Steelers owner Art Rooney II says changes will be made to Rooney Rule

quote:

---

Despite the existence of the "Rooney Rule," which requires league teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching and senior football operation jobs, only one of the five recent head coaching vacancies was filled by a minority. The 2019 NFL racial and gender report card stated that NFL minority hiring is at its worst in the past 15 years, according to a recent story from ESPN's Kevin Siefert.

None of this sits well with Art Rooney II, the Steelers' president and chairman of the NFL's diversity workplace committee. Rooney, during an interview with NFL Network's Steve Wyche on Tuesday evening, stated that the committee will look into making changes to the Rooney Rule in an effort to fix the lack of recent minority hiring in the NFL.

Rooney was asked if NFL teams should be required to interview more than one minority coach for an open position.

"We'll look at a lot of different things," Rooney responded. "This time last year, we made some changes to the Rooney Rule and we required the interview to come from somebody outside the organization because we didn't it to be an internal situation where somebody down the hall was called down to the office for an interview. We changed that rule last year. Obviously we have to look at what we can do differently now, perhaps even expand the Rooney Rule into some of the lower levels, perhaps the coordinator level, just to make sure that the minority opportunities are there."

---