Jason La Canfora of NFL Network created a mini-stir on Thursday (even though he was trying to jam the issue back into the bottle before it could properly escape) regarding the notion that the Seahawks tampered with former Colts coach Tony Dungy.
Here’s the basic logic. The Seahawks contacted Dungy regarding the possibility of becoming the president of the team. Dungy is still under contract with the Colts. So if any team is going to contact Dungy about a job, said team needs to first ask the Colts for permission to talk to him.
As La Canfora points out, the Colts won’t be doing anything about it.
For Dungy’s part, he told Dan Patrick today that the suggestion of tampering was news to him.
“I just heard that early this morning,” Dungy said. “I guess I’m not up on all the rules and regulations. I heard it on the news this morning that there was some type of tampering or whatever. I hope that’s not the case. Nothing was really serious at that point. People called and asked ‘were you interested?’ and I said no. . . . I just answer the phone and tell everyone politely I’m not interested.”
Given that Dungy acknowledged on December 11 that he had been contacted by a team the prior day and given that the Seahawks were using Jed Hughes of Spencer Stuart to line up potential candidates during the month of December, we’re going to assume (we’ve got a call in to Coach Dungy for confirmation) that he was contacted by the same search firm.
The reality, as multiple league sources have explained it to us over the years, is that search firms routinely “tamper” on behalf of the teams they serve.
Here’s how it works. The Spencer Stuarts of the world call potential candidates to gauge their interest before the process of seeking official permission to speak to the candidates even begins. In theory, it’s tampering. As a practical matter, no one ever says a word about it.
That’s why the Colts won’t be complaining. At some point, they’ll possibly be looking to hire someone, and they’ll possibly choose to engage a search firm. And then the search firm will make the initial contact with candidates who are already under contract with other teams.
The irony is that, while the league routinely ignores evidence of tampering unless it comes with a gift-wrapped admission, the evidence of tampering in this instance was brought to light publicly by a league employee on the league-owned television network.
Hmm. Maybe he’ll eventually be engaging a search firm, too.
