Poll The 'Rooney Rule'/positive discrimination

[peterhague]

English Football Should Take Another Look at the Rooney Rule After Mackay Texts

By Patrick Barclay, Guest Columnist
Aug 25, 2014

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Let me make one thing clear from the start: I don’t believe it is a question of numbers, this problem within English football that has been highlighted by the publication of text messagesallegedly sent by Malky Mackay and Iain Moody when they were manager and sporting director respectively at Cardiff City.
Amid the reaction to the texts, which contained a relatively small but shocking number of racist, sexist and gay-unfriendly references, it was widely agreed that the English game seemed to harbour a form of institutionalised racism, reflected by the fact that although there are plenty of black and mixed-race players around, not one is currently a manager.
The statistic itself doesn’t bother me. I don’t care if there are no black men in positions of footballing responsibility—just as I wouldn’t care if there were no white ones—as long as the best man (or woman) for every job is in it.
I hate the idea of quotas. If we had quotas based on population analysis, they would have to apply to players as well as managers—and black and mixed-race players, who by that token would suddenly be over-represented, would lose their places in team to inferior whites.

Sang Tan/Associated Press/Associated Press
Former Norwich City manager Chris Hughton was a rare sight as a black manager working in the Premier League


Should English football introduce Rooney rule?

YesNoSUBMIT VOTE vote to see results

So it’s with a certain reluctance that I concede it: English football should take another look at the Rooney Rule.
As anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of American sport knows, this procedure, making sure that so-called "minority candidates" are at least interviewed for senior posts, was introduced to the NFL more than a decade ago and has radically increased the number of black head coaches.
When the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Minnesota Vikings walked out for the annual NFL game at Wembley last year, they were led by black coaches Mike Tomlin and Leslie Frazier, and to American fans it was perfectly normal; in English—or indeed European—football it would have made history.

Matt Rourke/Associated Press
Mike Tomlin, head coach of the Steelers

We do need something like the Rooney Rule here to help overcome a suspicion that the disturbingly archaic attitudes flavouring the alleged exchanges between Mackay and Moody are not as close to banishment from the game as we imagined.
The input to the debate of black and mixed-race observers such as Stan Collymore, Jason Roberts and Lord Ouseley has been helpfully consensual in that the demand is for education across the game rather than mere punishment of Mackay and Moody. As Lord Ouseley wryly pointed out, as per BBC Sport, if all of football's worthies’ private correspondence were put in the public domain, few would survive the resulting wave of outrage.


Mackay, for his part, has agreed to consider undergoing a course in equality. He is likely to have plenty of spare time in which to take it; having been the favourite to land the manager’s job at Crystal Palace before the texts were published last week—they also cost Moody his post as sporting director of that club—he seems certain to face a ban by the Football Association.
But there is little appetite for exemplary punishment, more a recognition that Mackay—regarded as one of the game’s brighter managers after he steered Cardiff into the Premier League—will find it hard to persuade club owners and players that he can be trusted to treat all employees alike—for all his protestations that the messages were sent in a spirit of "banter".
So some good can indeed emerge from this latest scandal in a game that may have thought the worst was over when Luis Suarez and John Terry served their punishments for racially aggravated offences.


The FA is becoming more and more politically sensitive under the chairmanship of Greg Dyke, who recently referred to it as being"overwhelmingly" male and white, and with Heather Rabbatts, the Jamaica-born lawyer and businesswoman, on the board. The inclusiveness message seems to be getting over.

Tom Dulat/Getty Images
Greg Dyke, chairman of the FA

It’s also worth bearing in mind that the latest revelations followed a long-running dispute between Mackay and Moody and the "minority" owner of Cardiff City, Malaysian businessman Vincent Tan, initially over alleged overspending on transfers after promotion.
Both men eventually left the club but were pursued by Tan, despite apublic apology issued by Mackay, and under warrant the texts were seized from mobile telephones. It remains to be seen whether we shall learn some of the secrets of the transfer market from further revelations.
Mackay insists that there is nothing untoward. But how he and Moody must curse the day they made an enemy of Vincent Tan.

Patrick Barclay is an award-winning football journalist and best-selling author, whose portfolio includes biographies on Jose Mourinho and Sir Alex Ferguson.




Personally I'm against this sort of intervention.

What says you?

 

[Ryan]

How long did you deliberate over whether this deserved it's own thread Vs just cutting n pasting it into the new fangled 'Random Shite' thread peter?

Not long enough obviously.

 

[peterhague]

Shut up Ryan you bully.

 

[Ryan]

hahahahahahaha.

 

[Ryan]

I thought that was a very peterhague-esque reply initially there too.

 

[Red Astaire]

How long did you deliberate over whether this deserved it's own thread Vs just cutting n pasting it into the new fangled 'Random Shite' thread peter?



Not long enough obviously.

Haha

 

[MomoWASright]

If Patrick Barclay want's it then it means we don't need it.

On a more serious note the best candidates should be interviewed for a position. Regardless of their colour, race or whatever.

 

[peterhague]

I'm angry. Ryan has merked this thread by setting it up for the sheep to all reply in a similar vein - happens all the time on here.

Ok, I'll use it to pick up on a mistake Ryan made and which is very common on here now, to the extent that I suspect most people simply don't understand that it's wrong.

When used to refer to something that belongs to a non-person, one should write 'its' without an apostrophe, as in 'the car was blue, and its interior was black', for example.

An apostrophe is unnecessary because 'its' is already a possessive term, like 'theirs' or 'ours'.

 

[Ryan]

I'm angry. Ryan has merked this thread by setting it up for the sheep to all reply in a similar vein - happens all the time on here.

Ok, I'll use it to pick up on a mistake Ryan made and which is very common on here now, to the extent that I suspect most people simply don't understand that it's wrong.

When used to refer to something that belongs to a non-person, one should write 'its' without an apostrophe, as in 'the car was blue, and its interior was black', for example.

An apostrophe is unnecessary because 'its' is already a possessive term, like 'theirs' or 'ours'.

A fair point Peter, and I apologise for it's.

 

[Oncy]

I voted no Peter.
I dont believe its nescessary. Malky being a bit racist doesnt mean Paul Ince isnt a bit shit.

 

[peterhague]

A fair point Peter, and I apologise for it's.

I like this post.

 

[Fabio]

Yeah, if someone is shit at their job, why is why should they get hired because of their ethnicity

 

[Spionkop69]

Yeah, if someone is shit at their job, why is why should they get hired because of their ethnicity

Because Patrick Barclay says so. Keep up Mark.

 

[Fabio]

Because Patrick Barclay says so. Keep up Mark.

I only got a job at the hospital because i've got a cock (of sorts)

 

[Spionkop69]

I only got a job at the hospital because i've got a cock (of sorts)

You're not black?

 

[peterhague]

This whole argument just assumes that all football club owners and adinistrators are to some extent prejudiced. And not just prejudiced, but prejudiced enough to put that before their own commercial interest.

Is it just me or is that not quite a big leap to make? Possibly even requiring some kind of evidence?

 

[refugee]

I don't think it really effects us to be honest. I'd like to think that the elite clubs always take the best manager they can get because there's so much riding on the results. Even if they did interview managers from minority groups they would still be unlikely to get the job as most lack the experience to manage at the top level.

However, there aren't enough managers from minorities in the bottom clubs, building up a CV to allow them to apply for the higher levels jobs. Clubs that hire managers directly after their playing career ends (I know this is a generalisation) aren't doing enough and this is where this type of rule might help.

 

[the count]

I only got a job at the hospital because i've got a cock (of sorts)

I didn't realize that hospitals in England needed to hire stunt cocks!

 

[Judge Jules]

I'm angry. Ryan has merked this thread by setting it up for the sheep to all reply in a similar vein - happens all the time on here.

Ok, I'll use it to pick up on a mistake Ryan made and which is very common on here now, to the extent that I suspect most people simply don't understand that it's wrong.

When used to refer to something that belongs to a non-person, one should write 'its' without an apostrophe, as in 'the car was blue, and its interior was black', for example.

An apostrophe is unnecessary because 'its' is already a possessive term, like 'theirs' or 'ours'.

That last sentence is spot on, and very well explained. The "non-person" bit is incomplete and not really needed, because it doesn't matter what/whom the something belongs to.

Thread duty: a definite "no" to so-called "affirmative action". If we mean what we say about everyone being equally treated and skin colour being irrelevant, the latter shouldn't lead to favourable treatment any more than to its opposite. If it *did* come in, when should it stop, and who would judge that? Not only that, the mistakes and injustices which affirmative action can bring about - think appointing Uriah Rennie as a Premiership referee - can do more damage to the cause of anti-racism than almost anything else.

 

[peterhague]

I would just like to see a more intelligent analysis of the issue than a simple accusation of 'RACISM!'

People who have studied these things will tell you that an even distribution of groups across any industry or social category is the exception rather than the rule.

Here's one off the top of my head (simply for illustrative purposes). The reason people expect to see plenty of black managers is because there are relatively so many black players. The reason there are so many black players is because they are more athletic than other racial groups in British society. Black players will therefore tend to be concentrated among the positions requiring the most athletic ability. Managers will tend to be drawn from ex-players who played in positions requiring a deep understanding of the game, such as centre half, or where leadership qualities are most important. If those groups don't correlate closely, you would therefore expect there to be fewer black managers as a proportion of the total number of managers than there are black players as a proportion of the total number of players.

I'd think investigation along this kind of line would prove more useful than simply assuming there are issues of deeply entrenched prejudice at play.

 

[StevieM]

I thought this thread was going to be about shagging grannies.

#disappointed

 

[hmmmmm1]

Paddy Barclay is an annoying cunt.

 

[StevieM]

Paddy is a cunt.

Fixed

 

[tombrown]

Whats this got to do with the inventor of the overhead kick?

 

[MC Golgotha]

I would just like to see a more intelligent analysis of the issue than a simple accusation of 'RACISM!'

People who have studied these things will tell you that an even distribution of groups across any industry or social category is the exception rather than the rule.

Here's one off the top of my head (simply for illustrative purposes). The reason people expect to see plenty of black managers is because there are relatively so many black players. The reason there are so many black players is because they are more athletic than other racial groups in British society. Black players will therefore tend to be concentrated among the positions requiring the most athletic ability. Managers will tend to be drawn from ex-players who played in positions requiring a deep understanding of the game, such as centre half, or where leadership qualities are most important. If those groups don't correlate closely, you would therefore expect there to be fewer black managers as a proportion of the total number of managers than there are black players as a proportion of the total number of players.

I'd think investigation along this kind of line would prove more useful than simply assuming there are issues of deeply entrenched prejudice at play.

Surely you're guilty of making assumptions too? This whole idea of black players being valued for their athleticism sounds terrifyingly provincial, especially as Rio Ferdinand and Sol Campbell were mainstays of major club sides and the England national team in the recent past. Campbell has claimed it is difficult for black players to break into management. Michael Johnson (the ex-Birmingham City defender, not the City headcase) has all the UEFA badges but said of 30 lower league managerial and coaching positions he applied for, he got interviews for two academy positions. If he can't even get in the door for an interview, how can anyone say he is being ruled out because he isn't good enough? How would anyone know? Yet Roy Keane walks into jobs still, after a string of failures. Brian Deane had to go to Norway to get managerial experience because nobody would look at him over here.

The Rooney Rule doesn't mandate job quotas. It's for interview shortlists. That doesn't seem an egregious interference, especially as there has been a direct correlation between the introduction of the rule and the increase in minority coaches. Surely that says something about the situation beforehand? Nobody was saying NFL owners were running around in white sheets, but powerful people at the top of corporations often gravitate toward people similar to themselves, ie white males. It's why we have so few female directors in Britain, even though FTSE companies with female board members are more successful on average than those without. But people often look to solidify their own position above the success of their institution (look at increasing bonuses through the banking collapse). It's not necessarily outright racism or sexism, but a fear of change. The results of that refusal to change can in effect be discriminatory though.

There was traditionally common talk in America about black players being valued as athletes rather than leaders too. That kind of thinking isn't a reflection of how players are used in a sport. How players are used in a sport is a reflection of that kind of thinking. It has been broken down in America over the years, beginning with changing attitudes in high school and college coaches (and bearing in mind states like Florida, Georgia, and Texas lead the way in providing players that go through to the pros) leading to a vast increase in quality black quarterbacks, a position that black kids were traditionally believed to lack the leadership and understanding of the game for.

The Rooney Rule is easier to implement in America because the NFL is a closed market with detailed labour regulations already (the idea of America being the home of thriving free markets is a joke - two of the most successful industries through the recession, pro sports and film/tv, have the most powerful and broad unions in the country. Go figure), and there are only 32 teams, all of whom have tons of money. Changes in coaches almost always happen in the off season (there are only 16 regular season games for each side) so there is time for the process. Football here operates in a less-regulated and more dynamic environment. Teams don't reasonably have the time to interview six people if they sack a manager in November (although, controlling the hiring of managers like players and restricting changes to the windows might not be a terrible idea). And culturally the race issue is vastly different in the States than it is here anyway. Any implementation would have to be tailored to the game here. But in principle, given the success of the model in America and the obvious race problems in football here, I don't see the problem. What harm can come from interviewing a few quick and powerful black strikers...? Maybe through the process they'll be understood better as people with broader talents to offer sport rather than just as athletes.

 

[peterhague]

I didn't make a single assumption with that post other than that my fellow posters would be capable of understanding it.

 

[MC Golgotha]

Black players will therefore tend to be concentrated among the positions requiring the most athletic ability.

Managers will tend to be drawn from ex-players who played in positions requiring a deep understanding of the game, such as centre half, or where leadership qualities are most important.

These are assumptions, not facts.

Managers can and do come from all positions. Ferguson, Clough, Heynckes, and Hitzfeld were all centre forwards, and they can count eight European Cup wins between them. Hell, three of the top managers in this country right now barely had professional careers at all to speak of.

You asked for a more expansive reply, and when you get one that opposes your view, you retreat into ad hominem? Perhaps you should be more careful what you ask for.

 

[peterhague]

These are assumptions, not facts.

Managers can and do come from all positions. Ferguson, Clough, Heynckes, and Hitzfeld were all centre forwards, and they can count eight European Cup wins between them. Hell, three of the top managers in this country right now barely had professional careers at all to speak of.

You asked for a more expansive reply, and when you get one that opposes your view, you retreat into ad hominem? Perhaps you should be more careful what you ask for.

They are not my assumptions. Just simple examples of reasonable assumptions people might be disposed to make on investigating that issue. I repeat:

Here's one off the top of my head (simply for illustrative purposes)

🙂

 

[MC Golgotha]

Ha ha ha. So you disagree with the Rooney Rule, and claim some of the reasons for this are reasonable but belong to a hypothetical someone else? Any particular reason for that, other than that they come across as a bit where-are-my-measuring-callipers so it was better to attribute them to imaginary folk? Actually, let's just draw a line under that matter, before we get bogged down in pointless areas of sophistry.

Care to address any of my actual points, being as you requested responses on the matter?

 

[peterhague]

I don't know why you found the post so difficult to process. I thought I made it perfectly clear that I was just presenting a simplified hypothetical line of enquiry, to illustrate how easy it is to produce the kind of thing that I was complaining about being missing from the usual discussion of the issue.

That's it, as far as it goes.

I found your post very irritating and wasn't willing to respond to any of the meat of it until I'd made that absolutely clear.





The Rooney Rule doesn't mandate job quotas. It's for interview shortlists. That doesn't seem an egregious interference, especially as there has been a direct correlation between the introduction of the rule and the increase in minority coaches. Surely that says something about the situation beforehand? Nobody was saying NFL owners were running around in white sheets, but powerful people at the top of corporations often gravitate toward people similar to themselves, ie white males. It's why we have so few female directors in Britain, even though FTSE companies with female board members are more successful on average than those without. But people often look to solidify their own position above the success of their institution (look at increasing bonuses through the banking collapse). It's not necessarily outright racism or sexism, but a fear of change. The results of that refusal to change can in effect be discriminatory though.

There was traditionally common talk in America about black players being valued as athletes rather than leaders too. That kind of thinking isn't a reflection of how players are used in a sport. How players are used in a sport is a reflection of that kind of thinking. It has been broken down in America over the years, beginning with changing attitudes in high school and college coaches (and bearing in mind states like Florida, Georgia, and Texas lead the way in providing players that go through to the pros) leading to a vast increase in quality black quarterbacks, a position that black kids were traditionally believed to lack the leadership and understanding of the game for.

The Rooney Rule is easier to implement in America because the NFL is a closed market with detailed labour regulations already (the idea of America being the home of thriving free markets is a joke - two of the most successful industries through the recession, pro sports and film/tv, have the most powerful and broad unions in the country. Go figure), and there are only 32 teams, all of whom have tons of money. Changes in coaches almost always happen in the off season (there are only 16 regular season games for each side) so there is time for the process. Football here operates in a less-regulated and more dynamic environment. Teams don't reasonably have the time to interview six people if they sack a manager in November (although, controlling the hiring of managers like players and restricting changes to the windows might not be a terrible idea). And culturally the race issue is vastly different in the States than it is here anyway. Any implementation would have to be tailored to the game here. But in principle, given the success of the model in America and the obvious race problems in football here, I don't see the problem. What harm can come from interviewing a few quick and powerful black strikers...? Maybe through the process they'll be understood better as people with broader talents to offer sport rather than just as athletes.


The problem is the principle. It's discriminatory. There may be benefits in terms of an increase in black managers. What of the costs? To the dignity of black people, to the general erosion of the principle that talent should matter more than skin colour, that people should be treated equally.

How would you go about calculating the cost of, say, any increase in the general contempt for black people in high postions, and then comparing it to the benefit of an extra black manager?