Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
The NFL’s Rooney Rule is a worthy idea, clumsily executed.
Established in 2003 and tweaked in 2021, the Rooney Rule requires teams to interview at least two minority candidates in person before they are permitted to hire a head coach. Back when every coaching search was a mad sprint that began the second the regular season ended, that strategy made sense. But the NFL has in recent years turned coaching searches into drawn-out, constipated exercises in which teams need to wait two full weeks before they’re allowed to talk to employed pro coaches in person.