with the media and to recognize that that may be a path to coming back to the National Football League, such as it was for Jimmy Johnson, Dennis Green, Bobby Ross and others. So I think flexibility and an openness to opportunities is the key thing, and a recognition that you just don’t take experience at the assistant coaching level and parlay that automatically into the head coaching skill set.

BB: Where at a point in this country where anything that looks like affirmative-action,that sounds like a set-aside, that sounds like a special program, mainstream America is getting very uncomfortable with and they want to get it away. With that in mind, why is this an important thing for the NFL to do, to make sure that black candidates do get legitimate opportunities to advance in coaching?

PT: Intelligent employers, intelligent people know that you can do a lot of things to advance the interest of your business and the employees in your business without getting away from a merit system, without getting into set asides. What we are talking about is guaranteeing opportunity to compete on the merits, and there are a lot of affirmative things we can do in that respect. That doesn’t mean that we’ll have set-asides -- we won’t. None of the coaches that have been involved in this process would remotely suggest that they want a set-aside system. There are things that we can do to respond to the conditions in our business and to the circumstances in which our clubs are making these hiring decisions that would be affirmative and that will help.

BB: You as a commissioner do not make the ultimate hiring decision. A lot of the criticism comes up when people say, ‘He can’t do anything? There is nothing he can really do.’ The other criticism is that a lot of lip service is always paid, and anytime we get into a situation where we are trying to correct a situation, there are a lot of meetings and nothing is ever done. How do you address those two criticisms?

PT: We’re doing things and we’re doing things that have never been done before. We are working with professional personnel services and we are identifying ways that their services can be brought to bear in our League and in our hiring processes. When that planning and that process and discussion comes to a conclusion, I think it will be clear that it is a positive thing and that it will guarantee two things. Number one that we are looking at the club level at a deep and diverse pool of candidates, and secondly, that clubs have available to them services that enable them to consider a broad range of candidates and to make strong hires from a deep and diverse pool of candidates.

GENE WASHINGTON INTERVIEWED BY BRYAN BURWELL OF TNT, 8/12/97

BB: The issue of black coaches not getting opportunities is not a new issue in this League. What makes this offseason discussion of the problem any different than in the past?

GW: I think the way the black coaches handled the situation has been most impressive to me. I was fortunately a part of the process in the beginning at the Combine in Indianapolis when a group of assistant coaches, and in some cases former head coaches, got together to discuss what had gone on with the hiring. To me, what was most impressive about that was that the discussions went from ad-hoc discussions that often times can be looked at as complaining, to a very professional, organized approach. These coaches, with some leadership from people like Ray Sherman said, ‘This is important enough that we feel we need to be professional about it and take our concerns to the League office.’ That approach led to the Commissioner, in turn, hearing their concerns and providing what I consider to be terrific leadership and moving the issue forward. That’s what’s been most impressive to me about it.

BB: You know we are in a time in this country where anything that sounds like affirmative action or set-asides is not being viewed with any popularity at all. When somebody approaches you in that light, why should the NFL being doing anything like this to insure that African American coaches do get a fair opportunity?

GW: It’s in the best interests of the National Football League for all coaches to have equal opportunity to advance. That’s in our best interest. So if it’s affirmative to make sure that every coach who has the ability to become a coordinator or head coach, that’s in our best interest. I don’t think anyone in the NFL is afraid or ashamed to say we will do affirmative things to make sure that our best coaches rise to the position that they are capable of handling. While on the one hand, set-asides or quotas have never been a consideration, we are only looking to advance the concerns of the black coaches that there be a level playing field. Clearly, that has not been the case in some cases. We don’t want to ignore that. There has not been a level playing field. So what can we do to insure that there is a level playing field. I think that’s the real question. That’s the real issue.

BB: Is another factor that’s going to help this process the younger generation of owners, the younger generation of coaches and decision makers in this league who have grown up socialized and always been culturally around minorities and they don’t have some of the hang-ups that maybe the older generation had?

GW: If you put this issue in context of what’s going on in our society, it’s not very different. The issues that black coaches are raising regarding the NFL are issues that are going on in corporate America. We are not ahead of the curve or behind the curve. We are part of what’s going on in this country. I think that athletics has the opportunity to provide leadership. That’s what I’m most proud of in being a part athletics. We can provide leadership. Athletics can rally communities, it can rally states, it can rally countries. We have unique opportunities, and this is a unique opportunity for us to provide leadership. I think most of our owners view it that way. It’s different. It’s change, but it is only change to the degree that we are trying to insure equal opportunity.

BB: We have discussed what the decision makers need to do a better job of. Let’s discuss what coaches need to do a better job of to make sure that they are the best prepared coaches when those opportunities come up?

GW: I think that the minority coaches need to do the things that all coaches who rise to that level do. They need to be proactive in promoting themselves, or if they can’t promote themselves, then they need someone to promote them, like an agent. That’s just a reality of what’s going on today. You need to network. You need to do things to advance your career. Some people might describe them as sucking- up, and sometimes we are afraid to use that word, but the reality is that you need to advance yourself. When I look at my own situation, where we come from, the neighborhoods that we grew up in, sometimes our experience is that’s not what you do. That what you do on the field speaks for itself, but you and I know that’s not enough. That’s not the way the real world works. I think there are some instances where our minority coaches need to do a better job of stepping out and putting themselves forward a little more. Now, having said that, I also want to say that by no means should we be saying to minority coaches that they as a group need more training, need seminars. That’s not necessarily true and we’re not saying that. We have minority coaches who have been head coaches, who have all the tools necessary to become head coaches. We don’t want to say that minority coaches as a group need more training. There are individual situations and circumstances where not only minority coaches, but all coaches, need to step- up that process of moving themselves to the forefront, getting noticed and putting out their message.

BB: Has the League been able to identify a number of candidates right now that are ready to be coordinators or head coaches?

GW: I was surprised when we had the first meeting with basically assistant coaches to learn of the number of minority coaches in the NFL that are considered top coaches and ready to move to the coordinator position and in some cases, the head coaching position. I was not aware of that. One of the beautiful things that’s happened is that we’ve begun to see, including the commissioner and people at this office, that there are coaches out there that general managers know about, but the word hasn’t gotten around. Maybe that’s self-serving. Maybe they didn’t want it to get around. We’ve discovered that there are coaches out there that are very capable but don’t get a lot of notoriety. The commissioner has taken a leadership position. He’s moving this personnel process into a more professional manner and I think you are going to see some of the results of that.

BB: Who are some of those unnamed coaches?

GW: I think it might be unfair to mention names because I probably would leave some out. It think it would be easy to say that Ray Sherman is a coach who is ready and capable to move to the next step. In his case, to become a head coach...There are a number of head coaches who have impressed. I’m going to throw out one more name because we grew up together, and that’s Chick Harris. Chick Harris has been in the league a long time and we played on the same high school football team so I’m going to throw his name out there also.