Bear Digest

Twisting Rule Against Bears Reveals Where NFL Really Stands on Hiring

Analysis: The Bears will get no draft picks for Ian Cunningham leaving, as the NFL distorts things and ignores the intent of the Rooney Rule.
Gene Chamberlain|
The NFL claims to be about inspiring change and equitable hiring practice through the Rooney Rule, just not in the Bears' case it seems.
The NFL claims to be about inspiring change and equitable hiring practice through the Rooney Rule, just not in the Bears' case it seems. | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

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Chicago Bears

With numerous Bears fans complaining about the lack of draft pick compensation for the team after losing assistant GM Ian Cunningham to Atlanta, something really important gets lost in translation.

Especially after Atlanta "president of football" Matt Ryan described his job at a press conference and then in Super Bowl week interviews as helping out while Cunningham does the work, Bears fans became irate. The Rooney Rule awards draft pick compensation for an assistant GM who is a minority member and leaves to be GM, as Cunningham is. Yet, the Bears are getting nothing.

 Of course the fans feel cheated.

It might sound to the outside NFL world like a bunch of greedy, whiny Bears fans want their draft picks. Truly, there are many of those. They could be found on social media for months on end each offseason, counting on two third-round picks the Bears would receive if Cunningham left and looking at the stack of Bears’ draft picks like their own bank statements. Cunningham never got or took a job and there were no picks. Now there should be but there aren't.

Cunningham finally did move on but an odd situation where Falcons owner Arthur Blank wanted to reward a former quarterback of his by giving him the title "president of football," has been twisted by the league so that there is no need to give the Bears two picks.  

Who made this decision, the Packers? Matt LaFleur?

Ryan is making personnel decisions, the league says. That's news to Ryan. He said so several times.

All of this hides something really disgusting and that is how the league won't even stand by its own attempt to correct past inequitable hiring practices in personnel and coaching.

Carrot and the stick

The NFL took away the carrot and all the Bears get now is the stick after they had complied perfectly.

The league invented a rule for advancing the cause of minority hiring, plastered slogans all over the field and on players' uniforms to show how they battle racism, yet when push comes to shove, after the Bears have done exactly what the league says should be done ... nothing.

How can anyone take anything the NFL says about changing past hiring injustices seriously after they've pulled this stunt?

WSCR-AM 670's Leah Rahimi, on her show with Mark Grote and Marshall Harris this week, was discussing the topic with regular contributor Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk. Florio seems like an ideal person to speak to regarding this because he graduated from law school and also wrote the book "Playmakers: How the NFL Really Works (And Doesn't)."

However, it was actually show host Rahimi whose comment best summed up the dagger the NFL has put in the Bears' hearts and in the heart of its own Rooney Rule.

"Don't try to tell us that that isn't a promotion for Ian Cunningham," she said. "He left. That is a promotion.

"The better question is why is the NFL being stingy with something they're not even taking away from anybody else? Like, award the good behavior to the faith and the spirit of the law rather than the letter."

Indeed.

By sticking to the letter of the law here, the league looks like a bunch of con men cowering inside of a loophole for no good reason, or worse. They don't back their own hiring rules.

The rule was put in place to right the wrongs in past hiring practices, but the NFL comes across looking like it's able to say, "Whew, that was close. Dodged that one."

They have managed to avoid rewarding someone who properly developed a highly qualified personnel boss and happens to be a minority member. Congratulations on that.

Of course they’ll say this wasn’t their intent by withholding the picks, but who knows what their intent really is when they don’t even follow the intent of their own Rooney Rule and choose instead to hide in a loophole?

Why did the NFL even waste everyone's time putting the Rooney Rule in place if this is how it's going to be twisted?

The NFL's word is no good when it comes to promises on minority hiring until all of the preaching, printing at the back of end zones, and PR commercials are backed up by rules AND action that everyone supports, including the league itself above all others.

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.