In most years, covering the Sundance Film Festival in the cold and snow when the Oscar nominations are being announced in balmy Southern California might seem like an exile of the cruelest sort. But 2011 is not most years: 2011 is the year that Sundance ruled.
It was exactly one year ago that I saw Jacki Weaver, the chilling criminal matriarch in the Australian movie “Animal Kingdom,” which had its world premiere at Sundance, walking cheerfully alone and unnoticed on this city’s Park Avenue. Now she is an Oscar nominee for supporting actress.
“It’s great the way they nurture and bring attention to little independent films that wouldn’t get a lot of attention otherwise,” Weaver said Tuesday. “A lot of what’s happened to me is thanks to Sundance.”
“Animal Kingdom” was far from the only feature film from Sundance’s 2010 edition to get Oscar recognition. In fact, if you add up the number of nominations from last year’s festival — 14 all told — it’s a more impressive total than the dozen for “The King’s Speech.”
The two Sundance films that did best were “The Kids Are All Right” and the festival’s Grand Jury Prize winner, “Winter’s Bone,” each of which got four nominations.
And these were not just any four nominations either. Both Sundance films were among the 10 to receive best picture nods, both had screenplays selected and both had two acting nominations apiece: Annette Bening and Mark Ruffalo were picked for director Lisa Cholodenko’s “Kids,” and for Debra Granik’s “Winter’s Bone,” the nominees were John Hawkes and Jennifer Lawrence. (In fact, the lead actress category is dominated by performers from Sundance films: Bening, Lawrence and Michelle Williams from “Blue Valentine.”)
The category that Sundance films really dominated, however, was documentary: Four of the five films nominated — “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” “Gasland,” “Restrepo” and “Waste Land” — were in Park City a year ago.
And one could argue that just an accident of timing prevented the fifth selection, Charles Ferguson’s “Inside Job,” which premiered at Cannes, from being in Sundance as well. Ferguson’s first doc, the Oscar-nominated “No End in Sight,” had its world premiere at where else but this indie film festival in 2007.
So what is going on here? Aside from being a tribute to Sundance’s programmers, the choices underline what has been the most fascinating Academy Awards trend of the last decade: the dominance of independent films during Oscar season.
Though blockbusters created through the studio system once had a lock on these awards, things have so changed that “The King’s Speech,” the most classically Hollywood film on the best picture list, was distributed not by a major studio but by the savvy Weinstein Co.
While the studios focus almost exclusively on dumbing down their product on an often-fruitless quest to increase revenue, five of the 10 best picture nominees were distributed by specialty divisions or small companies.
Aside from the Weinstein’s “King’s Speech,” Roadside Attractions handled “Winter’s Bone,” Universal Picture’s Focus Features division did “The Kids Are All Right” and Fox Searchlight put out both “Black Swan” and “127 Hours.”
One might even argue that many of the Oscar-nominated movies distributed by the majors were so free of studio control (because of the power and status of their filmmakers) that they were independent films in spirit, if not in name. No one is going to tell the auteurs behind “Toy Story 3” at Pixar how to operate, no one is going to give notes to Joel and Ethan Coen on “True Grit” and no one but Christopher Nolan could have persuaded Warner Bros. to go through with as nervy a project as “Inception.” More power to Sony, then, for taking a risk and giving the green light to David Fincher’s “The Social Network.”
Speaking of Nolan, one of the real scandals of this Oscar season is his absence from the best director list. Why that branch didn’t recognize Nolan’s vision and skill, not only with special effects but with actors as well, is a mystery. It’s similarly disheartening to see Lesley Manville’s marvelous performance in Mike Leigh’s “Another Year” slighted, and to have Mark Wahlberg’s non-showy but absolutely essential work as the heart of “The Fighter” sadly ignored.
And don’t get me started about this year’s foreign-language category, which inexplicably excluded France’s marvelous “Of Gods and Men,” which won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes and dominated the recent Cesar nominations, France’s version of the Oscars. If not for the inclusion of Susanne Bier’s richly humanistic “In a Better World,” the likely winner, it would be an unusual group indeed. No, Bier’s film didn’t premiere at Sundance, but it is playing here now.
For this wintry Utah town, it’s been that kind of a year.
Showing posts with label It. Show all posts
Showing posts with label It. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
It's Time to Stop this Obsession with Works of Art Based on Real Events
Throughout their history, movies have been talked about in terms of dreaming: studios are "dream factories"; Hollywood is "the land of dreams". But scanning the list of contenders for this year's Oscars, such descriptions feels misplaced. The most striking thing about the leading films of the last 12 months is how many draw their inspiration from fact.
The leading Oscar contenders, The King's Speech and The Social Network, both offer fictionalised portraits of familiar but enigmatic public figures – a monarch and a monumentally successful entrepreneur. But it's also true of other hotly tipped releases such as The Fighter (about boxer Micky Ward) and 127 Hours (about rock climber Aron Ralston), as well as films still to hit our screens such as The Conquest (about the early life of President Sarkozy) or next year's Freddie Mercury movie starring Sacha Baron Cohen.
Is this glut of fact-based films a coincidence, or is something fundamental going on? Artists basing work on real people and events is hardly a new phenomenon. Shakespeare was very good at it, as Henry IV and Richard III attest. In Paradise Lost, Milton fictionalised the lives of two figures then regarded as historical: Adam and Eve. One of the greatest of all films, Citizen Kane, was inspired by the life of William Randolph Hearst. Even so, there has been a shift in recent years away from works of pure imagination towards ones that combine fact and fiction. This has been the case in every story-based medium.
Take literature. By far the most successful British novel of the last two years (if you measure success in terms of acclaim as well as sales) has been Hilary Mantel's Booker-winning Wolf Hall, based on the life of Thomas Cromwell. Though a superb literary achievement, Wolf Hall is also not unlike The King's Speech (or indeed The Social Network) in the way it takes a factual story whose contours are already familiar (in this case, the reign of Henry VIII) and attempts to unmask the private truth behind it. It is far from being alone. Accompanying Mantel's novel on the 2009 Booker shortlist were Adam Foulds's The Quickening Maze, about the poet John Clare, AS Byatt's The Children's Book, whose heroine is modelled on the writer E Nesbit, and Simon Mawer's The Glass Room, set in a (real) modernist villa in 1930s Czechoslovakia. Howard Jacobson's two closest challengers for last year's Booker likewise drew their inspiration from real events: Peter Carey, in Parrot and Olivier in America, fictionalised the life of Alexis de Tocqueville, while Emma Donoghue, in Room, gave us an imaginative response to Josef Fritzl. This spring the trend continues, with novels about Herman Melville (by Jay Parini), HG Wells (by David Lodge), and Princess Diana (by Monica Ali), to name a few.
Television and theatre are no different. In recent times BBC4 has churned out endless biopics whose subjects include Fanny Cradock, Kenneth Williams, Enid Blyton and Barbara Cartland. There was the Channel 4 drama The Deal (in which Michael Sheen made his debut as Tony Blair) and the Yorkshire Ripper-inspired Red Riding Quartet. In coming months, there's a BBC2 drama about the Munich air crash and an ITV film about Fred West. On stage, there's been the revival of political theatre, not to mention the spectacular success of plays such as Frost/Nixon and Enron.
What has prompted this flood of fact-based storytelling? The reasons for these kinds of cultural shift are never easy to pinpoint, but this one surely has a lot to do with changing ideas about privacy and truth. Over the past decade or so we have, as a culture, become much less attached to the idea that certain aspects of life should remain private. An increasingly intrusive press regards it as its job to sniff out the secrets of the rich and famous. Respect towards those in positions of authority has dramatically declined. The result is that a terrain to which entry was once largely barred – the private lives of those in the public gaze – has become accessible. And this has given new licence to artists. Even a decade ago, it would have been hard to imagine a film like The Queen – dealing with the relationship between a living monarch and a serving prime minister – being made. Now finding yourself in a novel or film is one of the hazards of being famous.
This scaling back of the private sphere has coincided with something else: a growing belief that it is in personal relationships and feelings that the important truths about the world are to be found. While the concept of a public facade has always existed, it has never held greater sway than it does today. Most people intuitively feel that the majority of what is reported – in newspapers, history books, government documents – is false, or only partly true, and that the important stuff happens behind closed doors, or inside people's heads. This is reflected in the way the New Labour epoch is discussed, with an overriding focus on the relationships between the protagonists and, often, their psychological states.
Yet this belief in a private domain where ultimate truth lies creates a problem. For we can be fed endless information – diaries and memoirs, leaked diplomatic documents – but none will necessarily tell us what went on. The apparatus of factual exposure habitually falls short. This, of course, is where art comes in. Artists may not be better acquainted with the truth than anyone else, but they can do something that others can't: describe plausibly what might have happened.
So much for the causes of our new fondness for factual drama. It is a trend to be welcomed or deplored? It may seem odd to begrudge artists any new outlet for expression that helps them pay the bills. Yet we would do well to be aware of the limitations of fact-based storytelling and recognise the confusions it can produce.
For one thing, if interest in a work of art is triggered by a desire to learn about real events, that represents a radical shift in our understanding of art's purpose. Throughout history, people have turned to art for various reasons, but two consistent ones have been a desire to be entertained or transported and a desire to learn more about what might be called (for want of a better term) the human condition. Yet in a world of docudramas and biopics, another factor enters the picture. Storytelling becomes a kind of lightweight pedagogical aid – almost a branch of investigative journalism. The risk here is that, by being placed at the service of factual knowledge, creativity loses its justification and becomes devalued as a result.
We can see this tendency at work in a comment made in 2009 by BBC4 controller Richard Klein, who defended the channel's reliance on biopics as follows: "As a small digital channel, it's hard to get anyone to come and watch pure fiction that no one has heard of before. Basing our dramas on factually based stories, we can re-examine and reinterpret, but people already have an interest." This depressing statement sums up an attitude that is creeping into our discourse, which is that a good story, on its own, isn't enough to "hook" people; that films, novels and dramas need to be bolstered by topical or historical "relevance."
If the rise of fact-based fiction creates confusion about the point of art, the same applies to our criteria for judging it. A work that re-imagines events becomes subtly different from one that makes up a story. As we saw last week with the "Nazi whitewashing" accusations thrown at The King's Speech, purely aesthetic judgments compete with other questions: how skilfully the storyteller re-creates the past; what version of history is being presented. The inevitable result is that attention is transferred from the work to the skill of the film-maker or writer. There's a necessarily self-conscious quality to films such as The King's Speech and The Social Network and this limits their ability to transport us.
Clever and interesting though such works may be, the truth is that, by the highest standards of art, they are meagre offerings that cannot escape the confines of their reality-bound aspirations. Against them, it is worth considering other recent, truly great, historical films, such as Michael Haneke's White Ribbon, or Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, or indeed a historical novel like Colm Tóibín's Brooklyn. All are mind-blowing precisely because they are works of imagination that, while set in the past, don't tether themselves too closely to events. The King's Speech and The Social Network may deserve admiration, even acclaim, but in our headlong rush to celebrate them we should bear in mind that great art strives for more.
The leading Oscar contenders, The King's Speech and The Social Network, both offer fictionalised portraits of familiar but enigmatic public figures – a monarch and a monumentally successful entrepreneur. But it's also true of other hotly tipped releases such as The Fighter (about boxer Micky Ward) and 127 Hours (about rock climber Aron Ralston), as well as films still to hit our screens such as The Conquest (about the early life of President Sarkozy) or next year's Freddie Mercury movie starring Sacha Baron Cohen.
Is this glut of fact-based films a coincidence, or is something fundamental going on? Artists basing work on real people and events is hardly a new phenomenon. Shakespeare was very good at it, as Henry IV and Richard III attest. In Paradise Lost, Milton fictionalised the lives of two figures then regarded as historical: Adam and Eve. One of the greatest of all films, Citizen Kane, was inspired by the life of William Randolph Hearst. Even so, there has been a shift in recent years away from works of pure imagination towards ones that combine fact and fiction. This has been the case in every story-based medium.
Take literature. By far the most successful British novel of the last two years (if you measure success in terms of acclaim as well as sales) has been Hilary Mantel's Booker-winning Wolf Hall, based on the life of Thomas Cromwell. Though a superb literary achievement, Wolf Hall is also not unlike The King's Speech (or indeed The Social Network) in the way it takes a factual story whose contours are already familiar (in this case, the reign of Henry VIII) and attempts to unmask the private truth behind it. It is far from being alone. Accompanying Mantel's novel on the 2009 Booker shortlist were Adam Foulds's The Quickening Maze, about the poet John Clare, AS Byatt's The Children's Book, whose heroine is modelled on the writer E Nesbit, and Simon Mawer's The Glass Room, set in a (real) modernist villa in 1930s Czechoslovakia. Howard Jacobson's two closest challengers for last year's Booker likewise drew their inspiration from real events: Peter Carey, in Parrot and Olivier in America, fictionalised the life of Alexis de Tocqueville, while Emma Donoghue, in Room, gave us an imaginative response to Josef Fritzl. This spring the trend continues, with novels about Herman Melville (by Jay Parini), HG Wells (by David Lodge), and Princess Diana (by Monica Ali), to name a few.
Television and theatre are no different. In recent times BBC4 has churned out endless biopics whose subjects include Fanny Cradock, Kenneth Williams, Enid Blyton and Barbara Cartland. There was the Channel 4 drama The Deal (in which Michael Sheen made his debut as Tony Blair) and the Yorkshire Ripper-inspired Red Riding Quartet. In coming months, there's a BBC2 drama about the Munich air crash and an ITV film about Fred West. On stage, there's been the revival of political theatre, not to mention the spectacular success of plays such as Frost/Nixon and Enron.
What has prompted this flood of fact-based storytelling? The reasons for these kinds of cultural shift are never easy to pinpoint, but this one surely has a lot to do with changing ideas about privacy and truth. Over the past decade or so we have, as a culture, become much less attached to the idea that certain aspects of life should remain private. An increasingly intrusive press regards it as its job to sniff out the secrets of the rich and famous. Respect towards those in positions of authority has dramatically declined. The result is that a terrain to which entry was once largely barred – the private lives of those in the public gaze – has become accessible. And this has given new licence to artists. Even a decade ago, it would have been hard to imagine a film like The Queen – dealing with the relationship between a living monarch and a serving prime minister – being made. Now finding yourself in a novel or film is one of the hazards of being famous.
This scaling back of the private sphere has coincided with something else: a growing belief that it is in personal relationships and feelings that the important truths about the world are to be found. While the concept of a public facade has always existed, it has never held greater sway than it does today. Most people intuitively feel that the majority of what is reported – in newspapers, history books, government documents – is false, or only partly true, and that the important stuff happens behind closed doors, or inside people's heads. This is reflected in the way the New Labour epoch is discussed, with an overriding focus on the relationships between the protagonists and, often, their psychological states.
Yet this belief in a private domain where ultimate truth lies creates a problem. For we can be fed endless information – diaries and memoirs, leaked diplomatic documents – but none will necessarily tell us what went on. The apparatus of factual exposure habitually falls short. This, of course, is where art comes in. Artists may not be better acquainted with the truth than anyone else, but they can do something that others can't: describe plausibly what might have happened.
So much for the causes of our new fondness for factual drama. It is a trend to be welcomed or deplored? It may seem odd to begrudge artists any new outlet for expression that helps them pay the bills. Yet we would do well to be aware of the limitations of fact-based storytelling and recognise the confusions it can produce.
For one thing, if interest in a work of art is triggered by a desire to learn about real events, that represents a radical shift in our understanding of art's purpose. Throughout history, people have turned to art for various reasons, but two consistent ones have been a desire to be entertained or transported and a desire to learn more about what might be called (for want of a better term) the human condition. Yet in a world of docudramas and biopics, another factor enters the picture. Storytelling becomes a kind of lightweight pedagogical aid – almost a branch of investigative journalism. The risk here is that, by being placed at the service of factual knowledge, creativity loses its justification and becomes devalued as a result.
We can see this tendency at work in a comment made in 2009 by BBC4 controller Richard Klein, who defended the channel's reliance on biopics as follows: "As a small digital channel, it's hard to get anyone to come and watch pure fiction that no one has heard of before. Basing our dramas on factually based stories, we can re-examine and reinterpret, but people already have an interest." This depressing statement sums up an attitude that is creeping into our discourse, which is that a good story, on its own, isn't enough to "hook" people; that films, novels and dramas need to be bolstered by topical or historical "relevance."
If the rise of fact-based fiction creates confusion about the point of art, the same applies to our criteria for judging it. A work that re-imagines events becomes subtly different from one that makes up a story. As we saw last week with the "Nazi whitewashing" accusations thrown at The King's Speech, purely aesthetic judgments compete with other questions: how skilfully the storyteller re-creates the past; what version of history is being presented. The inevitable result is that attention is transferred from the work to the skill of the film-maker or writer. There's a necessarily self-conscious quality to films such as The King's Speech and The Social Network and this limits their ability to transport us.
Clever and interesting though such works may be, the truth is that, by the highest standards of art, they are meagre offerings that cannot escape the confines of their reality-bound aspirations. Against them, it is worth considering other recent, truly great, historical films, such as Michael Haneke's White Ribbon, or Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, or indeed a historical novel like Colm Tóibín's Brooklyn. All are mind-blowing precisely because they are works of imagination that, while set in the past, don't tether themselves too closely to events. The King's Speech and The Social Network may deserve admiration, even acclaim, but in our headlong rush to celebrate them we should bear in mind that great art strives for more.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
The Rooney Rule: Why It's Outdated and Unnecessary in Today's NFL
For every Mike Tomlin or Tony Dungy, there's a Romeo Crennel, Mike Singletary or Art Schell.
As I really sit back and think about the Rooney Rule and what it does, I can’t help but think it’s the very reason that we as a country are still not solidified as one and why racism is still a real problem in America. The bottom line here is that the Rooney Rule itself uses race as a tool and uses the color of one's skin as a determinant. How is that just?
Let me give you a quick history lesson here. The Rooney Rule was enacted by the NFL in 2003 and essentially what it does is require NFL teams with a head coaching vacancy to interview a "minority candidate," basically requiring teams to operate within the affirmative action hiring guidelines set forth years ago.
The rule itself was drafted by and named after Dan Rooney, the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers and chairman of the NFL’s Diversity Committee. Since the inception of the rule, the NFL’s head coaching numbers have swayed slightly.
Currently, 37 percent of the coaches in the NFL are of minority decent, up from six percent prior to the rule change. Simply put, more black and minority coaches are being given head coaching jobs and I’m all for that and think it's long overdue.
I’m in support of equality and seeing beyond the color of one man’s skin.
That being said, I think the rule is a pointless measure enacted by the NFL. The numbers don’t lie, as I mentioned earlier; however it’s forcing NFL owners and GMs to interview people that, for whatever reason, may or may not be qualified as deemed so by private organizations (NFL franchises).
How is that fair?
Seriously ask yourself, how is that fair to any party involved? How is fair to the owners, GMs or the candidates whom they’re being forced to interview?
The short answer is, it's not. The league has some pretty stiff fines when it comes to not interviewing a minority candidate. In 2003, the league fined the Detroit Lions $200,000 for not interviewing any minority candidates and immediately hiring Steve Mariucci.
Per the rule, the fine was right thing to do; however, was the fine necessary if the Lions already knew who they wanted to coach the team? The cut and dry is that this rule is giving "opportunities" for head coaching and senior football operations positions to people that maybe don’t deserve to have the opportunity for various reasons and, rankly, that’s not right.
Now, inevitably, some of you will read this and your perception will be that I’m a racist and,for those of who that think that, I'd just like to ask you to leave now. For those of you still here, let me elaborate further…
As most of you know, unless you’ve been in some remote jungle in South America, Eric Mangini, John Fox and Josh McDaniels were all recently fired fired. Most of those changes were not a surprise, as all of those coaches, well, most, weren't who the franchise was looking for.
What that means is that the Denver Broncos, Cleveland Browns and Carolina Panthers and their owners and GMs have to find a coach moving into the 2011-12 season. Anyway, one of the first candidates that has been interviewed is Perry Fewell, who is currently the New York Giants' defensive coordinator.
Now, while he’s been at the right hand of a man that is clearly a very good coach in Tom Coughlin and created a very solid, albeit sometimes unmotivated defense, the fact is, if I were looking, I don't know that he'd rise to that level of a true candidate.
Another alarming factor is that he’s never been “the guy” at any level. Not at the high school level, not at the college level and not at the NFL level either; however, he did serve as the interim head coach in Buffalo after Dick Jauron was fired and then he himself was fired at the close of the season.
Fewell is the hot minority name being thrown around right now. And, he’s gotten the chance to interview for the head coaching vacancies in Denver and Cleveland and my question is this, why?
Is Fewell being interviewed by Pat Bowlen and Mike Holmgren because he’s genuinely qualified or is it because of the color of his skin and the fact that the Rooney Rule requires it?
Looking at what his defenses did in Buffalo, and the fact that the G-Men let some sure wins slip away this season, I think it may be the latter.
It looks like it's being done because it’s a formality and a requirement that teams are required to meet, not because he's genuinely revered or a serious candidate. Honestly, I don’t think it’s fair for Fewell to be thrust into this position because he’s the de facto “Mr. Popular Minority Head Coaching Candidate for 2010.″
Perhaps I'm wrong and maybe he'll be a great head coach, but until that's proven and in the meantime, it just shows how painfully skewed, racist and out of touch the NFL’s views really are.
Forcing this rule into effect shows that the NFL and Rooney are out of touch with the reality of the coaching world. The bottom line is this—no matter what the color of a man’s skin is, his accomplishments, experience and coaching knowledge generally are the basis by which he’s evaluated as a coach, not the color of his skin.
Honestly, if I’m an owner, looking at potential candidates, I don’t care if the guy is green with purple eyes. If he’s a winner and he’s got the experience that I seek for my club, then he’s my guy.
While I’m sure that every owner in the league would love to have a guy like Dungy, Tomlin, Lovie Smith or Herm Edwards at the helm of their organization, the fact, is forcing owners to interview minority candidates that are potentially unqualified, underqualified or that don't fit from a philosophical standpoint won’t promote finding those type of coaches.
To fix this, the best thing to do is to remove the rule and force a man (of any color) to stand on his own merits and earn what may come his way, not to give it to him. I was always taught that if you didn’t earn it, then it wasn’t yours to keep.
Tony Dungy, Tomlin, Edwards and even Crennel have earned their shot at the head coach position, it wasn’t given to them.
Possibly even more disturbing is that forcing this action into effect oftentimes may take the intention out of the interview and, in my mind, makes it simply a formality, nothing more. And frankly, I can’t think of anything that would be more insulting or racist than being interviewed simply because a club had to interview the “minority” and I was it.
Leslie Frazier spared himself from being interviewed because he's the "Hot Minority Candidate" and Fewell has mentioned several times that he's been skeptical at times during this process because of this rule. Current Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Raheem Morris has echoed this before too.
So, I guess another question would be this: when minority head coach candidates are speaking out about how the rule has adversely effected them, isn't it time to maybe make a change?
If the league wants to promote minority hirings, then they must do it equally, paying as much attention to black men, as they do to any other minority candidate, whether he’s black, Hispanic, Asian or any other minority race.
Therein lies the problem with the rule. We all know now after the history lesson I gave you earlier that it requires them to interview at least one “minority candidate,” but we all know that really means they have to interview one black candidate.
There’s still not an Asian head coach and finally, for the first time in a long time, there's a Hispanic head coach in the NFL right now, so can anyone really say the rule is benefiting anyone other than the black coach?
When was the last time you saw Norm Chow, Lloyd Lee or a Hispanic coach interviewed for the head coaching position with an NFL team, aside of Ron Rivera who was just recently hired in Carolina?
If I asked right now who the first minority coach to win a Super Bowl was, most of you would answer Dungy. However, that’s incorrect. The first minority coach to win a Super Bowl was Tom Flores with the Oakland Raiders and he won not one, but two Super Bowls. Those being Super Bowl XV and XVIII.
Yet most of you, even Raider fans, probably don’t realize that and most don’t recognize that groundbreaking achievement, which is as good as any other minority candidate's Super Bowl win. Why is that?
The Rooney Rule is outdated and pointless, proof of that is Flores who was winning Super Bowls as a minority candidate long before—25 years before to be exact—the “Rooney Rule" was enacted.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m all for someone being given an opportunity to better themselves and reach above. Really. That’s how I genuinely feel. I’m not for awarding anything to anyone, be it black, white, yellow or green simply because of the color of their skin.
I read somewhere recently that some race groups were upset at the firing of Crennel in Cleveland a couple of years ago. To that, I say this: open your eyes, and really look at the situation through a lens that’s not askew and tell me how the Browns were wrong in that decision? Going 24-40 in his time at the helm, one winning season and three seasons with 10 or more losses? An NFL record zero touchdowns in four consecutive games?
That warrants a firing, not a second chance.
Recently, Michael Wilbon of ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption” recently said, “Don’t spit in my face and tell me it’s raining. Progress will be when 65 percent of coaches are African-American, not 20 percent.”
He went on to say: ”The fact this shameful disparity is not discussed openly is part of the problem, not a sign that we are in a post-racist moment. Right now, as the coaching vacancies pile up, it is precisely the time to talk about it.”
Really Michael? Sixty-five percent African American? What about Chow or Lee? Use of the Rooney Rule in this fashion does nothing more than create an unfair playing field and creates even more racist ideals in my mind. Honestly folks, correct me if I'm wrong, but those numbers sound less like equality and more like dominance.
The fact is, almost 37 percent of NFL coaches are black and that number is continually on the rise, as the natural progression for a lot of former NFL players is to go into the coaching ranks.
As I write this and you read it, I know that somewhere the next Dungy or Tomlin is being groomed by a knowledgeable and strong coach and, really, I can’t wait to see who he his.
Is it Fewell? Is it Ted Cottrell? Is it Chow? Is it Jimmy Raye? I don’t know, but I do know this—we’ll never know until someone gives them a shot, however, that’s a shot that must be earned, not given.
As I really sit back and think about the Rooney Rule and what it does, I can’t help but think it’s the very reason that we as a country are still not solidified as one and why racism is still a real problem in America. The bottom line here is that the Rooney Rule itself uses race as a tool and uses the color of one's skin as a determinant. How is that just?
Let me give you a quick history lesson here. The Rooney Rule was enacted by the NFL in 2003 and essentially what it does is require NFL teams with a head coaching vacancy to interview a "minority candidate," basically requiring teams to operate within the affirmative action hiring guidelines set forth years ago.
The rule itself was drafted by and named after Dan Rooney, the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers and chairman of the NFL’s Diversity Committee. Since the inception of the rule, the NFL’s head coaching numbers have swayed slightly.
Currently, 37 percent of the coaches in the NFL are of minority decent, up from six percent prior to the rule change. Simply put, more black and minority coaches are being given head coaching jobs and I’m all for that and think it's long overdue.
I’m in support of equality and seeing beyond the color of one man’s skin.
That being said, I think the rule is a pointless measure enacted by the NFL. The numbers don’t lie, as I mentioned earlier; however it’s forcing NFL owners and GMs to interview people that, for whatever reason, may or may not be qualified as deemed so by private organizations (NFL franchises).
How is that fair?
Seriously ask yourself, how is that fair to any party involved? How is fair to the owners, GMs or the candidates whom they’re being forced to interview?
The short answer is, it's not. The league has some pretty stiff fines when it comes to not interviewing a minority candidate. In 2003, the league fined the Detroit Lions $200,000 for not interviewing any minority candidates and immediately hiring Steve Mariucci.
Per the rule, the fine was right thing to do; however, was the fine necessary if the Lions already knew who they wanted to coach the team? The cut and dry is that this rule is giving "opportunities" for head coaching and senior football operations positions to people that maybe don’t deserve to have the opportunity for various reasons and, rankly, that’s not right.
Now, inevitably, some of you will read this and your perception will be that I’m a racist and,for those of who that think that, I'd just like to ask you to leave now. For those of you still here, let me elaborate further…
As most of you know, unless you’ve been in some remote jungle in South America, Eric Mangini, John Fox and Josh McDaniels were all recently fired fired. Most of those changes were not a surprise, as all of those coaches, well, most, weren't who the franchise was looking for.
What that means is that the Denver Broncos, Cleveland Browns and Carolina Panthers and their owners and GMs have to find a coach moving into the 2011-12 season. Anyway, one of the first candidates that has been interviewed is Perry Fewell, who is currently the New York Giants' defensive coordinator.
Now, while he’s been at the right hand of a man that is clearly a very good coach in Tom Coughlin and created a very solid, albeit sometimes unmotivated defense, the fact is, if I were looking, I don't know that he'd rise to that level of a true candidate.
Another alarming factor is that he’s never been “the guy” at any level. Not at the high school level, not at the college level and not at the NFL level either; however, he did serve as the interim head coach in Buffalo after Dick Jauron was fired and then he himself was fired at the close of the season.
Fewell is the hot minority name being thrown around right now. And, he’s gotten the chance to interview for the head coaching vacancies in Denver and Cleveland and my question is this, why?
Is Fewell being interviewed by Pat Bowlen and Mike Holmgren because he’s genuinely qualified or is it because of the color of his skin and the fact that the Rooney Rule requires it?
Looking at what his defenses did in Buffalo, and the fact that the G-Men let some sure wins slip away this season, I think it may be the latter.
It looks like it's being done because it’s a formality and a requirement that teams are required to meet, not because he's genuinely revered or a serious candidate. Honestly, I don’t think it’s fair for Fewell to be thrust into this position because he’s the de facto “Mr. Popular Minority Head Coaching Candidate for 2010.″
Perhaps I'm wrong and maybe he'll be a great head coach, but until that's proven and in the meantime, it just shows how painfully skewed, racist and out of touch the NFL’s views really are.
Forcing this rule into effect shows that the NFL and Rooney are out of touch with the reality of the coaching world. The bottom line is this—no matter what the color of a man’s skin is, his accomplishments, experience and coaching knowledge generally are the basis by which he’s evaluated as a coach, not the color of his skin.
Honestly, if I’m an owner, looking at potential candidates, I don’t care if the guy is green with purple eyes. If he’s a winner and he’s got the experience that I seek for my club, then he’s my guy.
While I’m sure that every owner in the league would love to have a guy like Dungy, Tomlin, Lovie Smith or Herm Edwards at the helm of their organization, the fact, is forcing owners to interview minority candidates that are potentially unqualified, underqualified or that don't fit from a philosophical standpoint won’t promote finding those type of coaches.
To fix this, the best thing to do is to remove the rule and force a man (of any color) to stand on his own merits and earn what may come his way, not to give it to him. I was always taught that if you didn’t earn it, then it wasn’t yours to keep.
Tony Dungy, Tomlin, Edwards and even Crennel have earned their shot at the head coach position, it wasn’t given to them.
Possibly even more disturbing is that forcing this action into effect oftentimes may take the intention out of the interview and, in my mind, makes it simply a formality, nothing more. And frankly, I can’t think of anything that would be more insulting or racist than being interviewed simply because a club had to interview the “minority” and I was it.
Leslie Frazier spared himself from being interviewed because he's the "Hot Minority Candidate" and Fewell has mentioned several times that he's been skeptical at times during this process because of this rule. Current Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Raheem Morris has echoed this before too.
So, I guess another question would be this: when minority head coach candidates are speaking out about how the rule has adversely effected them, isn't it time to maybe make a change?
If the league wants to promote minority hirings, then they must do it equally, paying as much attention to black men, as they do to any other minority candidate, whether he’s black, Hispanic, Asian or any other minority race.
Therein lies the problem with the rule. We all know now after the history lesson I gave you earlier that it requires them to interview at least one “minority candidate,” but we all know that really means they have to interview one black candidate.
There’s still not an Asian head coach and finally, for the first time in a long time, there's a Hispanic head coach in the NFL right now, so can anyone really say the rule is benefiting anyone other than the black coach?
When was the last time you saw Norm Chow, Lloyd Lee or a Hispanic coach interviewed for the head coaching position with an NFL team, aside of Ron Rivera who was just recently hired in Carolina?
If I asked right now who the first minority coach to win a Super Bowl was, most of you would answer Dungy. However, that’s incorrect. The first minority coach to win a Super Bowl was Tom Flores with the Oakland Raiders and he won not one, but two Super Bowls. Those being Super Bowl XV and XVIII.
Yet most of you, even Raider fans, probably don’t realize that and most don’t recognize that groundbreaking achievement, which is as good as any other minority candidate's Super Bowl win. Why is that?
The Rooney Rule is outdated and pointless, proof of that is Flores who was winning Super Bowls as a minority candidate long before—25 years before to be exact—the “Rooney Rule" was enacted.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m all for someone being given an opportunity to better themselves and reach above. Really. That’s how I genuinely feel. I’m not for awarding anything to anyone, be it black, white, yellow or green simply because of the color of their skin.
I read somewhere recently that some race groups were upset at the firing of Crennel in Cleveland a couple of years ago. To that, I say this: open your eyes, and really look at the situation through a lens that’s not askew and tell me how the Browns were wrong in that decision? Going 24-40 in his time at the helm, one winning season and three seasons with 10 or more losses? An NFL record zero touchdowns in four consecutive games?
That warrants a firing, not a second chance.
Recently, Michael Wilbon of ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption” recently said, “Don’t spit in my face and tell me it’s raining. Progress will be when 65 percent of coaches are African-American, not 20 percent.”
He went on to say: ”The fact this shameful disparity is not discussed openly is part of the problem, not a sign that we are in a post-racist moment. Right now, as the coaching vacancies pile up, it is precisely the time to talk about it.”
Really Michael? Sixty-five percent African American? What about Chow or Lee? Use of the Rooney Rule in this fashion does nothing more than create an unfair playing field and creates even more racist ideals in my mind. Honestly folks, correct me if I'm wrong, but those numbers sound less like equality and more like dominance.
The fact is, almost 37 percent of NFL coaches are black and that number is continually on the rise, as the natural progression for a lot of former NFL players is to go into the coaching ranks.
As I write this and you read it, I know that somewhere the next Dungy or Tomlin is being groomed by a knowledgeable and strong coach and, really, I can’t wait to see who he his.
Is it Fewell? Is it Ted Cottrell? Is it Chow? Is it Jimmy Raye? I don’t know, but I do know this—we’ll never know until someone gives them a shot, however, that’s a shot that must be earned, not given.
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