As another NFL season concludes, President Joe Biden has some harsh criticism for the league’s lack of Black head coaches, NBC News reports.
In an interview that aired during the Super Bowl with NBC News anchor Lestor Holt, the president said that having diverse leaders in the league is a requirement of "generic decency."
Biden argued that "they haven't lived up to what they committed to and lived up to being open about hiring more minorities to run teams."
"The whole idea that a league that is made up of so many athletes of color, as well as so diverse, that there’s not enough African American qualified coaches 'to manage these NFL teams,' it just seems to me that it’s a standard that they'd want to live up to," he said. "It’s not a requirement of law, but it’s a requirement, I think, of just some generic decency.”
According to the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, 71 percent of NFL players were people of color, a quarter were white, and four percent is unknown.
Currently, only three people of color have head coaches in the league.
As EBONY previously reported, former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores levied a lawsuit against the NFL this month alleging racial discrimination in the league's hiring practices.
Holt asked Biden if he thinks the NFL should be held to a higher standard when it comes to diversity issues because of the league’s tremendous popularity
"I think it should be held to a reasonable standard," Biden argued
During a news conference on the state of the league, Commissioner Robert Goodell noted that the NFL has dropped the ball when it comes to hiring Black and minority coaches.
“We won’t tolerate racism. We won’t tolerate discrimination,” Goodell said. “I found all of the allegations, whether they were based on racism or discrimination or the integrity of our game, all of those to me were very disturbing. They are very serious matters to us on all levels, and we need to make sure we get to the bottom of all of them.”
