Last Friday, news that the NFL would consider incentivizing minority hires for general manager and top coaching positions boomeranged around the league. It elicited an array of questions: How would this work? Would it make a difference? And for some black coaches, who have lived the very problem at the root of this proposal, they wondered why this was the first time they were hearing about an idea they viewed as unhelpful—or even insulting.
Rod Graves, the executive director of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, the independent group that works to advance minority representation in the NFL, heard his own share of the feedback.