Rooney Rule

The Rooney Rule is a National Football League policy that requires league teams to interview ethnic-minority candidates for head coaching and senior football operation jobs. It is an example of affirmative action, even though there is no hiring quota or hiring preference given to minorities, only an interviewing quota. It was established in 2003, and variations of the rule are now in place in other industries.

In association football (soccer), players’ representatives have been campaigning for a similar practice in England. Gordon Taylor, Chief Executive of the PFA (the players’ trade union) said the sport “has a ‘hidden resistance’ preventing black managers getting jobs”, pointing out that “you see so many black players on the pitch, yet we have two black managers out of 92”.

Garth Crooks, a prominent black former player, was especially scathing of the failure of the English Football League (a large association of clubs below the top-tier Premier League) to pursue the matter, suggesting the league lacked courage. Black coaches Kieron Dyer and Titus Bramble spoke out against the idea of Rooney Rule, saying they did not want to be perceived as having their roles because of a “quota”.

The England national football team was reported to implement the Rooney Rule for all interviews for the manager position.

The West Coast Conference (WCC), an NCAA Division I league, announced that it had adopted a similar policy effective immediately, calling its initiative the Russell Rule after Basketball Hall of Famer Bill Russell. The WCC became the first Division I conference to establish such a policy.

According to the WCC, The “Russell Rule” requires each member institution to include a member of a traditionally underrepresented community in the pool of final candidates for every athletic director, senior administrator, head coach and full-time assistant coach position in the athletic department.