Art Rooney Insists Nfl Isn't "backing Off" In Diversity Efforts

At a time when some of the most powerful people in the country have made "DEI" into a four-letter word, the NFL claims it's standing firm in its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Recent developments make it fair to ask whether the NFL is truly committed, or whether the NFL is simply trying to thread a needle that is getting smaller all the time.

The latest news came from the league's cancellation of the 2025 version of the accelerator program, which puts minority candidates in front of owners during the May meetings. The NFL issued a statement last week that attempted to create a "nothing to see here" vibe, explaining that the program was stopped for a year in an effort to make it better next year.

Another view would be that doing it is still better than not doing it, and that it could have been held in its current form in 2025 as usual and changes could still be made for 2026.

Jarrett Bell of USA Today has taken a closer look at the league’s mixed signals. On a subject where the league tries to say all the right things, the actions aren't completely meshing with the words.

“I realize that people are going to look at [the cancellation of the 2025 accelerator program] and say, ‘These people are backing off,'" Steelers owner Art Rooney II told Bell. “That’s not going to happen. There’s nothing I can really do about that perception, except to say that we’re still not satisfied with where we are, and we recognize that we still have work to do.”

Both the perception and the reality when it comes to the league's hiring practices for key positions like coach and General Manager have been equally bad over the years. Not long before former Dolphins coach Brian Flores put his career on the line by filing a landmark racial discrimination case against the NFL and multiple teams, NFL executive V.P. of football operations Troy Vincent provided a damning admission that was highlighted in Flores's civil complaint.

"There is a double standard, and we’ve seen that," Vincent said. "And you talk about the appetite for what’s acceptable. Let’s just go back to . . . Coach [Tony] Dungy was let go in Tampa Bay after a winning season. . . Coach [Steve] Wilks, just a few years prior, was let go after one year . . . Coach [Jim] Caldwell was fired after a winning season in Detroit . . . It is part of the larger challenges that we have. But when you just look over time, it’s over-indexing for men of color. These men have been fired after a winning season. How do you explain that? There is a double standard. I don’t think that that is something that we should shy away from. But that is all part of some of the things that we need to fix in the system. We want to hold everyone to why does one, let’s say, get the benefit of the doubt to be able to build or take bumps and bruises in this process of getting a franchise turned around when others are not afforded that latitude? . . . [W]e’ve seen that in history at the [professional] level.”

Since Flores filed his lawsuit in 2022, the NFL has been trying to change its ways. The problem, as of 2025, is that a full-throated commitment to DEI can result in an executive order at worst — and a rambling, nonsensical, all-caps social media assault at best.

Speaking of rambling and nonsensical, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones provided some quotes to Bell regarding the impact of the political assault on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

“I don’t want to . . . I think it just makes us all aware,” Jones told Bell. “The emphasis the president puts on it just makes us all aware and thinking about it."

What's there to think about? Whether to remain committed to diversity? Or whether to find a way to tiptoe through a field full of mines planted by those who would like to 86 DEI?

“I know you’re saying, ‘Was this a reaction to that? And the timing of it?'" Jones told Bell regarding the cancellation of the accelerator program for 2025. "I don’t believe and have seen nothing from talking to anybody, that this is a reaction to that. I think you’d be naïve if you didn’t think the Supreme Court decisions have impacted decisions all over the country. The issue of technically, how and what you’re doing, I think that’s a lot more influenced than anything our president is talking about. . . . You see what I’m saying? The overall direction the Supreme Court took, that whole area would be a bigger impact.”

Jones is referring to the Supreme Court's ruling from 2023 limiting race-conscious admissions practices for colleges and universities. Which is one of the unsurprising outcomes of a Supreme Court that has been stacked with the kind of conservative, business-friendly justices to whom someone like Jones would gift a Super Bowl ring and then act like it's not part of a broader effort to ensure that the Supreme Court's body of work will be favorable to the interests of America's oligarchs.

The challenge for the NFL is to create a P.R. strategy that pushes the idea that they're trying to increase and promote diversity, while also discreetly waging legal battles aimed at minimizing liability. It's one of the reasons why the league always tries to pull any civil action against it from the true independence of the court system and into the secret, rigged, kangaroo court of arbitration, where the Commissioner is the one who hands out (and sometimes wears) the black robe.

Here's the NFL's apparent DEI playbook: Say one thing, do another. And then, when the thing you do gets noticed and criticized, say whatever you have to say to explain it all away.

That approach works, until it doesn't. With the top of the executive branch currently going scorched earth on DEI, the tentpoles of the NFL's P.R. effort are being quietly knocked down.

Beyond the decision to abandon the accelerator in 2025 under the guise of making it better for 2026, the NFL didn't conduct during the 2025 annual meeting (as Bell notes) a media briefing from the diversity committee, which Rooney chairs.

The reason for that seems obvious. Anything the NFL would have said during the briefing to pat itself on the back when it comes to DEI efforts could (and quite possibly would) have been used against it, if/when the Commander-in-Tweet had happened to notice it while scrolling through his phone from the golden throne with a hole in the middle of the seat.