How are South Florida pro teams doing with minority front-office hiring? Take a look
As America grapples with racial injustice, human rights activist Richard Lapchick is paying particularly close attention.
Lapchick is the son of Joe Lapchick, the legendary New York-based Original Celtics center from the 1920s and ‘30s and former coach of the New York Knicks, who was vilified by fans when in 1950 he drafted Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton, the first Black player to sign an NBA contract.
Seventy years later, the younger Lapchick carries on his father’s legacy as director of The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) and author of the annual Racial and Gender Report Card, which grades U.S. sports leagues based on an analysis of racial and gender hiring practices.
His executive summary of the 2019 report card was published on Wednesday, and South Florida teams fared better than the national average when it comes to racial diversity at the top.
There are only two Black presidents of baseball operations in Major League Baseball, and one of them is Michael Hill of the Miami Marlins, whose father is African American and mother is of Cuban heritage. The other is Kenny Williams of the Chicago White Sox. Overall, MLB got a “C-“ in racial diversity among presidents and general managers. Marlins CEO and co-owner Derek Jeter is biracial.
Despite MLB getting a “C” in gender hiring equity, Marlins chief operating officer Caroline O’Connor is one of the highest-ranking women in all of pro sports.
At the start of the 2019 season, only two of the NFL’s general managers were Black, a decrease of 50 percent from the 2018 season. One of them is Chris Grier of the Miami Dolphins. The other is Doug Williams, senior vice president of player personnel for the Washington Redskins.
There were three Black NFL head coaches at the start of the 2019 season. One of them was Brian Flores of the Dolphins, the son of Black Honduran immigrants. The others were Anthony Lynn of the Los Angeles Chargers and Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Black coach percentage drops in NFL
Although 70.1 percent of the players in the NFL are of color, earning the NFL an A+ for racial player hiring, the league got a D+ in diversity of head coaches after the percentage of Black head coaches dropped from 21.9 percent in 2018 to 9.4 percent in 2019. There was a drop in total head coaches of color from 25 percent in 2018 to 12.5 percent in 2019. The NFL also got an F in racial diversity of general managers.
“In leadership positions, vice presidents, CEOs, general managers, head coaches, owners, I know the records of the Miami Dolphins and Miami Marlins are significantly better than the leagues they’re in,” said Lapchick, reached by phone Thursday. His institute is based at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra is of Filipino descent on his mother’s side and the first Asian-American coach in the four major American sports leagues. He is one of eight NBA minority head coaches. There is one Latino and eight Black coaches.
The Heat recently was honored with the NBA’s inaugural Inclusion Leadership Award. The Heat’s workforce is 70 percent minorities and 33 percent women.
“With everything going on in the world today, I think it’s an appropriate time to stand up and talk about why that’s important,” said Eric Woolworth, the Heat’s President of Business Operations. “It’s important because there’s real value behind it for taking in ideas and bouncing them off a bunch of different experiences and backgrounds. and coming to a decision that’s going to resonate throughout your local community.”
Minority NBA head coaches on rise
The NBA has the highest percentage of head coaches of color since 2014, and that has been trending upward during the past three years. Additionally, the NBA has seen a growth in the number of female assistant coaches leading to the highest number in league history (four), while the percentage of assistant coaches of color was the lowest it has been since the 2014-2015 season.
Although still higher than the other professional leagues, the percentage of general managers of color is the lowest of the NBA’s categories for the percent of people of color. Despite getting an F for diversity among presidents and CEO’s, the NBA got an A+ for racial hiring, best among the four men’s leagues that participate in the report card (NBA, NFL, MLB, MLS).
The NBA got an A for player diversity with 81.9 percent players of color (74.8 percent African American) and an “A+” for head coaches with 33.3 percent coaches of color. The Heat has 16 vice presidents of color.
Major League Soccer got a B overall, an A for racial hiring, and A+ for head coaches, general managers and players. The players’ ethnic makeup is 38.3 percent white-Anglo, 33.4 percent Latino and 23.1 percent African American. Among head coaches, 37.5 percent are minorities, including Inter Miami’s Uruguayan coach Diego Alonso. Colorado Rapids coach Robin Fraser, the former FIU player, is of Jamaican descent and among the only Black head coaches in MLS.
Lapchick, who has been publishing the report card for more than two decades, considers this year’s report more important than ever.
“The 2019 Complete Racial and Gender Report Card was published at a critical moment in American history as we faced both a pandemic with COVID-19 and an extraordinary focus on racism sparked by the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor in the first few months of 2020,” he wrote. “The world of sport has been affected by both and the importance of measuring where we are in terms of race in sport became even more critical.”
Race and Gender Report Cards
The Report Card, by league:
NBA got A overall, A+ in Racial Hiring, and B in Gender Hiring.
MLB got B- overall, A- in Racial Hiring, and C in Gender Hiring.
NFL got B- overall, B in Racial Hiring, and C+ in Gender Hiring.
MLS got B overall, A in Racial Hiring, and C in Gender Hiring.
WNBA got the highest grades with A+ overall, A+ in Racial Hiring and A in Gender Hiring.
Lapchick expects to see an uptick in minority hiring for sports front-office jobs because of the current outcries for racial justice and reform following George Floyd’s death while in police custody in Minneapolis.
“I believe at the commissioner level, they are feeling the heat of not having it as good as it could be and wanting to have more diversity and inclusion,” Lapchick said. “I think the leadership in the league offices believed that diversity was a business imperative. What’s changing right now is that because of what’s going on in the country, we’re also looking at diversity and inclusion as a moral imperative. That’s how it first started in the 1970s, it kind of drifted away from that, and everything now is changing that.”
Minority team executives are doing what they can to make their workplaces more inclusive.
“Anyone who is in the position of leadership, you want to do the best that you can because you are a role model for so many in the game,” the Marlins’ Hill told MLB.com earlier this year as part of a Black History Month celebration. “I take every opportunity that I can and try to pay it forward and educate the next generation who might aspire to be in my position. … I want to do everything in my power to make sure we continue to grow.”
On MLB Draft Night on June 10, which was held virtually due to COVID-19, Hill and the other 29 league executives had placards on their desks that read: “Black Lives Matter. United For Change.”
They also announced a combined donation of $311,000 to charities that fight for racial justice: the NAACP Legal Defense Fund; the Equal Justice Initiative; Color of Change; Campaign Zero; and the Jackie Robinson Foundation. MLB is matching the donation.
“Jackie Robinson’s legacy and vision carries on 72 years after he broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball,” Lapchick said. “He played for a future of baseball where all people can participate on and off the field. The 2019 Major League Baseball Racial and Gender Report Card shows baseball is moving in the right direction, but there must be more urgency to make Jackie’s vision a reality.”
MLB reports steep decline in Black players
This year’s report contained the highest percentage of Latino players (31.9 percent) and total players of color (42.5) in MLB history. Yet the league also reported its lowest percentage of players who are Black, African-American or African-Canadian (7.7) since they began the studies in 1991.
Those numbers are a reflection of the demographics of college baseball, the report said. Less than 5 percent of Division I college baseball players are African American compared with 70 percent of NFL players and 80 percent of NBA players.
“Major League Baseball’s teams must improve inclusive hiring practices in order to accurately represent the players who play the game and the communities they serve,” Lapchick said. “Though the percentage of managers of color continued to increase this year, the lack of diversity in this key position throughout MLB is of utmost concern, especially when looking at the level of diversity among the players. The 2019 season opened with only five managers of color, which is half of the all-time high of 10 reached in 2002 and 2009.”
The NFL has been at the forefront of racial issues with the 3-year-old controversy surrounding San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel for the national anthem. Despite many diversity initiatives, there were only four coaches of color and two general managers of color in the league, only 12.8% of vice presidents and above at the team level are people of color and 20.7% are women.
The Rooney Rule was strengthened late in 2018, requiring teams to go outside their organizations to interview a candidate of color or to interview a candidate who is on the league’s career development advisory panel list for head-coaching positions. Recently, the NFL entered a partnership with Roc Nation, founded by rapper/producer Jay-Z, to build better relationships within communities through music and the NFL’s “Inspire Change” initiative.
As Lapchick studied the 2019 report card, he found reasons to feel optimistic, but also plenty of reason for concern.
“MLS has significantly increased grades on race over the past two or three years to the A category, on the other hand, in terms of gender hiring practices, they’re on the decline, as is the NBA, which generally has a good grade on everything, but their gender grades have been going down,” Lapchick said. “They’re still in the “B” category, but they used to be higher. Gender hiring in the NFL and baseball are not good.
“The NFL had the most precipitous drop of any professional sport in a single year in their racial grade last year, and that was largely was impacted by the lack of general managers and head coaches who are of color.”
Lapchick says athlete activism will be the true agent for change going forward.
“The game-changer in the future is going to be athlete activism,” Lapchick said. “As athletes focus attention and encourage management to diversify hiring practices on the teams they play for, whether it’s at the college or professional level, that’s where the changes will happen.
“We already saw that when the NFL players put out that video on a Friday night and the commissioner’s response the next day. I think we’re going to see more of that.”
This story was originally published June 26, 2020 at 10:17 AM.