First Not enough African American Head Coaches in NFL..... now

quote:

---

While five of the league's 32 head coaches are African-American, and the Panthers' Ron Rivera is Hispanic, all six of those men come from primarily defensive backgrounds. And though the number of African-American starting quarterbacks is roughly the same (currently: Cam Newton, Robert Griffin III, Russell Wilson, Michael Vick, Colin Kaepernick and Josh Freeman), only Caldwell is truly running an NFL offense.
"We are very, very conscious of this issue, and it's something that needs to be addressed," said John Wooten, the chairman of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, an organization charged with promoting equality of job opportunity in NFL coaching and front office staffs. "We have alluded to it and spoken to it directly, and we feel our only course of action is to push more people up the pipeline."

---

quote:

---

"This is the biggest travesty that's taking place in this league, and every black coach is well aware of it," said one anonymous African-American assistant for an AFC team. "They don't promote you from running backs coach or receivers coach to offensive coordinator. When guys do get coordinator titles, they have to be position coaches at the same time, and they don't get paid as much as other coordinators, because they're not the play-callers. And in a lot of cases, guys believe they're really there for locker-room reasons, to 'take care of' the minority players."

---

quote:

---

Yet it still requires a head coach being willing to give an opportunity to an untested position coach, something that isn't always as easy as it sounds. For Jackson, who was given some play-calling responsibility while working for the Redskins (as Steve Spurrier's offensive coordinator in 2003) and Falcons (as Bobby Petrino's offensive coordinator in 2007), another breakthrough came in 2008, when Harbaugh hired him as the Ravens' quarterbacks coach.

---