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Brian Flores in his first pre-season preseason as head coach of the Miami Dolphins in 2019 spoke with emotion about social injustice He met as a young Black and Latino male in the troubled Brownsville section of Brooklyn.
Flores said he applauded those protesting against racial inequality and police brutality, citing athletes like Kenny Stills, a Dolphins receiver at the time, and outcast quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
“They draw attention to my story,” Flores, son of Honduran immigrants, told reporters. “I am the son of immigrants. I am black. I grew up poor. I grew up in New York during the stop-and-frisk era. I was stopped because I fit a description before. I mean, I’ve been through everything these guys protested.”
Despite being fired by the Dolphins last month, setting a record two wins in two of his three seasons as head coach, and experiencing what he later described as a “fake” interview with the Giants, Flores now sees himself as stalled—or at least convoluted—that he again fits a certain definition. for.
Flores, who will turn 41 this month on Tuesday, filed a proposed class action lawsuitaccuses the NFL of discriminating against him and other Black coaches in their recruitment practices of systemic racism. In a 32-team league where roughly 70 percent of players are Black, only one current head coach – Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers – is Black.
Nine teams had coach vacancy in this year’s hiring cycle, and of the six teams that had already reportedly recruited or decided on one, the job went to a white man.
“We stand on the precipice of having more African Americans on the United States Supreme Court than head coaches in the NFL, it’s outrageous,” said prominent sociologist and social activist Harry Edwards, a longtime adviser to the San Francisco 49ers.
Flores’ lawyers did not make him available for an interview. He said on many television shows that real change will come not from policy decisions, but simply by changing the “hearts and minds” of the NFL’s main team owners. Not only are two of them white – Shahid Khan of the Jacksonville Jaguars is a Pakistani American, and Kim Pegula of Buffalo is a Korean American who, along with her husband Terry, owns Bono.
Those who have known Flores for many years, including high school coach Dino Mangiero at Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn, say he has a long-honed sense of moral purpose. Mangiero described Flores as “serious as a heart attack” and “a principled man who wouldn’t put up with it if he felt something wasn’t right”.
“I think all he’s looking for is a candid shot,” said Mangiero, 63, who played six seasons in the NFL and recently coached Archbishop McCarthy High School in Southwest Ranches, Florida. “I’m very proud of him. He stands up for what he believes in. It takes a lot of courage. His career is in danger, no doubt about it.”
As Flores gazes into an uncertain future, friends he’s held since his days at Poly Prep have gathered around him. Clifton Coker, who attended private school like Flores through a scholarship program for promising athletes, said Flores relies on mentors and tries to do things the right way to achieve her career goals. “It’s discouraging in the way something is taught not to feel right and to believe it,” Coker said.
Flores joined the New England Patriots team in 2004 after graduating from Boston College, where a leg injury ended his waning hopes of playing in the NFL as a security or defensive lineman. , getting the dry cleaning, sleeping in a friend’s loft air mattress.
But even then, New England’s then-executive vice president of personnel, Scott Pioli, saw Flores’ responsible nature. Prior to the Super Bowl in 2019, Pioli, who by then had left New England, said he jokingly referred to Flores as “union leader” and “Jimmy Hoffa”. If any of the watch assistants had a problem or question, Flores brought it up with Pioli.
Nate Solder, who won two Super Bowls on offense in New England and most recently played for the Giants, recalled Flores’ sense of justice in an interview. Solder said that Flores once practically graded the Patriots’ senior offensive line by putting his foot on the ball and breaking down the rush attack so he could set up the scout defense.
“I’m going to give up on language, but it was too intense,” Solder said. It was like, “I’m going to fight you for this.” I do not care. I will do this right.’”
During a bootcamp workout in 2019, Flores performed eight songs in a row after Stills by Brooklyn-born Jay-Z. criticized the rapper for being deaf When the NFL entered an entertainment and social justice partnership with Jay-Z, he said the league had “passed the knee” for the anthem, which offended Stills, who knelt down to protest racial disparities.
Flores received some criticism, including the editorial page. Miami Messengerlikened his choice of music to police brutality “a grinning taunt to a real-life American plague.”
Flores did not apologize, saying he had challenged Stills not to let the outside world affect his performance. Flores said he had his own sense of honesty shortly before his mother, Maria, died of breast cancer in 2019. instilled by his unwavering values. Maria Flores raised five sons while head of the family, Raul Sr., was away for months as a merchant sailor.
Education was at the forefront. Four of the Flores brothers, including Brian, earned master’s degrees. Her mother, she said, never seemed startled when the elevators broke down at the Glenmore Plaza residential complex in Brownsville, even when she and her children sometimes had to climb 20 flights of stairs carrying groceries.
“I was extremely positively impacted by how to treat people, how to lead with dignity and integrity, and how to do it right at all times,” Flores said.
He spent 15 seasons on the Patriots’ roster, was a defensive lineman, and was part of four Super Bowl champion teams. Then he was hired by the Dolphins at age 37 and was one of only three Black head coaches at the time. Since the so-called Rooney Rule was enacted in 2003 to encourage more inclusive hiring, 27 of the 127 current head coaching jobs in the NFL, or about 21 percent, have been filled by people of color. Associated Press.
At the age of 40, Flores was fired. “An organization can only function if it collaborates and works well together,” said team owner Stephen Ross. Flores reportedly had a strained relationship with Dolphins general manager Chris Grier and the team’s first quarterback, Tua Tagovailoa. Not every player liked his intense coaching style.
Since being fired, Flores has been speaking with a sense of betrayal, using words such as contempt, disbelief, hurt, anger in television interviews. The classic immigrant assurance her mother had given her—work hard and opportunities will come—was skewed to her.
In the Flores lawsuit, he said Ross pressured him into getting a better first-round pick for the 2019 season and offered him $100,000 for each defeat, which he turned down. And he quoted text messages he said were sent on Jan. 24 by his former boss, New England Coach Bill Belichick. In the messages, Belichick appeared to congratulate Flores on being hired as the Giants’ coach, a job he didn’t have yet in a January 27 interview. The messages seemed to indicate that Belichick intended the correspondence for another Brian – Brian Dabolll, who is white and hired by the Giants.
Ross described Flores’ allegations as “false, malicious and defamatory”. The Giants said on Thursday they have “concrete and objective evidence” that coaching decisions were not made until the day after meeting with Flores, and that their claims were “offensive and simply false”. But some other ex-Black coaches in the NFL, tone Jackson and marvin lewisThey spoke of the familiarity of Flores’ despair. Solder, the white one, was also among the players who played. tweeted out She supports Flores.
“I have no doubt that what he described is completely true,” Solder said in an interview.
Legal experts say it will be difficult to win her case unless Flores can prove that race was a factor in the business turnaround.
Sociologist Edwards said it seemed likely that Flores would encounter similar resistance. floodLosing its legal battle to overturn Major League Baseball’s reserve clause that tied players to one team for their entire careers in the 1970s, St. Louis Cardinals midfielder. Free agency has finally arrived, but it’s a great one. Professional and personal cost for flood.
And now Flores risks not coaching again.
“We are so obsessed with racism and traditions of exclusion and turning those who oppose it into martyrs that we say it is an expected price to stand up,” Edwards said.
Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, described Flores as “the coaching equivalent of Kaepernick” and said he never saw Flores being offered another coaching job in the short term, probably never. .
But in a more hopeful tone, Lapchick added that the heightened athlete activism during the racial showdown following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 could turn its attention to the recruitment practices of college and professional teams.
“Not that they would require them to hire a black coach,” Lapchick said, “but they opened up the process to make sure it was a fair process, which often resulted in more diverse candidates and more diverse options.”
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