When the Bears interviewed Eddie George for their head-coaching vacancy, only to quickly give Ben Johnson the job, questions were raised about whether the interview with George was a sham, making a mockery of the Rooney Rule. To the contrary, Bears President and CEO Kevin Warren says the interview with George was exactly how the Rooney Rule is supposed to work.
At the time of his interview with the Bears, George was the head coach at FCS Tennessee State. After that, George was hired to be head coach at Bowling Green, moving up to the FBS level and getting a higher-paying job with a bigger program. Warren said on PFT Live that George getting identified as an NFL head-coaching candidate helped his career and put him in a better place to pursue better jobs, and that’s an example of how Rooney Rule interviews can bolster the careers of minority coaches even when they don’t get the job they were interviewing for.
“The coolest thing about it is when people talk about the Rooney Rule, we got a chance to interview Eddie George and people said, Is that really a true interview? Yes. He did a fantastic job,” Warren said. “Then you fast forward a month or so later and he gets hired and he’s a new head coach. So the good thing about it, we were able to interview individuals who had coached in the NFL for many years, people who were college coaches, assistant coaches, head coaches, and you just learn so much. That is the only time you can have a conversation with coaches in the industry to be able to learn and grow, and there is a lot of talent out there.”
For coaching candidates, it can be worthwhile to take an interview just to have the experience of a high-profile meeting with NFL decision-makers, and to have their names mentioned as a candidate who’s rising in the coaching ranks. Warren thinks that’s a benefit of the Rooney Rule even for minority candidates who don’t get the job.
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