The most damning testimony about the NFL’s skewed adherence to the Rooney Rule went unnoticed for nearly 18 months.
Lost in the abyss of COVID-related football coverage — nestled in the middle of a Steelers Realm podcast in October 2020 — former NFL head coach Mike Mularkey took a well-known allegation about the Rooney Rule and told a story about it from a completely unfamiliar angle. He provided the point of view of the man who actually landed the top job in 2016 and the regret that followed for believing the process was a lie.
That’s what Mularkey tried to tell everyone in 2020. That the spirit of the Rooney Rule has been abused. That he knew about it firsthand. And that it was a top-down complicity issue, starting with ownership of the Tennessee Titans and ending with general manager Jon Robinson.
Somehow we missed this bomb. Now Brian Flores’ lawsuit against the NFL — alleging racial discrimination in hiring practices — has rediscovered them. It’s a devastating turn of events for the NFL, which now has to contend with a former head coach who got his top job in 2016, and then called it a “fake hiring process” where minority coaching candidates should just check a box .
Proposing such a distortion of Rooney’s rule is not new. But a former head coach like Mularkey expressing remorse for being a silent accomplice certainly is. That should worry the NFL. Not only because Flores is no longer alone in its class action lawsuit (Steve Wilks and Ray Horton have joined as plaintiffs), but also because the league never imagined dealing with this Mularkey disclosure. Not once in the history of Rooney Rule has a head coach said he got a job without giving the other candidates a fair shake. Enter Mularkey in 2020 and answer a remarkably broad question in a specific and personal way.
Mike Mularkey called the Titans’ 2016 coaching job, which ended in him getting the job, a “fake hiring process.” (Photo by Wesley Hitt/Getty Images)
This is how the query went:
“Would you have done anything differently or changed during your coaching career?”
The story goes on
“That’s a good question,” Mularkey said. “Let me tell you this: I’ve always taken pride in doing what’s right in this business, and I can’t say that applies to everyone in this business. It’s a very cutthroat business and a lot of people will tell you that. But once I was in Tennessee, I allowed myself to get caught up in something I regret. I still regret it. But the owner there, Amy Adams-Strunk and her family, walked in and told me I was going to be a head coach in 2016 before they went through the Rooney Rule. And so I sat there knowing I was 16 the head coach when they went through this fake hiring process – I knew a lot of the coaches they interviewed, knew how prepared they were to go through those interviews, and knew that anything they could do and they had no chance of getting that job. Actually, the GM, Jon Robinson, was with me at the interview. He had no idea why he was interviewing me — that I already had the job.”
Mulkey continued:
“I regret [it], because first of all I’m proud of my children for doing the right thing. I’ve always said that to the players. And here I am, the boss, not doing it. I’ve regretted that ever since. It was wrong. I’m sorry I did that. But it wasn’t the right way. I should have interviewed like everyone else and got hired for the interview, not too soon. That is probably my biggest regret.”
A coach doesn’t usually say something like that in a podcast. It’s the kind of answer offered in a sealed statement made under oath. That probably tells you a little bit about how long Mularkey must have carried this around.
Making such accusations is no small feat, especially when you essentially identify as a passive participant.
For the Flores legal camp, this is a dream. It may or may not be admissible in court, but it certainly stands to reason that Mularkey would be willing to say it once as a podcast guest, he would be willing to do it a second time as a contrite witness in a courtroom. And even if that’s not the case, the public perception of the moment is inescapable. It’s proof of concept that some NFL employees are already locked up before the trial even begins. And that Rooney’s rule became a tool for optics and shielding.
NFL teams have long been suspected of staging “sham” interviews with minority candidates to comply with the rule, essentially ticking a box standing in the way of hiring a white head coach. Never had it been broadcast in a way that illustrated the theory from both sides of that ticked box — a three-dimensional perspective between minority candidates who suspected they were being used and white colleagues who suspected (or even knew) that the job was theirs from the start.
Mularkey added a long-missing piece of this image. It’s a fact that led to the Titans effectively calling him a liar on Thursday.
“Our 2016 head coach search was a thoughtful and competitive process that was fully consistent with NFL guidelines and our own organizational values,” the Titans said in a statement. “We conducted in-depth, face-to-face interviews with four talented individuals, two of whom were different candidates. No decision was made and no decision communicated prior to the conclusion of all interviews. While proud of our commitment to diversity, we are committed to continued growth as an organization to promote diversity and inclusion in our workplace and in the community.”
It’s worth noting that Mularkey made his statement to Steelers Realm almost 16 months before Flores’ lawsuit. He unleashed what was arguably the most massive Rooney Rule grenade to date at a time when it was only likely to fall back on himself. And he did it in a way that made him part of the problem while answering a question that wasn’t specific to how NFL teams conduct their hiring processes.
All of this seems pretty strange. People don’t just fall for a sword for no reason, especially in the NFL and especially when no one seems to know you were complicit in something. That’s exactly what Mulkey did. With no tangible benefit to themselves.
That’s a statement in itself. And it’s one the NFL needs to take seriously.