National Football League to implement ‘Rooney Rule’ for women in executive positions

The rule will be modeled after the “Rooney Rule,” a 2003 standard the league adopted that requires teams and the league to interview minority candidates for coaching and executive vacancies. He later said during an interview that teams already are supposed to interview women when there’s an opening for an executive position.

Goodell told Rich Eisen the spot checks were to “prevent and make sure the clubs understand we’re watching these issues”.

Currently, 30 percent of the employees in the league’s front office are women, according to ESPN.

In January, the Buffalo Bills hired Kathryn Smith as the league’s first woman to serve in a full-time coaching role. Now, a female candidate must be interviewed for all executive openings. She also has said she’d be interested in serving as National Football League commissioner.

Whenever this rule is officially introduced it will, at the very least, be something that ushers in the chance to give women an equal shot of getting jobs in the NFL.

But it has often been pointed out that the Rooney Rule doesn’t actually work, as it doesn’t apply to coordinator or position coaches, and white coordinators and assistant coaches are much more likely to be promoted.

“I think this should be the Al Davis rule”, she tweeted.

On the field, Sarah Thomas was the first female official in National Football League history this past season, and with this new rule, the door is open wider for women to earn even higher ranking positions in the NFL.

Goodell on Thursday defended the Rooney Rule and praised its extension to female executive candidates.

In that 2012 article, Blackburn said, “Many sports teams are really fairly small companies, so finding an opportunity can be the most hard part”.

“What the league did this year was what we do with a lot of rules and policies designed to protect the integrity of the game, and that’s to create a deterrent effect”, Goodell said.