After years of dancing around race, the NFL is finally on the edge of a reckoning

"Managed much like a plantation."

That's how the NFL operates, according to former Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores. In a lawsuit filed recently in Manhattan federal court, Flores alleges past racism in the league's hiring practices.

The suit accuses the New York Giants of interviewing Flores, 40, who is Black, for a head coaching job days after the team decided to hire Brian Daboll, who is white. Flores argues that his interview wasn't based on the team's interest in hiring him, but because it would make the team compliant with the Rooney Rule, which was created in 2003 by the NFL and requires teams to interview at least two minority candidates for head coaching positions. CEOs have adopted the same measure in interviewing for job positions to increase diversity.

The lawsuit jeopardizes the legacy of the NFL, an American cultural mainstay. It places a spotlight on the league's lack of representation in leadership. Just under 70% of all NFL players are Black, according to analysis by Robert Turner, assistant professor at George Washington University. Yet only one head coach is Black — the Pittsburgh Steelers' Mike Tomlin — according to the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida.

But sources said the lawsuit is bigger than just the lack of representation. It illustrates the league's larger problematic history with diversity, multiple race scholars, sports-management professors, and two former NFL players told Insider. They pointed to the higher standards Black coaches are held to and the treatment of Colin Kaepernick as examples. The NFL has hired former Attorney General Loretta Lynch to defend the league in the lawsuit, it was reported Thursday. The NFL did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

"The lawsuit is long overdue," former NFL player Aaron Maybin, who played for the New York Jets and Buffalo Bills, told Insider. "The coaching and the ownership circles in the NFL are very much like the 'good ol' boys clubs' that gets talked about. They operate at their own speed, and they do things in ways that serve how they've been doing things for years."

The tip of the iceberg

The NFL "vehemently denies any allegations of racial discrimination" and is proud of its "diversity and inclusion," according to a statement responding to the lawsuit.

But some disagree with the league's stance. Former Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo said the NFL's struggle with race and equity is a microcosm of the country's fraught history with civil rights.

"When you look at the NFL, you see America, what America really is," Ayanbadejo said. For people of color, "there's less opportunity and representation. The majority of the league is Black, but you don't see Black people in leadership positions."

Brian Flores' experience with the NFL is not a one-off, according to USC Marshall business professor Shaun Harper. "It is emblematic of a larger set of structural and systemic problems," he said. Shortly after Flores' firing in January, Troy Vincent, the NFL's executive vice president of football operations, said the league should not "shy away from" its record of teams firing Black coaches after winning seasons or short tenures.

Both Harper and Vincent said there is a double standard wherein Black coaches have to perform significantly better than their white counterparts to get and retain their jobs. The Atlantic's Jemele Hill did a deep dive on the issue in a recent article. In essence, the coaching tenures of Black coaches are often shorter, even when their records exceed the records of white coaches.

"This is just how the NFL operates," Hill wrote. The firings of Flores and Houston Texans former head coach David Culley "highlight the double standards and unrealistic expectations that Black coaches routinely face."

Former NFL player Maybin told Insider he'd heard of other Black coaches expressing similar complaints of racial inequality in the league.

Multiple race and sports scholars connected Flores' allegations to the NFL's treatment of Kaepernick, who first took a knee during the national anthem on Sept. 1, 2016, in protest of police brutality, and was subsequently shunned by the league. A handful of celebrities supported Kaepernick, including Common, Ava DuVernay, and Rihanna, who refused a 2019 offer to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show in solidarity. New York Giants player Nate Solder, NFL free agent Desmond Bryant, and former Washington Commander player Robert Lee Griffin III tweeted that they supported Flores and his mission to make the NFL more equitable. "This is definitely a real thing," Maybin said. "This is definitely something that's not new and something that's been pervasive."

"There are certain ways of thinking that permeate the way the NFL operates," UMass Boston Chair of Sport Leadership and Administration Joseph Cooper said. "It seems like racism."

After the murder of George Floyd, Americans have responded to diversity issues more emphatically. They're demanding more from corporate and social leaders while employees are increasingly speaking up about their own experiences with racism and discrimination at work. Some race and sports management scholars said this could raises the stakes for league; pressuring executives to improve improve diversity within the NFL's own leadership ranks.

"The shield has been tarnished," said Eddie Glaude, Princeton University's chair of the Center for African American Studies.

Going from performative to substantive

The NFL has done work on its diversity and inclusion issues, including establishing a coaching fellowship program aimed at increasing the number of non-white male coaches, donating $250 million over a decade to combat systemic racism, and allowing players to wear helmet decals memorializing Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. In addition to developing and adopting the Rooney Rule, the league has also worked for years with the Fritz Pollard Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to making the league, and sports in general, more diverse.

But race scholar Harper said those measures have been largely "empty" and "performative." He said the NFL's financial commitments were marginal compared to its annual revenue, which has topped $12 billion in 2020. Harper also noted that the NFL's culture appears to penalize those who seek to speak out on social-justice issues, he said.

"I think the waves are getting higher than they've ever been. You're standing on the shore. It's not that the tide is going back. The tide is getting higher," said Kenneth Shropshire, the CEO of the Global Sport Institute, a management consultancy, and a professor at Arizona State University.

Former Baltimore Ravens player Ayanbadejo said he's hopeful that Flores' lawsuit will result in a substantial change. But Maybin was not as inspired.

"I want to be hopeful and all those things," Maybin said, "but when you look at the history of how the league and how society kind of moves along on these issues, you kind of just see the writing on the wall for what's coming."

This article was originally published Feb 10.