Firing of Several Black Coaches Puts N.F.L. Hiring Under Scrutiny (NYT alert)

Four black coaches were fired Sunday or Monday, including the Jets’ Todd Bowles, who was let go shortly after his team’s final loss Sunday. The Jets had a 14-34 record in the last three seasons under Bowles.

Marvin Lewis, who had been at the helm of the Cincinnati Bengals since 2003, was fired Monday. Though he had resurrected the moribund Bengals and took them to the playoffs multiple times, he never won a playoff game and this season was Cincinnati’s third consecutive one with a losing record.

Also fired Monday was Denver Broncos Coach Vance Joseph, who had presided over the first back-to-back losing seasons for the Broncos since the early 1970s. In Arizona, Steve Wilks had been the Cardinals’ coach for just one season when he was fired Monday after his team compiled a league-worst record of 3-13.

A $21,000 Cosmetology School Debt, and a $9-an-Hour Job In October, another African-American coach, Hue Jackson, was fired after his teams were 3-36-1 in roughly two and a half seasons.

The two black head coaches still in the N.F.L. are Anthony Lynn of the Los Angeles Chargers (12-4), who are headed to a wild-card playoff game Sunday against the Baltimore Ravens, and Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers (9-6-1).

How unfair is it to demean a brilliant, say, black person by pointing out that he’s a member of a race that by some statistics is deemed less intelligent.

Life is unfair. Deal with it. Avoid people who won't deal with it.

When you need to make life-critical decisions in a short time frame, with no background information, then you go with the odds. That is "profiling" or "stereotyping", and it is a vital survival skill for all racial and ethnic groups. That is why it never goes away.

And there are observed reasons for those stereotypes. They aren't wrong. They may be incomplete. There are always a large number of exceptions.

Where things go wrong is in ignoring individual exceptions to those stereotypes. As a member of an allegedly superior race or ethnic group (superior for what, exactly?), the hardest thing to accept is that you can always find some individuals from "the other" groups who are smarter, faster, tougher, have better morals, or are better looking that you are. Maybe all of those characteristics.

When you have time for consideration, it can pay off big to discard the stereotypes and look carefully at individual behavior, rather than making snap decisions based on race or ethnic groups. Everybody should do this at least once in a while.

I’m a white person.

I don't care if you are a white person.

Re: Bill O’Brien

Thanks. I completely missed that.

I remember O’Brien coaching at Penn State.

But I have no recollection at all of him being the New England Patriot Offensive Coordinator for one year.

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