Melissa Harris-Perry   |  February 03, 2013

Few minorities in NFL’s power positions

With four active head coaches of color in the NFL and five active minority general managers, Melissa Harris-Perry asks why so few minorities are hired at these levels.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

in december, seven families fired their general managers . the team executives in charge of picking the players. eight of them fired their head coaches . of the eight newly unemployed coaches, two were in kansas city and lovie smith in chicago were african-american. that left four active head coaches in the league, three black and one latino. five minority managers. there were 11 including interim coaches. in 2003 , the league institutes the rooney rule , which required they interview a minority candidate for any head coach opening. before then, there were only seven head coaches of color, ever, in the nfl history. that's increased to 20. 20 black and latino head coaches are permanent or interim. they are doing quite well, thank you. sinls super bowl xli when tony dungy became the first black head coach to win a super bowl . for seven seasons there's been a black coach or general manager leading the super bowl come pet the tor including tonight with ozzie newsome . despite that, this off season, zero men of color were hire d as nfl coaches. for the general manager openings zero minorities got a job. the nfl went 15 for 15 when it came to hiring white people to lead their teams. now, why might that be? seven of the eight head coaches hired specialize in offense, not defense, a sign of where the league is headed. one nfl team, baltimore ravens have a black guy calling the game. taking them to an appearance in super bowl xliv where, of course, they lost to my new orleans saints. despite his helping lead the ravens to tonight's super bowl , you know how many interviews he got from the teams looking for a head coach? yep, zero. something is not quite right here. next, i'll talk to a man behind the drive to interview minority coaching candidates to see if he thinks more change needs to happen. stay tuned.