Has the NFL’s Rooney Rule Efforts “Leveled the Field” for African American Head Coach Candidates?

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PSC Working Paper Series
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Affirmative action
African American
Coaching
Defensive coordinator
Discrimination
Football
Head coaches
Hiring disadvantage
NFL
Offensive coordinator
Performance advantages
Race
Racial differentials
Regression analysis
Rooney Rule
Sports
Demography, Population, and Ecology
Economics
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Sociology
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Abstract

Madden (2004) and Madden and Ruther (2009) provide evidence that African American National Football League (NFL) head coaches significantly out-performed their white counterparts between 1990 and 2002. They conclude that this evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that African Americans had to be better coaches than whites in order to be hired as a head coach in the NFL. In 2002, the NFL promulgated the Rooney Rule requiring NFL teams to interview a minority candidate when appointing new head coaches, as well as other affirmative efforts. This paper analyzes whether the performance advantage of African American head coaches has been eliminated in the time since the Rooney Rule’s affirmative efforts have been in effect. The paper also examines racial differentials in performance in other NFL coaching positions that were less affected by Rooney Rule affirmative efforts, finding no similar time trends in performance differentials by race.

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2010-07-15
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Madden, Janice Fanning and Matthew Ruther. 2010. "Has the NFL’s Rooney Rule Efforts “Leveled the Field” for African American Head Coach Candidates?" PSC Working Paper Series, PSC 10-05.
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