SAN FRANCISCO (AP) \u2014 NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell will implement a \u201cRooney Rule\u201d requiring that women be interviewed for executive positions with teams around the league and in his own office, too.<\/p>\n
Goodell made the announcement Thursday in his opening remarks at the first NFL Women\u2019s Summit, part of Super Bowl 50.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe in diversity,\u201d Goodell said. \u201cWe believe we\u2019re better as an organization when we have good people at the table. We have great people at the table. We\u2019re also seeing it on the field. …<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can see that progress is being made and our commitment is, we have something called the Rooney Rule, which requires us to make sure when we have an opening that on the team or the league level that we are going to interview a diverse slate of candidates,\u201d Goodell said. \u201cWell, we\u2019re going to make that commitment and we\u2019re going to formalize that we, as a league, are going to do that for women as well in all of our executive positions. Again, we\u2019re going to keep making progress here and make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bills hired the NFL\u2019s first full-time female assistant coach last month, Kathryn Smith, as special teams quality control coach.<\/p>\n
That move comes after Jen Welter coached the Cardinals\u2019 inside linebackers during Arizona\u2019s training camp last summer, while Sarah Thomas became the league\u2019s first female official this past season.<\/p>\n
\u201cSarah was our first female NFL official on the field this year,\u201d Goodell said. \u201cShe did a fantastic job, and we\u2019re very proud of her. We also have people breaking into the coaching ranks. Jen was the first coach last year. She set a trend, and we now have a second coach with the Buffalo Bills.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goodell\u2019s announcement immediately drew attention.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hurdles are there,\u201d former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. \u201cPart of the challenge of breaking through is to change traditional patterns of hiring and advancement. It\u2019s not a question of people don\u2019t have merit or they aren\u2019t as good. … I guarantee you there are plenty of women and minorities who are qualified for positions, but unless you actually go outside to look, outside normal channels, you won\u2019t find them, which is why the Rooney Rule is very important. When you\u2019re told you have to diversify your pool, you will get some remarkable candidates within that pool.\u201d<\/p>\n
Liz Boardman, a senior client partner at the recruitment firm Korn Ferry, believes such a move by the NFL can only be a benefit and an example for other businesses big or small to diversify and change their hiring practices.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt shows fantastic progress and momentum. It\u2019s setting a trend for the rest of the world. That\u2019s what sports does, that\u2019s what the NFL can do,\u201d Boardman said. \u201cThe NFL has a lot of high-ranking women and this just formalizes the effort they have put forward for several years. It just continues their momentum in terms of leading the charge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former Oakland CEO Amy Trask, the NFL\u2019s first female CEO, said on Twitter, \u201cI think this should be the Al Davis rule,\u201d referring to the late Raiders owner who put his faith in her decades ago when he wasn\u2019t even required to do so.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am bothered and saddened that there is a need for a rule to do what is right and what is smart,\u201d Trask, now a CBS analyst and working the Super Bowl, told The Associated Press. \u201cI had the privilege and pleasure of working for a man who needed no rule to evaluate people without regard to race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and other such characteristics.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Online:<\/p>\n
AP NFL website: www.pro32.ap.org and AP NFL Twitter feed: http:\/\/twitter.com\/AP_NFL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) \u2014 NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell will implement a \u201cRooney Rule\u201d requiring that women be interviewed for executive positions with teams around the league and in his own office, too. Goodell made the announcement Thursday in his opening remarks at the first NFL Women\u2019s Summit, part of Super Bowl 50. \u201cWe believe in … Continue reading Goodell to require teams to interview women for exec jobs<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-16497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16497"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=16497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}