Advancing the ball race, reformation, and the quest for equal coaching opportunity in the NFL - Duru, N. Jeremi (Oxford University Press, 2011)
Includes bibliographical references and index
Baltimore love -- An idea's origin -- Superior performance, inferior opportunities -- Enter the godfather -- The Rooney Rule -- The coaching carousel -- Millen, Mooch, and the great Detroit hiring debate -- Birth of an alliance -- A season of dreams -- Digging new wells -- Road to Super Bowl XLI.
Two days before Super Bowl XLI in 2007, the game's two opposing head coaches posed with the trophy one of them would hoist after the contest. It was a fairly unremarkable event, except that both coaches were African American--a fact that was as much of a story as the game itself. As Jeremi Duru reveals in Advancing the Ball, this unique milestone resulted from the work of a determined group of people whose struggles to expand head coaching opportunities for African Americans ultimately changed the National Football League. Since the league's desegregation in 1946, opportunities had grown plent