Minority report

Open-mindedness is needed for diversity in hiring

I know where the man was coming from, hard as it may be to believe. No doubt it was a comfortable summer day and William Clay Ford Sr., the venerable 78-year-old owner of the Detroit Lions, was simply minding his team's business, observing the opening days of Lions' training camp, when someone asked him what he thought of the $200,000 fine levied recently against team president Matt Millen by the NFL for failing to interview at least one candidate of color before hiring Steve Mariucci to fill Detroit's head coaching vacancy.

Ford is, of course, a grandson of Henry Ford, creator of the Model T and founder of what is now one of the United States' largest automobile manufacturers. Though not widely known, Henry was also a close friend and benefactor of Dr. George Washington Carver, whose research Ford supported by donating generously to the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where the legendary inventor worked. He even named one of his manufacturing plants after Carver, who could pretty much make anything out of peanuts.

This is the real kicker: Henry Ford is also credited with helping to create -- hang in there with me on this-- the black middle class.

How? Well, when most car manufacturers wouldn't hire blacks, many of whom had ventured north during the great migration, Ford did. He even paid black workers the same wages as white workers for equal work. Ford has also been credited with promoting the industry's first African-American, James Price, to a level that today would be considered a vice president.

Today Ford Motor Company boats of its efforts to foster diversity in the workplace and support minority businesses. Ford says it purchased more than $3.2 billion in goods and services from minority businesses worldwide in 2002, and that it supports more than 370 minority dealerships, meaning seven percent of its dealers are minorities.

Henry Ford's grandson purchased the Lions four decades ago and the team now has 12 African-Americans in leadership positions, including senior vice president of football administration and legal affairs Martin Mayhew, director of pro personnel Sheldon White, head trainer Al Bellamy and offensive coordinator Sherman Lewis.

This -- all of it, dating back to grandad's buddy-thing with Carver -- is where William Clay Ford Sr. was coming from when he called the fine "a shame and totally unwarranted." He charged that the Lions had a better diversity track record than the Pittsburgh Steelers, whose owner, Dan Rooney, chaired the NFL's diversity committee, which last December drafted the guidelines that require teams to interview at least one minority head coaching candidate.

Millen hired Mariucci in January without having first talked to a single minority coach. His reason? Five minority candidates turned him down after reasoning that Millen had already made up his mind to hire Mariucci, the successful and respected former San Francisco 49ers head coach. Why bother? they reasoned, it ain't even worth the frequent-flyer miles.

Neither side -- not Millen or the men who refused to interview with him -- were right. And neither is William Clay Ford.

Seems they all miss the big picture, every one of them.

Millen misses the genius that is an open mind. Mariucci may indeed have been the best coach available and the best candidate for the job. But he would have been even more confident about his selection had he reached outside his comfort sphere and at least approached other candidates with the real possibility of hiring them before concluding that Mariucci was his man. He might have even surprised himself by meeting a candidate who challenged his own preconceived notions and forced him to review whom he had apparently slated for the "best man" role.

The Frustrated Five miss an appreciation for opportunity. Those who know me realize that I never met a job interview I didn't like, even when logic said I had no shot at getting hired. Why? Because you never know. I was just arrogant enough to believe I could change a mind, no matter how set. At worst, even the most far-fetched interview is an opportunity to make an impression, to plant a seed that might not bloom until it reaches another time and place. A seed never planted never blooms. Each of the Frustrated Five should have sat themselves in front of Millen and blown him away. They likely would not have been hired, but I believe they would have been one step closer to their head coaching dream than they are today.

And William Clay Ford? As I said, I know where he's coming from and I can respect his family's relationship with African-Americans. But rules are rules (even if they haven't been approved by the NFL's owners, as Ford has charged) and the league was right to charge Millen for, well, taunting -- taunting a policy put in place to destroy one of the league's last holy grails.

Yes, there are three black NFL head coaches -- Herman Edwards of the Jets, Tony Dungy of the Indianapolis Colts and the Bengals' Marvin Lewis -- but until an African-American coach is standing on the sideline at the Super Bowl being doused in a victory celebration, too many owners and presidents throughout the league will still consider it a risk to put a black man in charge. And thus, too many owners and presidents will not give serious consideration to hiring a black man as head coach.

Not unless they are forced to. That is why commissioner Paul Tagliabue took the bold and admirable step of implementing the radical policy last year, and it's why -- despite the efforts of his family, his company and his team to hire, support and promote African-Americans -- William Clay Ford should simply pay the fine, enjoy the rest of the summer and pray that Millen picked the best man instead of just the man he wanted.

Roy S. Johnson is an assistant managing editor for Sports Illustrated. His "Pass the Word" column appears on SI.com every Friday. Catch Johnson on CNN Headline News every Thursday at 3:40 p.m. ET.

 

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