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The Cleveland Browns are coming under a bit of fire after firing one general manager and going to another. Some believe the National Football League franchise made a farce out of the Rooney Rule.
Cleveland’s incredibly quick hiring of general maanger John Dorsey, on the same day executive V.P. of football operations Sashi Brown was fired, resulted in both backlash and confusion.
How can the team comply with the Rooney Rule in only (roughly) 11 hours?
John Wooten, the executive director of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, gave voice to this.
“I think John Dorsey is a very top quality G.M.,” Wooten told Jarrett Bell of USA Today. “I am livid that the Browns would totally ignore the work all of us to make the Rooney Rule meaningful.”
To be fair, the NFL has since announced that the Browns interviewed former Bills general manager Doug Whaley.
The Rooney Rule demands a face-to-face interview to happen. Not to mention that, given how quickly Cleveland transitioned to a new front-office leader, it appears if the Rooney Rule was legally met by the franchise, it was only done so for the sake of semantics.
More bluntly put: Was the entire process a farce to begin with?
There is good reason to believe that Cleveland wanted to hire Dorsey this entire time. That, when the franchise fired Brown, it already knew who they were going to hire.
This story is going to continue to unfold, but it appears that the franchise has legally met the Rooney Rule's standards, at least according to the NFL. Whether or not Cleveland actually treated it the way it was meant to be, is completely up for debate.
