NEW ORLEANS — In light of President Donald Trump’s executive order to roll back DEI policies, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell faced multiple questions Monday about the league’s intentions for equitable hiring.
During his state of the league address, Goodell doubled down on the NFL’s commitment to inclusive hiring practices, like the Rooney Rule, which the league created in 2003, and which now requires clubs to interview minority or female candidates for open head coach, general manager, coordinator, quarterbacks coach, and senior level positions.
“We got into diversity efforts because we felt it was the right thing for the National Football League, and we’re going to continue those efforts because we’ve not only convinced ourselves, I think we’ve proven to ourselves that it does make the NFL better,” Goodell told reporters. “We’re not in this because it’s a trend to get into it or a trend to get out of it. Our efforts are fundamental in trying to attract the best possible talent into the national football league both on and off the field.”
The league has made multiple updates to the rule since 2003, based on feedback from clubs and candidates. “There’s no requirement to hire a particular individual on the basis of race or gender, it’s simply on the basis of looking at a canvas of candidates that reflect our communities and to look at the kind of talent that exists there, and then you make the best decision on who is hired.”
“There are no quotas in our system. This is about opening that funnel and bringing the best talent into the NFL.”
In 2021, the rule was updated to require clubs to interview two external minority candidates in person, for head coach and general manager jobs. This hiring cycle, the rule came under scrutiny because several clubs — the Chicago Bears, New England Patriots and Jacksonville Jaguars — had head coaching jobs open that were publicly linked to a white candidate before completing their two external minority in-person interviews. As a result, the in-person external minority interview requirement turned into a way for fans to track whether their team was compliant with the Rooney Rule and therefore determine when they were able to hire the leading candidate.
When asked if he was concerned about the validity of the interviews extended to minority candidates, Goodell said no.
“We follow up with the candidates,” he said. “We speak about the sincerity and the thoroughness of an interview to make sure that we’re doing that in a proper fashion.”
In the past, Goodell said there have been minority candidates he’s spoken to who thought otherwise.
“There have been candidates going back a ways where they didn’t feel what was authentic or what they thought was thorough enough,” Goodell said. “And so we go back to the clubs and we talk about that, and I think we’ve made changes to our policy to make sure we deal with that.”
When asked about what the league will do about corporate sponsors that are participating in DEI rollbacks, Goodell said the league doesn’t make policies for sponsors or corporations or networks of partners.
“We have a lot of conversations about the importance of it to us,” he said. “There’s a lot of conversations that go on about that.”