President Joe Biden had words of admonishment for the NFL on Sunday during a pre-Super Bowl interview with NBC News’ Lester Holt.
Biden was commenting on a lawsuit that has been filed against the league and several teams by former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores, who is black, after he was fired from his post following the regular season.
The president’s remarks came on the heels of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s remarks recently that the league “won’t tolerate racism” and “won’t tolerate discrimination.”
“The commissioner pointed out they haven’t lived up to what they committed to. They haven’t lived up to being open about hiring more minorities to run teams,” Biden NBC News anchor Lester Holt in the interview.
“Goodell says they’re gonna take a look at whether they can meet the standard. And the standard was set by someone who said this is something we should do,” noted Biden.
“The whole idea that a league that is made up of so many athletes of color, as well as so diverse, that there’s not enough African American qualified coaches ‘to manage these NFL teams,’ it just seems to me that it’s a standard that they’d want to live up to,” he said. “It’s not a requirement of law, but it’s a requirement, I think, of just some generic decency.”
The Daily Wire notes:
In the class-action suit filed in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday, Flores makes the claim that Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross pressured Flores to “tank” during the 2019 season, to the point that Ross offered Flores $100,000 for each loss during the season. He also claims that “Mr. Ross began to pressure Mr. Flores to recruit a prominent quarterback in violation of League tampering rules” at the end of the 2019 season.
Flores was fired as head coach of the Dolphins in January, following two winning seasons as head coach in Miami. It was the first back-to-back winning seasons for the organization since the 2003 season.
Flores claims that as a result of refusing to recruit the quarterback, he was “treated with disdain and held out as someone who was noncompliant and difficult to work with.” The suit alleges that the Dolphins labeled Flores as “difficult to work with” through the media.
The lawsuit names the Denver Broncos, the New York Giants, and the Dolphins. NBC Sports reported that Flores will amend his lawsuit to also include the Houston Texans.
Flores is alleging, among other things, that the league’s hiring policies for coaches are racist.