Whitewashing the Tomlin Hiring?
Posted by
tgirsch
Over in this thread, I made what I thought was basically an uncontroversial comment:
The other story worth covering here is the Pittsburgh Steelers’ hiring of Mike Tomlin — an African-American coach they wouldn’t have even interviewed if not for a requirement that they interview some minority candidates. This is exactly what that requirement was supposed to accomplish: a candidate who otherwise would have been overlooked so impressed team management that they hired him in favor of several other big-name coaches, and even in favor of promoting from within.
Why did I think this was uncontroversial? Because at the time I made it, almost all of the stories on the subject basically said as much. Basically, they said that the Steelers interviewed Tomlin because he was on a short list of “qualified minority candidates” that they’re required to interview because of the “Rooney Rule,” established in 2002 at the prompting of Steelers owner Dan Rooney, which requires teams with coaching vacancies to interview minority candidates. But commenter Ted challenged me on this claim, and when I went to look it up again today, almost all of those references are gone.
Do a quick Google on tomlin steelers “rooney rule” and you’ll see what I mean. Plenty of references, but when you click through — to Yahoo sports, to the New York Times, etc. — the references to the “Rooney Rule” are gone. You have to look up the cached versions to find them. I’m not that conspiratorial, but what’s going on here? Something doesn’t smell right about this.
With enough searching, I was able to find one story out of Pittsburgh that’s still essentially unaltered:
Not long ago, before Steelers owner Dan Rooney successfully lobbied in 2002 for a rule that requires all NFL teams to interview minority candidates for coaching jobs, the 34-year-old Tomlin might not have been targeted by the Steelers.
But after a successful first season as Minnesota’s defensive coordinator, Tomlin’s name was one of about a dozen on a list of qualified minority candidates given Rooney at a mid-December meeting in New York. Rooney is the chairman of the NFL Committee on Workplace Diversity.
The very intent of the Rooney Rule was to give coaches such as Tomlin a forum to display their credentials. And Tomlin was chosen largely because of the motivation, enthusiasm and organizational skills he showed in two strong interviews with Rooney, team president Art Rooney II and director of football operations Kevin Colbert.
…snip…
Tomlin’s hiring completed a 2 1/2-week search in which he was initially viewed as an unlikely choice behind perceived front-runners Ken Whisenhunt and Russ Grimm, but Whisenhunt later accepted the Arizona Cardinals’ job.
Why have virtually all of the other stories been edited to remove this aspect? It seems not only relevant, but extremely important. Something’s not right here.
>>>>
Oh yea, we believe you man. It was not meant to stir up things! Idiot.
Comment 1/31/2007