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Robert Saleh coaches the San Francisco 49ers at a game in October 2019.
Robert Saleh, the first Muslim head coach in the history of the National Football League (NFL) and the fourth Arab-American head coach in U.S. history, was fired in early October after starting the season with a 2-to-3 record.
The decision came just two days after Saleh, the head coach of the New York Jets, was seen wearing the Lebanese flag on his sleeve. The son of Lebanese immigrants, he displayed the flag during his team’s game in London on October 6.
Recently, Israel expanded its war on Gaza to Lebanon in a mission to take down Hezbollah. This unfolding story continues to make headlines as at least twenty-one people were killed by Israeli airstrikes on Sunday evening, according to Al Jazeera.
Saleh had also worn the flag during a game last October as part of the NFL’s Heritage program, which, according to the league, encourages players and coaches to celebrate their cultural backgrounds.
“This initiative allows us to celebrate the heritage, families, and cultures that make up the fabric of the league, and truly showcases the growing global reach and impact of the sport of football and the NFL,” said Peter O’Reilly, executive vice president of club business, international & league events at the NFL.
Though the official reasoning behind Saleh’s dismissal was “team performance,” the abrupt manner in which he was fired and escorted out by building security suggests otherwise.
Following the firing, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released a statement on the circumstances surrounding Saleh’s dismissal.
“The report that Jets security physically escorted Saleh out of the building does raise concerns about the possible motive for such unusual hostility—especially given that Saleh wore a Lebanese flag pin at a game just days ago and that owner Woody Johnson is a former Trump Administration official who has been accused of making racially charged remarks,” the statement said. “We encourage the Jets to thoroughly explain its unusually hostile reported treatment of Coach Saleh.”
In a personal statement, Saleh expressed gratitude to his team.
“To the Jets Organization, I am grateful to have had the opportunity to work with so many incredible people,” Saleh said. “To my fellow coaches and staff, it has been an honor to work with all of you.”
The NFL’s historical aversion to politics and controversy makes it likely that there will be no further statements or conversation from the league around the termination of Saleh’s position as the next news cycle hits.
However, it is imperative to consider the larger implications here: Where is the line between cultural and political expression? How does politics position itself in the sports world? Most importantly, how does the NFL fall short in its commitment to diversity and equity?
Michael Serazio, professor in the Department of Communication at Boston College and author of The Power of Sports: Media and Spectacle in American Culture, points out the few other instances in sports history in which athletes or staff members have disrupted the apolitical sports bubble.
In 2019, Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey posted on what was then Twitter an expression of solidarity with Hong Kong protestors amidst government crackdowns and immediately received backlash in both China and the United States.
Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta was quick to distance the team from the general manager, tweeting that Morley “does NOT speak for the @HoustonRockets” and emphasizing that the team is “NOT a political organization.”
This sentiment has been, and continues to be, largely universal in the sports world. The most notable example of the tension between sports and politics is Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling protest in 2016.
Four years ago, Kaepernick took a stand against police violence by refusing to stand during the National Anthem before a preseason game.
The football player told NFL Media in a postgame interview, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football, and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
In response to public outcry—including from former President Donald Trump, who called for Kaepernick’s firing—the NFL essentially blacklisted Kaepernick. It wasn’t until 2020, following the murder of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter protests, that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell publicly condemned racism and expressed regret for not supporting peaceful protests earlier.
“If Kaepernick start[ed] his kneeling protest in fall 2020, I think he [would] still [be] a quarterback in the NFL. I think that he just did it too soon for the culture to have changed,” Serazio says.
Yet, even in the political turmoil of 2020, professional sports leagues were hesitant to take a bold stance. Serazio points out that “the way sports would often position itself in relation to politics was still in a safe way.” For example, athletes would post something along the lines of “Don’t forget to vote,” and nothing further.
“There was a safe way [to engage in politics] and [athletes] did that because they understood that even in the most politicized year, sports still has to tiptoe because fans hate when athletes are activists,” he says.
In 2003, the NFL adopted an anti-discrimination policy known as the Rooney Rule in response to criticism about the lack of diversity, namely the absence of Black coaches, in the league. Named after Dan Rooney, former owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers and chairman of the NFL’s diversity committee, the policy requires teams to interview at least one minority candidate for any head coaching vacancy during the hiring process.
The proportion of Black head coaches compared to the proportion of Black players in the NFL—3 percent compared to 58 percent—illustrates a significant racial gap in sports leadership positions. As a “soft” affirmative action policy, the Rooney Rule does not impact hiring criteria by setting a quota, but simply alters the racial composition of candidates interviewed.
While its implementation has generally been received as a step in the right direction in terms of combating racial discrimination on a legislative level, it has not proved to be as effective as initially hoped.
According to a study of racial disparity in leadership published by the American Journal of Sociology, white coaches were almost twice as likely to be promoted to coordinators in the NFL between 1985 and 2015. The study also found that racial disparities in leadership representation were persistent before and after the implementation of the Rooney Rule.
As recently as 2022, former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores sued three teams in the NFL for racial discrimination after being fired due to his performance. He claimed “he and other qualified Black and minority candidates are routinely held to higher standards, rejected, or not considered at all for coaching and other leadership roles,” alleging that the Giants only interviewed him to comply with the Rooney Rule.
The Rooney Rule has been updated several times since its inception in 2003. In 2009, it was amended to include general manager and equivalent front-office positions. By November 2020, team owners approved a proposal rewarding teams who developed minority talent that went on to become general managers or head coaches across the league.
Despite this, the number of minority head coaches in the NFL has decreased from six in 2016 to just one in 2022. At the end of the 2022 season, Mike Tomlin of the Steelers was the only active head coach of color.
The anti-discrimination policy has produced some noticeable results: At the beginning of the 2024 season, for example, there were a record nine minority head coaches (including Saleh). Yet, the firing of Saleh and treatment of coaches such as Flores point to larger, less obvious issues happening behind the scenes that cannot be easily identified or fixed.
It is ineffective to enforce policies that are supposed to fight discrimination if the NFL is going to fire coaches after only one season or a few losses. This reflects poorly on the league’s commitment to racial diversity and equity. Though the NFL is trying to level the playing field during the hiring process, it falls short in extending the same grace they grant their white employees to their coaches of color during the playing season.
An analysis conducted by The Washington Post found that “the sentiment among Black coaches [is] that they are playing by a different set of rules than their white counterparts.”
At the end of the day, “the league characterizes itself as largely powerless to direct the hiring practices of thirty-two individual teams that are owned almost exclusively by white men.”
The NFL, and the sports industry in general, prides itself on operating meritocratically—the idea that talent alone can equate to success. But this assumption ignores the systemic challenges and barriers that many people of color face to reach the same level of success as their white counterparts.
Now, more than ever, it is imperative that the NFL and major sports leagues enforce anti-discrimination and affirmative action policies through the standardization of hiring practices. As the rights of minorities are threatened daily in the United States, it is important to protect the legislation currently in place before it is overturned.