NFL Adds Women To ‘Rooney Rule’ Language, Mandates Teams Hire Diverse Offensive Assistant

The NFL announced Monday that it would be adding women to the Rooney Rule that has been the Shield’s way of diversifying the workforce around the league. That’s right, diversity, diversity, diversity.

Tired of having diversity beaten into your head? You haven’t seen anything yet.

Starting with the 2022 season, all 32 teams will be required to hire a diverse person as an offensive assistant. That diverse hire can be a woman, “or a member of an ethnic or racial minority,” the league said in its policy change.

This will be the first hiring mandate in the history of the Rooney Rule which was adopted by the league in 2003. The initial idea behind the Rooney Rule was to require every team with a head coaching vacancy to interview a minority candidate.

Now, in 2022, the league has progressed to the point where it will now require an offensive assistant to fill a quota. Why the offensive side? The league says it’s because that’s where owners are pulling their head coaches from, so the quota was placed on that side of the operation.

“This person will receive a one-year contract and work closely with the head coach and offensive staff to gain experience. Clubs will receive reimbursement from a league-wide fund towards the coach’s salary for up to 2 years.

“In recent years, head coaches have predominantly had offensive backgrounds. We believe this resolution will assist greatly in continuing to source and identify diverse candidates earlier in their career, providing pipeline depth and furthering developing the diverse offensive pipeline.”

As of the beginning of the 2021 season, there were 12 females in coaching positions. The Chiefs, Washington Commanders and the Bills had women serving in offensive assistant coach positions.

Gipson, Grossman and Marini also worked for college football teams.