By Rory Carroll
(Reuters) – Former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores, who filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the NFL this week, hopes to coach again while also paving the way for more minorities to have that same opportunity, his lawyer said on Thursday.
Flores, who is Black, has said his firing by the Dolphins last month after back-to-back seasons with winning records was emblematic of the treatment of Black coaches, who comprise a fraction of team staff positions while 70% of NFL players are Black.
There is currently just one Black head coach among the National Football League’s 32 teams.
Flores accused two NFL teams of interviewing him just to show they were considering Black candidates after already having decided to hire white head coaches.
Flores has acknowledged that the lawsuit, which the NFL said is without merit, could hurt his chances of landing another coaching job in the league. His attorney said he hoped that would not be the case.
“He’s a coach and he loves coaching, and he loves developing young athletes into better athletes and into good people. And so yes, he wants to keep coaching,” David Gottlieb, a partner at Wigdor Law, told Reuters.
Flores is currently a candidate for at least two vacant head coaching positions and his hiring would send a positive signal about the NFL’s desire to be more equitable in its hiring, Gottlieb said.
“This is an opportunity for the league and for its individual owners to show true leadership and say that those two things can both happen,” he said. “That he can both be an agent for change and be a head coach at the same time.”
The lawsuit also provides the league with a chance to address past mistakes with regard to Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco quarterback who was never hired again by a team after he knelt before games to protest police brutality and racism, Gottlieb said.
“It’s an opportunity to correct the mistakes of the past, specifically with respect to how Colin Kaepernick was treated when he protested racial injustice and then he was blackballed from the league,” Gottlieb said.
“It’s an opportunity for the NFL and its owners to show that they’re not going to make the same mistake, and Coach Flores will not have it held against him that he’s standing up and has the courage to speak out against discrimination that’s going on in the league.”
(Additional reporting by David Grip in Washington; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
