Advancing the Ball: Race, Reformation, and the Quest for Equal Coaching Opportunity in the NFL

by N. Jeremi Duru, Tony Dungy (Foreword)

Following the NFL's desegregation in 1946, opportunities became increasingly plentiful for African American players--but not African American coaches. Although Major League Baseball and the NBA made progress in this regard over the years, the NFL's head coaches were almost exclusively white up until the mid-1990s. Advancing the Ball chronicles the campaign of former Cleveland Browns offensive lineman John Wooten to right this wrong and undo decades of discriminatory head coach hiring practices--an initiative that finally bore fruit when he joined forces with attorneys Cyrus Mehri and Johnnie Cochran. Together with a few allies, the triumvirate galvanized the NFL's African American assistant coaches to stand together for equal opportunity and convinced the league to enact the "Rooney Rule," which stipulates that every team must interview at least one minority candidate when searching for a new head coach. In doing so, they spurred a movement that would substantially impact the
NFL and, potentially, the nation. Featuring an impassioned foreword by Coach Tony Dungy, Advancing the Ball offers an eye-opening, first-hand look at how a few committed individuals initiated a sea change in America's most popular sport and added an extraordinary new chapter to the civil rights story.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published November 24, 2010

Reviews

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, another book I seem to have read before, without any memory of same. This time around, I'd say 5 stars for content, 3 for narration. This is modest, complete, complex, adult in its sense of the world, alert to the legal complexities attendant on deciding what exactly the NFL could be liable for (he seems to be arguing that it could plausibly argue that it was at once a single entity and also merely an oversight body with no responsibility for teams' hiring decisions, which somewhat surprised me), and especially good in laying out the delicate negotiations involved in the formation of the Fritz Pollard Alliance and its grasp of just how much, and where, it could exert leverage, given the league's ambiguous legal status. The bits of sociology he quotes, some of which he wrote, testify to the enduring power of race, especially at the margins--as one study notes, multiple NBA rosters ran internal DEI programs as late as the 90s that made sure to take care of second-string white players who could sit at the end of the bench, where they were twice as likely to be white as were the starters.

He's generous to all sides, perhaps to a fault (it's quite hard to tell how much of the failure to cultivate much of a pipeline lies in racism among owners/ownership structures), and the book shines in the sections where he explains how the Alliance came together, how energized its members felt after the first year (and how terrified they were to meet at first), and when and where the Rooney Rule actually worked. Is it perhaps overly generous to the league, perhaps as a consequence of the access he was granted? Maybe? But as a latter-day chapter in the civil-rights struggle, these parts are excellent.

And probably this is unfair, but I have to ding him a bit for not being a great storyteller. The drawback of the measured, reasonable approach is that it's both of those things, and so this never rises to any crescendo narratively. That seems accurate--it's hard for anyone with a sense of history and proportion to see the Colts/Bears Super Bowl, the first to match two Black coaches, and conclude that the story was now finished. But at the same time, as a reader I craved a bit more of that narrative zing, something to keep me moving beyond the sense that this was a worthy story, worthily told. Which it remains.

[Les · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm sure this history of black head coaches in the NFL would have been more enthralling if I had even a passing interest in football. Still, it was interesting, solid and sometimes moving information and even though it was only 170 pages, could have been shorter, I think. The gravity of the issue is evident and Duru's writing style is crisp, clear and nuanced. But some parts were REALLY stretched out and there was unnecessary recapping on the heels of certain portions and an almost patronizing (okay, maybe that's not fair) over explanation of certain obvious inferences. Still, I found it informative and worth a read so I can only imagine how much more so this would be for fans or even casual viewers of the sport.