Diversity In Sports

Women’s equality is an issue that has been around for awhile. While women have been given many rights to increase equality, including the right to vote and go to college, the problem hasn’t completely vanished. One area that still sees this is in sports. Women’s sports do not draw nearly as many fans and are not covered in the media as much as men’s sports, pay differences between male and female athletes are large, and female athletes have to wait longer to start their professional career than men, which risks their professional career before it even starts.

The Rooney Rule is a National Football League policy established in 2003 that requires all teams to interview minority candidates and senior football operation jobs. The rule was created as a reply to the 2002 firings of head coaches Tony Dungy of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Dennis Green of the Minnesota Vikings, at a time when Dungy had a winning record and Green had just had his first losing season in ten years. Soon after, U.S. civil rights attorneys Cyrus Mehri and Johnnie Cochran released a study showing that black head coaches, despite winning a higher percentage of games, were less likely to be hired and more likely to be fired than white head

The Rooney rule is a rule that the NFL created back in 2002 and implemented in 2003. According to Burke (2013) “the rule stated that each organization had to interview at least one minority candidate for all coaching and general manager positions once there was an opening.” The Rooney rule changed the league as a whole, according to Thomas George of the New York Times in an online article (2002), “since 1920 the league has hired more than 400 head coaches and only 6 or 1.5% have been African American.” This rule was specifically created to help African American and other minority coaches get head coaching jobs at the professional level. This was a great rule that the NFL decided to create, according to George (2002), “minorities compose nearly 70 percent of the league,” but the coordinators jobs are 72 percent white and 28 percent African American. After the Rooney Rule was put in place it took a while but the

I believe implementing the Rooney Rule has both positive and negative effects on societal views. The positive effects are that the society may see the NFL as giving more chances to minorities to be in influential positions. Society

The purpose of this research paper is to identify the current state of the Rooney Rule and determine its effectiveness. The Rooney Rule was implemented back in 2003 to avoid potential lawsuits and minimize the injustice in the hiring of minority head coaches in the National Football League (NFL). Since then, other companies such as the English Professional Soccer and even Facebook have considered implementing the Rooney Rule to help balance out the scale in the number of minorities in leadership roles. The background of the Rooney Rule is initially outlined, followed by its influence in the NFL; the controversy over its effectiveness. Then analysis the rule’s significance in other countries and field, such

What is the Rooney Rule? The Rooney Rule was established to encourage diversity in coaching or any top management position in the National Football League. It required teams to interview a minority candidate before making a head coach or head management hire. Do NFL officials still need the Rooney Rule? Yes, the Rooney Rule has helped force owners to cast a wide net, going from who you know system to who’s the best system. What should be done about the lack of minority coaches and general managers? The NFL officials should make it clear that hiring minorities is a priority in all positions.

When you’re watching a sports game do you ever wonder why the coaches are mostly white? Leagues like the NFL and NBA are trying to get their teams to hire coaches from minority groups, but some people say that race should not interfere with the process of hiring a coach. Sports teams should make an effort to hire their coaching and higher office positions from minority groups because it is mainly white male coaches, most of the players in the sports come from minority groups, and it would also prove that racial sports barriers don’t exist.

Despite the disadvantages that colored women faced, African American males had more opportunities to partake in sports and have their athletic abilities recognized. Detectable through the Sports Illustrated covers, colored males were pretty dominant in many of the magazine covers. At least half of the issues within a year, they contained colored males either individually, or with other players to make it diverse. In Douglas Hartmann’s “Rethinking the Relationships Between Sport and Race in American Culture: Golden Ghettos and Contested Terrain,” he conducted a statistical research to discover that “African Americans, while representing only 12% of the population, comprise 80% of the players in professional basketball, 67% in football, and 18%

It may not be thought about much but there are some racial games that are played. Although the Rooney Rule has at least given minority head coaches a chance to potentially get hired because they actually get a chance to get an interview, many still see it as just a rule put into place to make it seem like everything is equal and to save face from scrutiny about racial issues in sport. In 2003, Mike Millen the president of the Detroit Lions was fined for not interviewing a minority. He was not fined for intentionally not interviewing minority coaches, he actually contacted five different minority coaches and each of them turned the request for an interview down. Each of them felt like the job was already Steve Mariucci and felt like they were just being interviewed just so that the Detroit Lions could fill their obligation to interview a minority coach. The problem not only lies with collegiate and professional sports organizations and the issue of not interviewing and hiring more minority coaches and managers but also stems from this minorities feeling that they don’t have a fair shot at the position. Some minorities looking for a head coaching position also have negative feelings towards getting called up for an interview just because of rule that was put into place that forces teams to do this. Some feel like if the Rooney Rule wasn’t in

The topic of race in sport, particularly African Americans in sport, has long been a controversial yet, widely discussed matter. Human and social issues are never easy subjects to discuss or debate, and racial differences tend to provoke very strong reactions. To begin, we will explore those whom claim that black athletes excel in sports as a result of their biological make up. Of all players in the NBA, more than 75% of them are black; of all players in the WNBA, more than 70% of them are black; of all players in the NFL, more than 65% of them are black (Hoenig, 2014). Evidently, black athletes make up a vast majority of these sports in the United States. Athletes must be of elite caliber to have the ability to play at this level, so this

The treatment of minority athletes, particularly African Americans has been a grave issue in American sports for decades. More than fifty years ago, to be a colored person playing a so- called “white sport,” meant that it was an unfortunate fact that inequality, prejudices and racial discrimination came along with that territory, and it is also an unfortunate fact that some of those racial tensions are yet in full, modernized effect today. African- American starting five, or starting lineman, being told what to do, when, and how to do it by their Caucasian coaches, and general managers, are in sync with past century notions of African- American slaves being under total dominion and authority of

I would like to discuss the issue of race and ethnicity in sports. We will also explore the bigger questions. How much does race and ethnicity matter in the sports world? Are certain races dominant in certain sports? Is there a difference in how we treat players based on race and ethnicity? Does it matter? I would like to answer some of these questions and gain a better understanding of how much of a part they play.

Sports are the entertainment that is spreading throughout the world. Because of this, there are many sports leagues that are culturally diverse. People have started the address the issue of diversity in sports. For example, Leo Kahane, Neil Longley, and Robert Simmons wrote an article titled “The Effects of Coworker Heterogeneity on Firm-Level Output: Assessing the Impacts of Cultural and Language Diversity in the National Hockey League,” and this article talks about how teams and players have to deal with teammates that are culturally from a different background. Also, Alison J. Doherty wrote an article titled “Managing Cultural Diversity in Sport Organizations: A Theoretical Perspective” while this article talks about how sports organizations have to manage the diversity of the team while trying to be able to perform at their best. Both of these articles do a fine job in using certain elements of argument to make their respective articles persuasive. However, the article that talks about the National Hockey League uses logos, along with facts and evidence most successful while the other article uses mainly ethos and logos most effectively.

After attending the Issue in Sports Discussion on Diversity I realized many things. The main point that I took away was that diversity in the sport community is a major issue that many people tend to ignore. Dr. Laura Burton of the UConn Sport Management Program, Fluerette King of the Rainbow Center and Nicole Melton of the UMASS Amherst Sport Management Program all provided their opinions on the issue of diversity in sports. They answered many highly debated questions in relation to diversity and sport and how the two fit together. They then opened the floor to the people in the audience for a chance to ask questions.

As a student-athlete at the University of Illinois, I’ve noticed a certain skew in the ethnicity of staff hired at the University in comparison with the populations that they serve. The ration between staff to student or even coach to student shares more familiarity with those of a Caucasian back ground. Of the 19 Varsity sports available within the University of Illinois Division of Intercollegiate Athletics, only two of them have head coaches that are of African-American decent. This number is an increase 0 prior to June 2015 with the hiring of Head Women’s Softball Coach, Tyra Perry, & the recent hiring of Head Football Coach, Lovie Smith earlier this year. This trend follows a much important trend that carries through many institutions of higher education in reference to their administration. These administrators, as shown in the issues surfacing with