The lawyer representing former interim Panthers coach Steve Wilks made it clear last week that Wilks likely will be adding the Panthers to the pending litigation arising from decades of allegedly discriminatory hiring practices. In Tuesday’s 40-minute press conference that introduced new coach Frank Reich, Wilks’s name never came up.
After the event, owner David Tepper took questions from the media. In one clip that has landed on Twitter, Tepper defended the hiring of another white head coach despite Wilks winning six of 12 games — and apparently winning over the locker room.
In doing so, Tepper pointed out that there is diversity elsewhere in the organization.
“I think that you should look first at our executive team, and inside the building,” Tepper said. “And look at who we have in different positions inside the building. Our president is a woman. We probably have the most diverse executive team in the NFL right now. We have two African-Americans. We are probably a minority of white men on our executive team right now. That’s where it starts. That’s America. OK? That’s the process.
“And that’s the process I’m talking about here. You don’t want an old-boys network. I don’t care, the old-boys network works all kinds of different ways, OK? Unfortunately in this case it’s a detriment, because most of the old boys were white. That should be your main focus. How do you break that old-boys network?”
Tepper then spoke about how to break that old-boys network. Basically, he said you hire people who aren’t old boys (or who aren’t white) and then focus on hiring the best people.
That’s fine, in theory. At the end of the day, the owner is still making the final decision on who gets hired. And, in this specific case, the question is whether the legally-protected activities in which Steve Wilks has engaged (i.e., filing suit against the Cardinals for racial discrimination) caused him to be viewed differently by Tepper, in any way.
Along those same lines, it will be interesting to see whether Wilks had a real chance at getting the job, or whether Tepper at some point became enamored with the idea of hiring an offensive coach who also was the first quarterback in franchise history before the 2022 season had even ended.
That’s all to be determined in discovery. And, frankly, the breadth of that discovery process will be determined by whether the Wilks litigation is resolved by an independent court, or via arbitration controlled by the NFL.
On decision not to hire Steve Wilks, David Tepper touts diversity elsewhere in his organization originally appeared on Pro Football Talk
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