Posted on 05/13/2026 4:01:17 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The NFL ended a mandate that all 32 teams hire a minority coach as an offensive assistant ahead of the 2025 season and not because of recent pressure from Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who on Wednesday issued an investigative subpoena to the league over its hiring practices.
Uthmeier, who in March threatened potential civil action against the NFL over the league's Rooney Rule, said Wednesday that the NFL had changed diversity language on its website and that it had "capitulated on some of their discriminatory hiring quotas," while arguing that the revisions raise new questions about the policy.
He also took credit for the league ending the program to increase minority representation in assistant coaching ranks, a program started in 2022 after former coach Brian Flores sued the league. But ESPN learned of the league ending a mandate for the program this past winter.
"The NFL now contends -- apparently in response to our letter -- that the NFL has 'sunset' this mandate," the letter reads. "Given the NFL's history of open discrimination, however, we are skeptical that the mandate is no longer in place. And like the Rooney Rule, it violates Florida law."
Ruling says Flores lawsuit vs. NFL can go to court
Despite the NFL recently acknowledging the end of the program to Uthmeier, Jonathan Beane, the NFL's senior vice president for league leadership and inclusion, resisted that characterization in an interview in March.
He said that league office funding was never meant to be permanent. The league had been reimbursing clubs for half the salaries of coaches hired via the program.
"We didn't end it," Beane told ESPN. "... So that program is still in existence, but it's not mandatory for a club, and also it's not reimbursed.
"We have clubs that are hiring [minority] offensive assistants, and at this point, is there a need to necessarily continue to reimburse? Is there a need to necessarily mandate that? Or is it now a best practice we have as an organization?"
Two months after Flores' lawsuit in 2022, the NFL announced the initiative that mirrored a proposed change listed in the suit: "Increased Pipeline for Black Coaches." The lawsuit reads: "Teams should be required to have either a Black QB Coach or Assistant QB Coach to ensure a pipeline of experienced candidates for Offensive Coordinator and Head Coach positions."
That year, the NFL mandated that all 32 teams hire a minority coach as an offensive assistant, with half the salary reimbursed by a leaguewide fund. The resolution stated that the minority offensive assistant must have "regular and direct contact" with the head coach and the offensive coordinator, offensive line, quarterbacks and tight ends coaches, with duties that included contributing to offensive game-planning.
The league office touted the program widely at the start, but Beane said the league couldn't ensure that every team actually used the minority offensive assistant in the QB room or in offensive game-planning.
"I think [the hiring mandate] had some success in some areas and not as much success in other areas," Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney II, the chair of the league's diversity committee, told ESPN in March.
Beane said that all 32 clubs were in compliance with the mandate from its inception but that the role of offensive assistant varied by club, so, "not everyone was in the QB room."
"We have some [clubs] that would do that, and some would say, 'Well, I also want my offensive assistant doing some other things as well.'"
Former NFL assistant coach Kenneth "K.J." Black got his start in the NFL through this hiring mandate, as an assistant with the Los Angeles Rams in 2022. Coach Sean McVay promoted Black before the 2023 season to be an offensive assistant, and Black worked with the wide receivers.
By the time the league discontinued the hiring requirement, Black had left the Rams to follow defensive coordinator Raheem Morris to the Atlanta Falcons in a full-time role as an offensive assistant. Still, he told ESPN the move by the league was "confusing" and "disappointing."
Black said that the program was important because it tackled one of the biggest challenges minority coaches face: finding a place in a league dominated by relationships among white coaches. "Because of it, I met people I probably never would have met," Black said.
Morris, Black and much of Atlanta's staff were fired this past January. Black is now the offensive coordinator at South Carolina State.
After Black's departure in 2024, the Rams hired Nate Scheelhaase, who was the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Iowa State, as an offensive assistant. The Rams promoted Scheelhaase to offensive coordinator in February 2026, and he interviewed for five head coaching jobs this offseason. Beane pointed to Scheelhaase as the program's most notable success story.
Scheelhaase told ESPN the program "accelerated his development" because he was able to learn directly from McVay.
"It put me in rooms earlier than I felt I would be able to get into without it," he said. "And maybe it wouldn't have happened outside of that program being available to me to gain access to the head coach, the offensive coordinator and the quarterback room.
"Those are rooms that are sometimes sacred. That program provided proximity. And in this league, proximity matters."
I didn’t realize the NFL was so racist it mandated minority hires.
I’m glad I haven’t watched the National Felons League, for years.
They have a much lower percentage of felons than Congress!
The league office touted the program widely at the start, but Beane said the league couldn’t ensure that every team actually used the minority offensive assistant in the QB room or in offensive game-planning.
Remember during the clinton era when the US government was selling the airways for the eventual explosion of cell phones??
Clinton and his cronies said companies with black executives would get preference to those airways (my terminology is likely wrong).
So what did companies do?? Right- they went out and hired black people then put titles on them to make it seem like they were decision makers, when they actually had no decision making power at all, so they could bid on and acquire the airways for cellphones...
Why aren’t those national felons still in gaol?
Oh, great. And just yesterday my DNA ancestry test came back. I’m 1.5% Siberian Buryat.
I thought that would be enough to snag me an assistant coach position in the NFL. But now I guess not.
Oh, well. Maybe I’ll follow Elizabeth Warren’s lead and run for the US Senate instead.
Ok, now do the same to your NFL players .
I'd make kneeling to a Black Lives MatterTM flag mandatory before every game.
No burying their history. No pretending they're not racist.
The league insisted on permanently changing the name of the Washington Foreskins; let them permanently show their racism.
Pat Tillman played in the NFL. You disrespect him?
Lamar Hunt, as owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, advanced race relations in pro football by NOT discriminating based on race. Before, you practically had to be Jim Brown to be hired. With Hunt, all you had to be was the best available person for the position.
If the theory of “all men are created equal” is correct, then if you have to intervene to shake things up to overcome prejudice, it shouldn’t be permanent. The Supreme Court has multiple times stated this. Any intervention must be designed to be temporary. So, the NFL intervened to get blacks into coaching. Look around. Today there’s lots of black coaches in pro football (also in the college ranks, and in baseball and other sports in which blacks are well represented).
Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers was the longest term head coach of any color of an NFL franchise at the time he stepped down. In that year, 8 NFL teams including the Steelers had black head coaches.
Let me close with a comment on Jayson Seahorn, the last regular starting white cornerback in the NFL. He wore long-sleeves when playing. Why? Because he didn’t want to be known as a white cornerback. He wanted to be known as Giant cornerback. You win or lose in football as a team. Ditto in the armed forces. Ditto in police and fire.
Get rid of the affirmative action and let the cream rise to the top. Have some confidence in our founding principle, that all men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights.
Wut??? Just Wut???
Pat Tillman left the NFL to serve in the Army. Is your point that we should "respect" a sportsball korporation for what one of their former employees did after he left their employ?
Michael Vick also played in the NFL, including after going to prison for running a dog fighting ring. You respect him?
Vick and any others deserve whatever punishment they earned.
Right now, there are 2,880 players on NFL rosters and and hundreds that aren't currently on rosters.
In a sample that big, there would be criminals, right?
Should we bash all Baptists because of Bill Clinton, or all Catholics because of Joe Biden.
Congress has more criminals the NFL.
A few? Really? They were kneeling all over the place in support of Communist organizations such as Black Lives MatterTM.
Anyone joining such an organization tarnishes themselves.
That's the logical fallacy of a False Alternative. It's not one or the other - they're both anti-American trash.
I will focus on Congress since they oppress us, and they get our money.
You're making my point. The NFL deserves the punishment they earned: Make the league forever stick to their racist practice of hiring black coaches based solely on their race, and mandatory kneeling to a Black Lives MatterTM flag before every game.
Again, no burying their history. No pretending they're not racist.
The NFL knelt in solidarity with Communist organizations such as Black Lives MatterTM in support of the Democrat Riots of 2020 in order to overturn a presidential election - with the intent of oppressing We The People.
And the NFL gets our money also - stadiums, roadways, police protection, tax breaks, etc.
To pull this thread in another direction, I think Catholicism should be seriously questioned not because of Biden and Pelosi, but because of the Pope and Priests that surrender to leftist ideology and invite Muslims (Satan) into the Church.
Now if only they would end the ban on white players....I am convinced they do.
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