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SBJ Football: What's Next For The Rooney Rule?


Don’t miss Monday’s issue of SBJ. The cover story is about my night tagging along with NFL league observers, who attend games incognito and grade every aspect of the fan experience, looking for problems to fix and good ideas to share with other clubs.

 

 

JIM ROONEY: FATHER WOULD BE "DISAPPOINTED" BY BACKSLIDE ON MINORITY HIRING

  • What’s wrong with the Rooney Rule in the NFLJim Rooney thinks it’s a lack of owners with the necessary dedication to the principle -- and the power to influence their peers. Jim Rooney, son and biographer to the rule’s creator, late Steelers owner Dan Rooney, said his father would undeniably be “disappointed” to see the recent backslide in minority head coach hires. “This is an owners issue, and they have to take individual responsibility,” said the younger Rooney, who made the 2003 Rooney Rule a centerpiece of his recent book about his father, “A Better Way to Win.” “They all have to create some level of advocacy amongst themselves, because that’s the model that worked in the past.”

  • Jim Rooney, who runs a business consultancy, doesn’t think most teams are acting in bad faith. Dan Rooney and his compatriots explicitly eschewed hard quotas, but his son said it's impossible to think the rule is working considering there are only two more minority head coaches in the NFL now than in 2002, the last year before the rule was implemented. Rooney thinks the rule did work while his father was alive, because he and Fritz Pollard Alliance Chair John Wooten pushed so effectively for it on a personal level. “Maybe you can blame both of them, maybe they should have been mentoring someone to succeed them,” Jim Rooney said. “That didn’t happen.” Eleven minority coaches were hired in the rule’s first nine years, and on three separate occasions, the number of minority head coaches peaked at eight (not counting interims). The figure is four today. "That to me is the proof that the rule can work, it did work for awhile -- or at least you had significant progress -- when Dan and John were advocating with such rigor."

  • Unless the Browns take a person of color to fill the last remaining vacancy this offseason, it will be the third consecutive year in which one minority coach was hired, and this year, it's second-time head coach Ron Rivera, who won't change the overall numbers. Jim Rooney hesitated to make specific recommendations to the NFL (he’s not a Steelers shareholder and his brother, Art Rooney II, is the controlling owner). But he wondered if it's even possible in the modern era for any single owner to compel their peers to prioritize minority personnel development the way his father, Wooten and others did. “Is there more of a reticence to call someone out than there was in the past, because those dynamics are different?” He said. “My father was with some of these guys for 40, 50, 60 years, and he knew them well, and he could appeal in different ways, and maybe there’s not that familiarity today."

 

 

CLUB MEDIA PLATFORMS PLAY KEY ROLE IN COACHING ROLLOUTS

  • Panthers reporter/producer Caroline Cann had no idea she would be traveling to WacoTexas, when she woke up in Charlotte Tuesday. But when Owner David Tepper plucked Matt Rhule from Baylor, the content team sprang into action. Cann told SBJ’s Thomas Leary, “We had talked about the possibility of -- depending on who we hire -- their willingness to let us come and invade their home and their space.” A similar story played out up north, where the Giants had a reporting crew with Joe Judge in Boston before he was officially announced as Big Blue's next coach.

  • Rhule committed to Tepper around 10am ET on Tuesday. Cann, along with the team’s videographer and photographer, got the green light to travel to Waco an hour later. “At 1pm we were taking off from Charlotte to fly to Austin. It was a very quick, ‘run, go pack your bags, make sure you have enough for a 24 hour trip.’ By 5:30pm CT that evening, [after an hour-and-a-half drive to Waco] we were knocking on Matt Rhule’s door.” 

  • Over the course of the next 12 hours, the Panthers' content team was able to take a tour through the Rhule home and give the coach a chance to introduce himself to the fan base via videos posted to Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. The aim was to connect fans with Rhule and his family in a more personalized context than the traditional intro presser scheduled for Wednesday. "Winning the press conference" is sort of a sarcastic term, but first impressions do matter, and teams no longer simply hope for a positive review from the independent media in those crucial first 36 hours of a coach's tenure. They try to create that first impression with their own social and digital channels. Giants Chief Commercial Officer Pete Guelli told me: "We control massive platforms where we can communicate directly with Giants fans, and we utilized every single asset we have to make sure we got the message out."

  • Cann on covering Rhule: “I called him as soon as we landed in Austin. After one ring he picks up. He and his wife Julie are very relatable, very casual. When we showed up he was in athletic shorts and a hoodie and asked what we thought he should wear. The last big ask was if we could show back up at 6:45am to follow his family to the airport. ‘Absolutely.’ … Without that buy-in and his willingness, we wouldn’t have been able to give our fans that access and experience with he and his family.”

 

Several members of the Panthers' digital team were sent to get images and video of Matt Rhule at his Waco home

 

XFL LOOKS TO ATTRACT FANS WITH UNIQUE RULES

  • Commissioner Oliver Luck reaffirmed the XFL is not interested in bold face names like Colin KaepernickAntonio Brown or Tim Tebow as a way to grab attention, but he did cite one avenue where he thought the league might adjust its salary structure for a certain player. Luck told ESPN’s Dan Le Batard, "The only area where that may come up is with younger kids, college kids. We’re not subject to the NFL’s eligibility rules. We’re not a party to the collective bargaining agreement obviously. There’s nothing restricting us from taking a college freshman."

  • Seattle Dragons President Ryan Gustafson told ESPN Radio Seattle the XFL is committed to providing entertaining, physical football, but they are also well aware of the increasing importance of player safety. Gustafson: “Fans tell us two things. They want authentic football. … But they also don’t want to be complicit in player health and safety issues." Luck also appeared on "The Sports Junkies" on WJFK-FM in DC and talked about the setup for kickoffs that will offer a "safer play." Luck talked about how the XFL rules will guarantee more kickoff returns. "That's what fans want to see," he said. "We've eliminated that 40-yard sprint and that takes a lot of the velocity out of that impact. Kickoffs are around 6% of plays in professional football, but about 20% of injuries. It's the single-most dangerous play, so we think we've made it safer, but have kept it in the game."

  • On the authenticity front, the XFL considered banning punts and field goals, but ultimately felt that was too close to gimmick territory. The XFL rules most apt to alter the basic presentation? A running clock until the two-minute warning, a 25-second play clock at all times, and the three-point PAT option -- which makes even an 18-point advantage still a two-possession game. Any OT games will feel radically different thanks to the shootout concept, which will tally up how many times out of five attempts each team can score from the 5-yard-line.


 

SPEED READS

  • The Dolphins exceeded expectations with a 5-11 finish, and fans are responding: Season ticket renewals stood at 80% at the start of 2020, up six percentage points year-over-year, according to the team. No doubt Hard Rock Stadium had some particularly sparse crowds in 2019 as the club embarked on a comprehensive rebuilding effort. Demand was soft and no-shows were high. But group sales offset some of the weakness, and two games posted the highest gross-ticket revenue in the NFL in their weekends. With three first-round draft picks this coming April, the Dolphins' sales pitch was always going to be about the future. The question this season was whether the team could give fans any optimism. Mission accomplished. “Great things take time to build,” said team President & CEO Tom Garfinkel. “We’re in a much better position to be a very good football team in the future than we were a year ago, and I think fans understand that and are excited about that."

  • Data from Ticketmaster shows the 49ers have the highest average ticket price for any NFL Divisional Game this weekend ($475). There's a lot of pent-up demand by the Bay, as the team hasn't been the playoffs since 2013. The Ravens aren't far behind the Niners ($446) for their game in Baltimore tomorrow night against the Titans. The emergence of Lamar Jackson has driven up that price, as the team was averaging only $197 when it hosted the Chargers for the Wild Card last season. The Chiefs are seeing a gain for their divisional game at Arrowhead Stadium ($277 vs. $190) on Sunday, while the Packers ($299) are up from the last time they hosted a Wild Card in 2017 ($205).

  • The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay had this gem regarding the Browns’ head coaching search. “It’s a comical history of turnover. You know that restaurant space in your neighborhood that never seems to work? One year, it’s a wood-fired pizza place; the next year, it’s a crab shack; then it does pita sandwiches; then it tries tiny, tiny cupcakes; then it’s a lousy bagel joint where the bagels aren’t chewy enough; then it turns into a lousy bagel joint that is also a supply store for people who breed exotic turtles? That’s the job of Browns head coach.”

  • The 49ers want to deliver something special tomorrow when the team hosts its first NFL playoff game since moving into Levi's Stadium, and concessionaire Levy Restaurants is on the case. They've created a new product that caught my eye: a “Loaded Big Kid Dog.” The foot-long hot dog comes topped with mac & cheese and Flamin’ Hot Cheeto dust. I can't eat much when my team's in the postseason, but more power to the Niners fans who want to tackle this one.

 

Fans at Levi's Stadium tomorrow will have the "Loaded Big Kid Dog" as an option on the menu

 

 

 

Enjoying this newsletter? We've got more! Check out SBJ College with Michael Smith on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and SBJ Media with John Ourand on Mondays and Wednesdays.

Something on the football beat catch your eye? Tell us about it. Reach out to either me (bfischer@sportsbusinessjournal.com) or Austin Karp (akarp@sportsbusinessjournal.com) and we'll share the best of it. Also contributing to this newsletter is Thomas Leary (tleary@sportsbusinessdaily.com).