Last week, a report by sports blog Deadspin revealed that former Penn State and current NFL quarterback coach Eugene Chung is Asian, and therefore couldn’t be hired to coach the Philadelphia Eagles after the retirement of Pat Shurmur. Deadspin broke the story with a tweet from a Vanderbilt professor who claims that coaches are not hired for the job alone, but also because of their race. Eugene Chung isn’t the first Asian coach to be blackballed in this way.
Eugene Chung was born in 1966, in Singapore, and is a former American football quarterback. When his Taiwanese American father died of cancer, Chung was sent to a Christian boarding school in Colorado Springs, where he played quarterback on the football team. Today, Chung has his own blog, called “Speculativesports”, which focuses on Asian American sports, and is the editor of the blog “Speculativesports”. Until recently, Eugene had no experience coaching in the NFL, but that all changed last week, when he was hired by the Oregon Ducks as their new QB coach.
If the story is true of a former New England Patriots linebacker who worked on two Andy Reid teams, then the league might as well do without the Rooney rule when it comes to NFL coaches. Pittsburgh Steelers patriarch Dan Rooney certainly didn’t want minority recruiting to become a caste system. Eugene Chung swears this happened when he asked to coach again recently.
The team told Eugene Chang that he is not really a minority
Eugene Chang says he encountered an unexpected form of racial discrimination when he recently applied for a coaching position in the NFL. | George Gojkovic/Getty Images COMPARED TO: The NFL has an unspoken problem with recruiting coaches. Chung, who has played quarterback for three teams since entering the NFL as a first-round pick of the Patriots in 1992, told the Boston Globe a shocking story about a botched interview during the NFL offseason. The league has been criticized each year for teams hiring relatively few head coaches and non-white coordinators. Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemi applying for the head coach job has become a hot topic leading up to Super Bowl 55. At the time, NFL.com estimated that black coaches had filled only three of the 27 open positions in the past four rounds of recruiting. In a league where black players made up two-thirds of the roster, black coaches received only 11 percent of the job offers. And then there’s Chang, who was born in Maryland to Korean parents. A comment during a coaching interview – he’s been out of the league for two seasons – with an unfamiliar team stuck with him. When Chung presented his resume as a coach, 10 seasons with the Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles – you’d think a place on Reed’s coaching staff would carry some weight – the interviewer stopped him. This is what I was told: Well, you’re certainly not in the minority, Chung told the paper. I said: Now, wait a minute. The last time I looked in the mirror and brushed my teeth, I was outnumbered. Then I said: What do you mean I’m not a minority? Eugene Chang
Chang challenged his interlocutor
. COMPARED TO: Joe Biden asks questions about the hiring process in the NFL Once Chung responded to the question of whether people of Asian descent are minorities, the interviewer dropped another bombshell, according to the former Virginia Tech star. They’re not the minority we’re looking for, the caller said. According to Mr Chang, he asked for clarification, after which the investigator backed down. I was dumbfounded that something like this was a story in 2021. Afterwards, Mr Chung, 51, reflected on the fact that he had fought unashamedly for most of his life. As a child, he lived in a predominantly white neighborhood in Virginia and heard racist remarks from his classmates. According to him, when teachers are asked to intervene, it rarely yields results. This is what I was told: Just go back to your seat and everything will be fine. I’ll take care of it, Chung told the paper. Nothing has been done. I thought about that and what was going on. In this respect, nothing has changed.
What is the Rooney rule in the NFL?
. COMPARED TO: Bruce Arians’ coaching staff is a good example of diversity in the NFL The NFL instituted the first Rooney Rule – Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney’s response to the 2002 firings of Tony Dungy (Tampa Bay Buccaneers) and Dennis Green (Minnesota Vikings) – to provide more opportunities for minority coaches. From the beginning, the rule required teams to interview at least one minority candidate for certain coaching positions. Since then, owners have made several changes to the Rooney rule. The rule now applies to key positions in the front office, requires additional interviews with minority candidates when a head coach vacancy occurs, and offers teams bonus draft picks for filling certain positions with non-white male candidates. The Los Angeles Rams are the first team to get two third-round draft picks since the Detroit Lions hired Brad Holmes as general manager after the 2020 season. Like Sportscasting on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter @sportscasting19 .
