Black Intel

From the fanhouse website

By: Jay Mariotti

LOS ANGELES — If I were Dan Rooney about now, I’d be demanding that my name be removed from the so-called Rooney Rule. He was integral in establishing the rule seven years ago in the spirit of diversity, to provide legitimate NFL opportunities for minority candidates who deserved to be considered for head-coaching and executive positions. It was named for Rooney, one of the league’s smartest and most progressive men, because he was offering chances to minorities with the Pittsburgh Steelers back when other owners still were employing good-old-boy practices.

But something very wrong and troubling has happened of late. The Rooney Rule has been twisted into a hokey euphemism for the token interview, a sign that those same good-old-boys are alive and not well. I’m not saying that Leslie Frazier (pictured), defensive coordinator of the Minnesota Vikings, is more worthy of the Seattle Seahaws’ coaching position than Pete Carroll, who twice has been an NFL head coach and is coming off a rousingly successful reign at USC. Nor am I saying that Jerry Gray, an assistant coach with the Washington Redskins, should have been offered the head-coaching position in D.C. over Mike Shanahan, a two-time Super Bowl champion who might make the Hall of Fame if he revives a dog franchise.

What was shamefully evident in both cases, though, is that Frazier and Gray were used as minority-interview pawns in the much bigger process of hiring marquee names. The Seahawks were embarrassingly ignorant and/or defiant of the Rooney Rule, cutting a deal in principle with Carroll for two jobs — team president and coach — before meeting Saturday morning with Frazier. When Frazier balked at the idea of interviewing for a filled position, as well he should have, the watchdog group known as the Fritz Pollard Alliance protested that the Seahawks weren’t compliant with the Rooney Rule and said it would fight the idea of Carroll getting both positions. That forced the Seahawks to backtrack late Saturday and clarify that Carroll only was being named coach, which just complicates Carroll’s wish for complete personnel control and forced him into another meeting Sunday with Seahawks CEO Tod Leiweke. As for Gray, he was interviewed for the Redskins head-coaching job by owner Dan Snyder while Jim Zorn still was in the position. It meant Snyder used Gray while showing no respect for Zorn in his grand scheme of landing Shanahan, a high-profile head coach, once the regular season was done.

If teams aren’t serious about their interviews with certain minority candidates, why waste their time and sabotage the intent of the Rooney Rule? Or why even have such a rule at all when it seems, in the minds of some owners, to be more of a logistical pain in the butt than a sincere attempt to raise the profiles of minority candidates? The last two days have been an exercise in tragicomedy, with furious backtracking being performed by Leiweke, Carroll and even John Wooten, chairman of the Pollard Alliance. Which is why it was important for Tony Dungy, perhaps the most prominent and influential black voice in sports, to use his NBC microphone as a way of speaking out against the Rooney Rule’s violators.

“That is not what the Rooney Rule is supposed to be, [that] you make up your mind and then interview a candidate for it anyway just to satisfy the rule,” Dungy said. “If the Jerry Gray situation is the way it has been described as happening, I don’t think it was fair. I don’t think I would ever interview for a job if my boss was not out of the job. I don’t blame Jerry; it’s the position he was put in, if it happened that way.”

This was in direct contract to the wishy-washy conclusions of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who hopped into the owners’ communal bed and defended the Seahawks and Redskins. “They have in both cases — I can assure you they have complied with the rule with the information that I have,” Goodell told reporters. “I mean, I’ve been in contact with them, so they’ve been in compliance. I can’t give all the details, but they’re in compliance.”

How can he say that without the lie-detector buzzing? Carroll officially accepted the head-coaching position in Seattle on Sunday night, reportedly notifying his players via a text message, and it’s obvious the Seahawks pursued him without first considering the Rooney Rule. Check out the timeline: Jim Mora Jr. was fired Friday, Carroll immediately was reported to have cut a deal with the Seahawks on Friday night, Frazier finally agreed to an interview with Leiweke on Saturday morning and Carroll laid low for a day and a half before his deal was finalized Sunday. The Washington timeline also was indicting: Gray was interviewed just before Zorn was dismissed, allowing Snyder a quick pursuit and signing of Shanahan while the Rooney Rule requirement was fulfilled.

“The idea of the rule is to slow down the process and get teams to do their homework and investigate a lot of candidates, not just minority candidates,” Dungy said. “You [go] through the process, and in doing that, sometimes you uncover people.”

It should surprise no one that Rooney and the Steelers did just that in unearthing a little-known Minnesota defensive coordinator named Mike Tomlin, who was hired in 2007 over two Pittsburgh coordinators, Ken Whisenhunt and Russ Grimm. The result was a Super Bowl title for Tomlin, an African-American, in his second season. Whisenhunt and Grimm fled to Arizona, where they reached the Super Bowl last season and remain alive this postseason. But tell me who was the better hire?

The hue and cry over the Seattle situation was strong enough Sunday that the NFL continued to defend the Rooney Rule.

“The rule has been effective, teams are complying and it has produced its intended positive results,” league spokesman Greg Aiello said. “Before the Rooney Rule, interviews with minority head coaching and GM candidates that are conducted now might never have taken place. Since the Rooney Rule, there has been an exceptional increase in the number of minority coaches who have had interviews, and there are far more minority coaches in the NFL, including head coaches, than in years past.”

Oddly, a day after criticizing the Seahawks for their mishandling of the Frazier interview and their premature anointing of Carroll, Wooten also was sounding like a pro-management honk. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times on Saturday, he had issued a warning to the Seahawks suggesting Leiweke was lying: “Our position is, if Pete Carroll comes there as the head coach, he will only be in charge of the 53-man roster. That’s the extent of his authority. Because of their commitment to swear that to us, we have agreed to let them interview Leslie Frazier. They can hire Pete Carroll if they want. But he cannot be anything more than a head coach. He does not have control of the draft. He does not have control of the trades. He does not have the last word on anything other than the 53 men he puts out on that field each and every week. If there’s any violation of anything else, you can rest assured — and I’ve already alerted the NFL office on this — it would mean that Tod Leiweke would have been dishonest with us and would have violated the Rooney Rule.”

All it took was one call from Carroll on Saturday night for Wooten to do an about-face. Never mind that Carroll, in telling Wooten he had no deal with Seattle, was employing semantics and playing a political game to woo an old football colleague to his side. Wooten was naive enough to buy into the game anyway. “[Carroll] said, ‘I wouldn’t try to be disruptive to what you’re trying to do, and I support what you’re trying to do,’ ” Wooten told ESPN.com. “He said, ‘I feel comfortable at USC, and if the deal isn’t what I want it to be, I’ll just stay right here at Southern Cal. But I need to talk to Seattle to clear up any issues.’ He said he never would get into any arrangement that would cause controversy or undermine the Fritz Pollard Alliance. As long as I’ve known Pete Carroll over the years, he’s been honest. I take him at his word.”

Twenty-four hours later, Carroll announced the deal he had all along.

And Snyder? Wooten insists the Redskins were clean, too, in the Gray affair.

“Do we have to fight and safeguard against shenanigans? Yes. People try to play as close to the line as they can,” Wooten said. “We say to our guys, ‘Don’t let people use you. We all know what a legitimate interview is.’ [But] I told Jerry that Dan Snyder went about it the right way. He called the commissioner, and the commissioner called me. The thing that bothered me with Jerry is he didn’t stand up and say, ‘Dan Snyder came to me and asked me would I be interested in being coach of the Redskins?’ He’s the owner and knows what will happen with his team.”

If Carroll truly was serious at some point about returning to USC, it might have shocked him that the Trojans were in hot pursuit of Oregon State head coach Mike Riley. As Troy burns amid the Reggie Bush and Joe McKnight scandals, there is considerable disarray among recruits who may not honor their USC commitments. One such star is All-American Kyle Prater, a 6-5 receiver from suburban Chicago, who postponed a trip to Los Angeles in which he was supposed to officially sign and begin class enrollment proceedings. Another in limbo is running back Dillon Baxter, who verbally committed to USC as a freshman. Carroll left USC at the worst possible time, which may have been part of his scheme.

Wisely, Riley was said to be leaning toward remaining at Oregon State with a lifetime deal, not wanting to deal with the ramifications of probation and other problems at USC. His bosses were only happy to pursue a deal that will fulfill Riley’s wish to be the Joe Paterno of Corvallis. Where USC goes from here, who knows? But Barry Switzer, of all people, was quick to weigh in that Carroll left the better job for an inferior job. What Switzer fails to acknowledge is that Carrroll’s program is sinking in sleaze and that he’s bailing before the NCAA weighs in with substantial penalites in the Bush case. That’s what this is about, of course, Carroll bailing on his sullied creation as it fades into a scandalous rut.

“I don’t think SC falls down. We’re too good. We do things well,” USC athletic director Mike Garrett told ESPN. “We’ve had a great history, 11 national championships, we’ve produced a lot of excellent student-athletes and I don’t think that will stop. All you can do is address the allegations and go from there. But we feel we run a good program and we always try to do the right thing.”

If there was any humor in the Carroll soap opera, it came from his former quarterback Mark Sanchez. Remember when Carroll criticized Sanchez for entering the NFL draft last year, claiming he wasn’t ready for the pros? “The facts are so strong against this decision. After analyzing all the information, the truth is there, he should have stayed for another year,” Carroll said then. “He lost out on a chance to fully prepare himself. The facts are, there’s a 62 percent failure rate for underclassman quarterbacks.” Sanchez playfully fired back after playing a near-flawless game in beating Cincinnati in the wild-card round of the AFC playoffs.

“I just wanted everybody to know I completely disagree with his decision,” Sanchez said of Carroll’s move to Seattle. “Statistics show that it’s not a good choice. I talk to Coach a bunch. I told him I was going to hammer him about it. I wish him the best, whatever happens, whether he stays in school or not.”

Carroll is gone, aching to prove he can succeed as an NFL head coach after failures with the Patriots and Jets. This time around, you sense he’ll be less a rah-rah, as he was at USC, and more a tough guy with a hands-on approach toward defense, his specialty. In the meantime, we only can hope that Goodell, thrilled that his compelling playoffs are earning huge TV ratings, doesn’t go soft on the Rooney Rule when he is so tough on player conduct and other issues.

This is the true test of the commissioner’s character. And so far, he’d hiding behind a convenient veneer.