Dallas Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett took heaps of abuse this past week for opting to punt on fourth-and-one during last Sunday's 19-16 overtime loss to Houston. This weekend, former NFL cornerback Domonique Foxworth, who now writes about racism in sports for ESPN's social justice blog, The Undefeated, made Garrett the poster boy for white privilege at the expense of African-Americans unable to secure jobs as head coaches and general managers in the NFL. When Foxworth encounters trouble corroborating his claims of institutional racism in the NFL, he falls back on poster boy Garrett throughout his narrative.
In his headline, Foxworth complains that Garrett has job security that is a "sore spot for black fans." Yet Foxworth fails to name, cite or quote a single fan of any color about any such thing. The best he could do was to post a video clip of ESPN's Stephen A. Smith demanding Garrett's job after the Cowboys' most recent loss.
Smith had also complained that "Garrett’s presence on the sideline reflects a painful fact of life in America: It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Relationships play an outsize role in opportunities in one’s career." Foxworth says Garrett has an unfair advantage in holding an NFL coaching job because the coach is a friend of the team's owner, Jerry Jones. Foxworth even concedes that the "it's who you know" argument is not exclusive to the NFL.
Foxworth is convinced that blacks are denied equal opportunities in the NFL, but he can't use head coaches to prove that point. The NFL currently has an all-time high of seven black head coaches. So he moves on to "the absence of black owners and lack of black general managers" and claims the bond between Dallas's Jones and Garrett highlights the absence of blacks in the front office, which is "the next frontier for blacks in the NFL ... ."
Foxworth says the NFL's Rooney Rule requires teams to interview blacks for head coaching positions, but doesn't force them to interview blacks for vacant general manager positions. Whose fault is it? Who's the punching bag? Garrett, a coach, not a general manager:
"The truth is Garrett has received more runway than most coaches with comparable résumés, not just black coaches. And that is likely because of the relationship Garrett and Jones have been developing since the ’90s, when Garrett was Troy Aikman’s backup during the golden era of Cowboys football. Currently in his ninth season, Garrett is the longest-tenured coach since Jones bought the team in 1989."
Foxworth concedes that Garrett is not an awful coach and was denied an opportunity to possibly win a Super Bowl when the NFL's indecision on what constitutes a catch led to a damaging playoff loss at Green Bay in 2014. But then it's back to attack mode: "Many were surprised to see that Garrett wasn’t fired with last season’s crop of underachieving head coaches."
Meanwhile, black head coach Jim Caldwell got the axe at Detroit after compiling a winning record over three seasons. Caldwell "might be the coach most interested in Garrett’s staying power," Foxworth writes.
Foxworth meanders down the home stretch by going into great detail to compare Marvin Lewis, the black head coach at Cincinnati, to Garrett and concludes Lewis has the more favorable record. Then he concludes "it is impossible for me and many other black people to look at the racial demographics of the labor (players), management (coaches and general managers) and ownership in the league and not see reflections of societal disadvantages faced by all minority groups." Foxworth just didn't quote anyone else to support his points.
