Black and white

Well, it was certainly no surprise when several National Football League teams collectively pushed back against the landmark class action lawsuit filed against them by former Miami head coach Brian Flores, alleging discrimination in its hiring practices.

Flores, an African American, aimed his lawsuit at the Miami Dolphins, New York Giants and Denver Broncos.

Brian Flores

 Flores was fired by the Dolphins Jan. 10 after posting consecutive winning seasons, something the team hadn't accomplished since 2003. Furthermore, the team won eight of its last nine games this season, just barely missing out on the playoffs.

The lawsuit could be explosive. One of the allegations being made is that the Dolphins offered Flores $100,000 for each loss – tanking – back in 2019 in order to qualify for a No. 1 draft pick. We'll get to that in a moment.

Flores has also accused the Dolphins of asking him to tamper by recruiting a quarterback on another team. The Giants and Broncos are in the picture for making a joke of the NFL's Rooney Rule, which requires all NFL teams to interview at least one minority candidate for each head coaching position that comes available. That rule in itself is a joke, designed primarily to cover asses.

But to my eyes, the pushback appears to be more reactionary than substantive. Nearly 70 percent of the league's players are people of color, yet the only black head coach in the league at the moment is Pittsburgh's Mike Tomlin.

And all of the owners are white. Sure, players are richly compensated for playing a game, albeit a violent game that can result in lifelong injuries, a loss of brain function, even paralysis or death. But what does 100 percent white ownership of a significant black work force sound like to you? Plantation culture, perhaps?

This is what makes the NFL's pushback seem insincere at best. The NFL can show righteous indignation all it wants, but the simple fact is that numbers don't lie. Or, if you like, 0.043 percent of the league has minority head coaching.

Even NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has sent out a memo noting the league's hiring practices need review.

In 2022, this is outrageous. But here we are anyway, back to an era of Confederate statues, banned books, synagogue bombings and torchlight parades. Back even to swastikas. How the hell did we get to this? We were here once before. Now we have to do it again?

If tanking games is somehow proven, then we have a little sports cross pollination going  on. Baseball still refuses to induct Pete Rose into the Baseball Hall of Fame for allegedly betting on his team when he was an active manager of the Cincinnati Reds. But he says he never bet on his own team. Not sure that distinction makes his behavior OK, but when the NFL puts a team in Las Vegas and sports betting is alive and well – and legal – and online, what exactly is Rose's crime again?

Flores said he thought long and hard before filing his suit on Tuesday – the first day of Black History Month and in the fortnight of the Super Bowl – and understands he may be blackballed and never allowed to coach in the NFL again.

It's reminiscent of San Fransisco quarterback and civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during national anthems several years back to protest racism in America. That protest seems kind of quaint now. But Kaepernick never took another snap in the NFL after the 2016 season.

It's hard to escape the plantation.