Curiosity would go long way toward addressing NFL’s diversity woes

In an episode of the hit show, Lasso recounts all the people who overlooked and underestimated him, seeing through him because they didn’t think he was worth their time or attention. It bothered him, he said, until he saw a quote from Walt Whitman: Be curious. Not judgmental.

“All the sudden it hits me,” Lasso said. “All them fellas that used to belittle me, not a single one of them were curious.”

The same could be said of many of the NFL’s owners. It is hardly a surprise they gravitate toward familiar names or people they think fit the part — white men — when hiring a head coach or general manager because that’s who they’re surrounded by in every other aspect of their lives.

By and large, they’re not curious to look beyond what, and who, they know. They’re not curious to challenge their assumptions. They’re not curious to discover if someone who looks different or comes from a different background might have value to their team. (Or their business or their social circle.)

They’re not curious to get to know people just because, not realizing those interactions might pay dividends down the road.

“That’s all of it. That’s the entire problem. The entire problem is (owners) hire people like them that they know,” said David Berri, an economics professor at Southern Utah University who specializes in the economics of sports.

“I don’t think you can make a policy that’s going to fix it,” Berri added. “You have to educate them and say, ‘Your current approach has significant costs because you’re not getting the right people. You keep hiring the same person over and over again.’”

The Rooney Rule isn’t going to fix this. It’s been 20 years since the NFL first implemented the policy requiring teams to interview minority candidates for their top openings and there are only seven head coaches of color this season. And one of them is an interim.

But the NFL’s Accelerator Program, begun last year for minority head coaching and front-office candidates, just might.

In addition to interview prep, participants get to meet and interact with owners and/or team officials in a more relaxed setting than a job interview. The thinking being that when owners do have an opening, they’ll remember these meetings and these candidates won’t just be another name on a list.

The latest Accelerator Program, for front-office and GM candidates, was held at the league meeting this week. More than 40 people from 31 teams participated.

“(This is about) building relationships … and seeing that there’s a lot of other talented people,” said Jonathan Beane, NFL senior vice president and chief diversity and inclusion officer.

“This is about, really, the human-to-human connection, developing the relationship so the first time they are meeting one of these amazing candidates is not during an interview,” he added. “The relationship is already built.” 

The NFL has tweaked the Rooney Rule several times and tried to make it so teams aren’t just checking boxes. But let’s be honest. If owners don’t know these candidates, if they’re only meeting them for the first time during the interview process, of course they’re going to stick with what — and who — they know.

‘The people who are owning these NFL teams and making decisions, and the people they’re connected to, aren’t people from my neighborhood, you know?’ Cleveland Browns offensive assistant Ashton Grant told USA TODAY Sports earlier this fall. ‘I don’t think it’s a racial thing. It’s just who they’re exposed to, and who they have relationships with. Who do they know? And who can they get in contact with? I think that’s why you see all the changes, or the demographics are the way they are.’

Or as Nicole Melton, the co-director of the Laboratory for Inclusion and Diversity in Sport at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, said, “It does take some effort to go beyond, ‘Who do I know?’”

But put owners and minority candidates together in low-pressure settings where they can talk about spouses and kids and pets and hobbies, and it’s going to be easier for owners to envision that person as the face of their franchise when the situation arises. Rather than just ‘minority candidate No. 1.’

Titans general manager Ran Carthon is convinced of it. He participated in Accelerator Programs in May and December of last year and believes they were instrumental in him being hired by Tennessee.

Titans owner Amy Adams Strunk didn’t disagree.

“I really enjoyed the Accelerator experience last December. We were weeks away from starting our formal general manager hiring process at the time, but it was a unique opportunity to meet some of the league’s top up-and-comers,” Adams Strunk said in an email.

“Given his experience and reputation around the league, I think Ran would have been high on our interview list even if we hadn’t met him in Dallas last year. But spending time with him in a laid-back, informal setting offered us a different perspective than the formality of an interview.”

It might seem simplistic to think the NFL’s lack of diversity could be solved with small talk and low-key conversations. But look at the way Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis operates and you realize it’s got a far better chance than anything else the NFL has tried.  

The Raiders have one of the better track records for diversity in the NFL, dating back to the days of Davis’ father Al. They hired both the first Black (Art Shell) and Latino (Tom Flores) head coaches. They had the league’s first female CEO, Amy Trask.

When Davis was looking for a new team president last year, he reached out to Sandra Douglass Morgan.

Douglass Morgan’s only NFL experience was as vice chair of the Las Vegas Super Bowl committee — an attorney, she previously had worked in politics and gaming — but Davis had been impressed with her when they’d met and kept in touch. She is now the first Black woman president of an NFL team.

Davis has used similarly fluid thinking with his WNBA team, the Las Vegas Aces. Though Davis has known Nikki Fargas for years — her husband Justin once played for the Raiders — she was coaching at LSU when Davis hired her to be the Aces president. He hired Becky Hammon as coach of the Aces after getting to know her when the team retired her jersey.

The Aces have won the last two WNBA titles, the first championships for the Davis family since the Raiders won the Super Bowl in 1984.

“As I go through life and I meet people all the time, there are a lot of people that pique my interest. `That’s somebody I’d like to work with,’” Davis told USA TODAY Sports. “There are people that, to me, stand out. I always keep that mental Rolodex.”

The NFL cannot make owners think like Davis. It cannot force owners to have the innate curiosity that makes them see possibility in everyone they meet. But it can broaden their horizons so the gap between those they know and those they don’t is no longer an insurmountable chasm.

Because the problem has never been with the people interviewing for these jobs. Or as Ted Lasso said, “I realized their underestimating me, who I was had nothing to do with it.”

Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.