AP Photo/Chris O’Meara
When Bruce Arians retired from coaching this week and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quickly replaced him with defensive coordinator Todd Bowles, the team technically used a Rooney Rule loophole to do so.
The Rooney Rule requires NFL teams to interview at least two external minority candidates for any head-coaching vacancy. But after March 1, teams do not have to make their own assistants available for interviews with other organizations, so in the case of the Bucs, the NFL allowed the team to promote Bowles to head coach without conducting any external minority interviews.
Tom Pelissero @TomPelissero
The <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/Bucs?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#Bucs</a> didn’t have to comply with the Rooney Rule before hiring new head coach Todd Bowles because it’s after March 1 and potential candidates could be blocked from interviewing. From the anti-tampering policy: <a href=”https://t.co/Ezc99ixaCL”>pic.twitter.com/Ezc99ixaCL</a>
It’s a loophole the NFL is contemplating closing, per Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk.
Granted, for the loophole to be exercised, it would require a team waiting until after March 1 to fill out a coaching vacancy. Between the end of the NFL season and that date, teams have plenty of time to conduct a wide-ranging search.
There would be, essentially, two reasons to wait so deep into the offseason to make a change. The first is the Bucs situation, with Arians retiring. In this case, little was made of the loophole, given that the team replaced Arians with a Black head coach in Bowles, aligning it with the spirit of the Rooney Rule.
If the promotion had been for a white head coach, however, the situation almost assuredly would have raised more alarms.
The other possibility is a high-profile coach, out of a job, suddenly deciding he wanted to get back into the game. Florio used the example of Sean Payton: “What if Cowboys owner Jerry Jones now decides to court Payton? Jones could fire Mike McCarthy and replace him with Payton without conducting a single interview.”
More than likely, teams would prefer to have their head-coaching position solidified prior to March 1. But the NFL is surely aware that the optics of a team using a Rooney Rule loophole to hire a white head coach would be bad. Closing the loophole to avoid that situation makes sense.
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