Advancing The Ball: Race, Reformation, and the Quest for Equal Coaching Opportunity in the NFL By N. Jeremi Duru Oxford University Press. 2010. 224 pages. $24.95 cloth

Abstract

This book consists of a journalistic narrative that traces the events and actors behind the National Football League's (NFL) reform of team hiring procedures aimed to increase the number of Black American head coaches. More specifically, it recounts the roles of four sets of actors who were involved in creating that reform: the two lawyers unaffiliated with the NFL who set the process of reform in motion; the Black American employees of the NFL (many of whom were assistant coaches) who became organized in an interest group named the Fritz Pollard Alliance; the NFL team owners who varied in their attitudes toward changing their hiring procedures; and, finally, the League officials, most especially, the League Commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, who had responsibility for protecting the League's collective interests. Information about the roles of these four sets of actors was hardly visible to the media. Indeed, it seemed that, aside from wanting to create a process that would increase the number of Black American coaches, the NFL had one paramount concern: keep the Leagues' conflicting views about alleged racial bias in-house. The fact that the NFL largely succeeded in keeping its negotiations secret is directly related to this book's major strengths: its behind-the-scene accounts of the events that resulted in the hiring reform, termed the Rooney rule, which were not reported in the media.