The NFL and ‘diversity’

Richard Lapchick watches the National Football League for the ladies -- but not the cheerleaders.

Mr. Lapchick heads the University of Central Florida's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports. His obsession is much different from the rest of this country's football-crazed populace, who'll launch five months of pigskin bliss tonight when the defending Super Bowl champion New York Giants host the Washington Redskins. No, Mr. Lapchick applies higher education's mania for political correctness, affirmative action and identity politics to the male-dominated world of professional sports.

There just aren't enough women in positions of NFL leadership for Mr. Lapchick's taste. In 2004, his annual report on inclusiveness in professional sports gave the NFL a D+ for gender hiring practices. So the league stopped providing personnel data to the university, which also studies the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, major college athletics and the Women's National Basketball Association.

"We prefer to focus on our own initiatives to enhance diversity and inclusiveness in our workplace," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said.

Mr. Lapchick says the NFL would probably get better grades these days if it cooperated. According to his research, 18 percent of team senior administrators and 11 percent of vice presidents were women last year.

Among his other findings: The share of black NFL players dropped a point to 66 percent last year, that difference made up by a small increase in Latino and Asian players.

It's amazing to think Mr. Lapchick gets paid for tracking this stuff.

Aside from being a multibillion-dollar business, the NFL is the ultimate meritocracy. On the playing field, 32 teams compete ferociously to develop and retain the best players and coaches, win games and, they hope, capture the league's championship. On the administrative side, teams need to make as much money as possible to pay their staff, players and coaches enough to stick around.

Forget that no woman has ever played a down in the NFL. It's in the league's interest to appeal to the widest possible audience. It wants women to follow the sport as passionately as men do. It can't expect to accomplish that without some input and productivity from the fairer sex.

By any standard, the NFL continues to be a smashing success. Clearly, it is doing almost everything right as a business. Perhaps Mr. Lapchick or some other academic can learn something from that, rather than demand that pro sports leagues be judged on a silly set of arbitrary standards decided in some academic ivory tower.