After Florida attorney James Uthmeier posted a video on Wednesday demanding that the NFL suspend the Rooney Rule, the team owned by the man after whom the rule is named had no comment.
On Friday, Steelers owner Art Rooney II — the son of Dan Rooney, the namesake of the Rooney Rule — had a comment.
“There’s no question that the environment has changed in recent years,” Rooney told Kalyn Kahler of ESPN. “We do have an obligation to make sure that our policies comply with the laws, whatever the law is, and whatever the changes in law might be. We’ve got to look at that and make sure we’re in compliance. . . . That’s just the environment we’re existing in today.”
The laws haven’t changed. The attitude toward them has. No state attorney general has ever investigated the NFL for decades of questionable hiring practices when it comes to race. Now, out of the blue, a red-state attorney general is attacking the Rooney Rule as being discriminatory on the basis of race.
Rooney’s comments have relevance far beyond Florida. They explain the NFL’s tiptoeing through the DEI minefield, dumping the Accelerator program last year before bringing it back in 2026 and expanding it to include white candidates.
The NFL has tried to strike the balance between saying all the right things and doing as little as possible. Now, the league is faced with a dilemma. Paying lip service to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts has invited an attack from Florida. What the NFL does from here could invite a social-media assault from one specific location in Washington, D.C.
It also could spark an effort by a blue-state attorney general or two to pluck low-hanging fruit that has been hanging there for decades.
On Wednesday, Florida attorney general James Uthmeier demanded that the NFL suspend the Rooney Rule as to the three franchises based there: the Dolphins, Jaguars, and Buccaneers.
On Friday, the NFL issued a statement regarding Uthmeier’s correspondence.
“We are reviewing the letter,” NFL executive V.P. Jeff Miller said. “We believe our policies are consistent with the law and reflect our commitment to fairness, opportunity, and building the strongest possible teams.”
Uthmeier believes otherwise. It’s part of the current assault on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Programs meant to rectify past instances of systemic discrimination have been met with claims that those programs are discriminatory.
Obviously, the NFL’s Rooney Rule doesn’t mandate the hiring of minority coaches. The goal is to get owners to slow down, to take a look at a broader pool of candidates. Even with it, the NFL’s collection of head coaches doesn’t begin to reflect the demographics of its rosters.
The situation puts the NFL in a delicate spot. It’s possible that the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is watching, waiting, and ready to start posting social-media attacks in the wee small hours of the morning.
For now, the NFL has said something. Even if it’s not much of anything. Starting this weekend at the annual meetings, owners undoubtedly will be asked about the situation. The league presumably hopes they’ll say nothing more than, “We are reviewing the letter.”
The video posted by Florida attorney general James Uthmeier on Wednesday has been supplemented with formal correspondence.
Via Andrew Atterbury of Politico, Uthmeier sent a letter to Commissioner Roger Goodell demanding that the Rooney Rule no longer be applied to NFL teams in Florida.
In the letter, copies of which were sent to the owners of the Dolphins, Jaguars, and Buccaneers, Uthmeier asks for confirmation by May 1 “that the NFL will no longer enforce the Rooney Rule or any variation or extension thereof — which requires consideration of race, sex, or any other prohibited classification — on teams in Florida.” Uthmeier adds that "[f]ailure to provide such confirmation may result in a civil rights enforcement action.”
From the letter: “The NFL’s own Executive Vice President of NFL Operations has acknowledged that the NFL should create ‘a workplace culture that doesn’t require mandates to interview people of color and minorities.’ If that is so, then stop discriminating based on race. Stop discriminating based on sex. Interview, hire, and train based on merit. If merit-based employment should exist anywhere (and it should exist everywhere), it is in the NFL. NFL fans in Florida don’t care what color their coach’s skin is. They care what colors their coach is wearing — and that those colors are winning on the football field.”
Of course, the full quote from Troy Vincent reflects his stated belief that a “double standard” exists regarding white and minority coaches. The Rooney Rule was created 23 years ago amid decades of hiring practices supporting the conclusion that the head-coach hiring practices had been heavily skewed toward white candidates. The league acted when it did in order to stave off a threat of litigation from Cyrus Mehri and the late Johnnie Cochran.
Uthmeier’s letter ignores the fact that litigation has been pending, for more than four years, regarding the firing of Brian Flores by the Dolphins.
Provisions like the Rooney Rule are aimed at rectifying decades of systemic discrimination. It’s about ensuring that candidates will get a full and fair opportunity to prove their merit, which often isn’t measured by objective metrics but by subjective factors that are characterized at times by terms like “comfort,” “fit,” and “feel.”
NFL franchises over the years have been owned almost exclusively by white men. Consciously or not, they have gravitated toward white coaches in a way that pales in comparison to the constitution of NFL rosters.
For the players, it’s much easier to display merit. The best players, as evidenced by their skills and abilities demonstrated during practices and games, earn and keep jobs. It’s much more difficult to determine merit when the supply of capable head coaches far outnumbers the 32 positions that are available, and when they all have the basic ability to perform the basic physical requirements of the job.
The league has said nothing to date about Uthmeier’s crusade against the Rooney Rule; the NFL has not responded to two separate emails from PFT seeking comment.
With the league’s owners soon to be arriving in Arizona for the annual meeting, where many of them will be speaking to reporters (and where Goodell will eventually conduct a press conference), it’s inevitable that someone will be saying something about the NFL’s position in response to Florida’s attack on the Rooney Rule.
The Buccaneers hosted free agent linebacker DeAngelo Malone on a free agent visit on Thursday.
Malone, 26, spent his first four seasons with the Falcons after they made him a third-round pick in 2022.
He landed on injured reserve last season after injuring an ankle in Week 10 against the Colts. Malone ended up playing nine games, and he totaled eight tackles, an interception and a pass defensed.
Malone played all but two games in his first three seasons.
In his career, Malone has recorded 59 tackles, three sacks, an interception and a pass defensed.
Raiders minority owner Tom Brady was interested enough in a potential comeback on the playing field to ask the NFL what the rules would be. The NFL reiterated that a player can’t also be an owner.
Brady told Alex Sherman of CNBC that when he looked into the rules, it was made clear to him that he can’t be an owner and a player at the same time.
“I actually have inquired, and they don’t like that idea very much,” Brady said. “We explored a lot of different things, and I’m very happily retired. Let me just say that, too.”
NFL rules would require Brady to sell his stake in the team before he could become an active player, and even then there could be additional questions about whether he would be a free agent or only eligible to play for the Raiders, and then whether money Brady has made as a Raiders minority owner would have to be counted against the salary cap. It wouldn’t be an easy process.
Brady played flag football last weekend but said that didn’t make him think he was going to return to the field.
“If anything, that game reconfirmed to me that I’m very happy in my retirement,” Brady said.
The 48-year-old Brady last played in 2022, when at age 45 he completed 490 of 733 passes for 4,694 yards with 25 touchdowns and nine interceptions.
