The commissioner of the NFL said Tuesday that the league has no plans to end diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, saying those initiatives make the sport better.
In recent months, a number of major U.S. companies such as Walmart, McDonald’s, Amazon, Meta Platforms, and more have rolled back or ended their DEI policies, while the Trump administration has also issued executive orders in recent days to end such directives.
“We got into diversity efforts because we felt it was the right thing for the National Football League, and we’re going to continue those efforts because we’ve not only convinced ourselves, I think we’ve proven to ourselves that it does make the NFL better,” Goodell said.
“We’re not in this because it’s a trend to get into it or a trend to get out of it,” he also said. “Our efforts are fundamental in trying to attract the best possible talent into the National Football League both on and off the field.”
He said team owners also “participate in everything that we do” and that league “policies have been designed to be well within the law, well within the practice.”
“There are no quotas in our system. This is about opening that funnel and bringing the best talent into the NFL,” he said.
DEI policies have been criticized for prioritizing race and gender over job-related qualifications in workplaces where it has been implemented, with opponents saying they violate anti-discrimination laws.
Aside from DEI policies, the NFL in 2020 rolled out slogans that have been prominently displayed on end zones and on the back of players’ helmets such as “End Racism,” “It Takes All of Us,” “Choose Love,” and others. At one point, the NFL allowed the display of the “Black Lives Matter” slogan on some players’ helmets.
A number of players at the time had been engaged in political activism on the field, such as kneeling during the playing of the U.S. national anthem, saying they were protesting against what they called “rampant police brutality.” The campaign sparked a nationwide debate over the role of politics in sports.
Goodell on Monday also made reference to the NFL’s longstanding rules that require teams to interview minority candidates for key coaching and front office positions as part of the Rooney Rule that has been in place for more than two decades.
“There’s no requirement to hire a particular individual on the basis of race or gender. It’s simply on the basis of looking at a canvas of candidates that reflect our communities, and to look at the kind of talent that exists there and then you make the best decision on who is hired,” Goodell said on Monday.
A fact sheet released by Target on Jan 24 said the Minneapolis-based retail giant will be ending its “three-year diversity, equity, and inclusion goals” and concluding its “Racial Equity Action and Change (REACH) initiatives in 2025 as planned.”
