By Andrew Warshaw at the International Football Arena conference in Zurich
November 13 – Football can learn several lessons from how the NFL operates in the United States, not least giving more black coaches the opportunity to be interviewed for senior positions, the NFL’s United Kingdom managing director, Alistair Kirkwood, declared today.
Kirkwood said here that the Rooney Rule, established in 2003 that requires NFL teams to interview minority candidates for high-level coaching positions and is named after Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney (pictured top), could also have a beneficial effect on eradicating racism from the round-ball game.
“By law within the NFL, an African/American candidate has to be interviewed though not necessarily hired,” Kirkwood explained.
“This has led to around 25 per cent of coaches being African-American.
“I know racism issues have been a major thing in English football.
“I strongly believe that football should be looking at something like this.
“If you know there is opportunity out there based on ability and nothing else, this can only help.”
Other areas in which football can learn from American football, said Kirkwood, is a salary cap – a dirty phrase in European football but which works in the United States with heavy sanctions for teams who abuse the rules; a revenue-sharing process that allows teams with smaller catchment areas to compete equally with big cities; extensive media training and commitments on both players and coaches; a $12 million (£8 million/€9 million) annual retirement fund for players who have left the sport; and the much-lauded draft arrangement which gives the worst team in every season first pick of the best college players for the next campaign.
“The ethos of shared collectivism is all about making sure all teams are competitive,” said Kirkwood (pictured above).
“Of the last 14 Super Bowls 18 different teams have appeared.
“We are a league associated with the phrase ‘any given Sunday’.
“Week-in, out-out, there are astonishing results.
“Even if your team is having a terrible season, you can believe that next year could be your year.
“There are so many examples of this.”
A special competitions committee overseeing every single game call will be extended next year to downgrading any officials who are not up to scratch.
But not every NFL rule would be universally condoned by football; not least, the regulation blacking out games on local television if fewer than 85 per cent of general admission tickets are sold.
Kirkwood denied, however, that this prejudices less-well-off fans that simply don’t have the money to attend games, pointing out that there have been only eight examples of the so-called local blackout in the last 160 games.
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