After George Floyd was killed while in custody of Minneapolis police four weeks ago and protests of police brutality morphed into a rejection of institutionalized racism, Los Angeles Chargers General Manager Tom Telesco began calling black players, coaches and staff members to check on them and to listen. In hearing their fears, concerns and aspirations, Telesco began to wonder: Have I done enough?
“I don’t know the challenges the black community faces on a day-to-day basis, just because I haven’t walked in their shoes, but I think as a scout, you are reminded of it when you interview players — the obstacles, the injustice, the inequality, the racism,” Telesco said. “It makes me a little disappointed in myself because it’s been right in front of us, me included. And, you know, we haven’t acted early enough and done more.”
It’s a question on the minds of many in leadership positions across the NFL, encouraged by the pause in the offseason schedule because of the novel coronavirus pandemic, which gave longtime scouts such as Telesco time to reflect on what they have seen as they evaluated prospects for league rosters that are roughly 70 percent black.
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The Washington Post asked four general managers the same question: How does your background in scouting lend to an understanding of racial inequality in this country, and how do you view those experiences in light of the recent unrest? The general managers — Telesco, Les Snead of the Los Angeles Rams, Rick Spielman of the Minnesota Vikings and Thomas Dimitroff of the Atlanta Falcons — all spent decades traveling the country and researching football prospects, learning about their family lives, educational backgrounds and, in some cases, confrontations with law enforcement.
“You begin to realize over time that a lot of that adversity and those obstacles are symptoms of systemic racism and all that comes with it,” Snead said.
In video meetings and phone calls with players, staffers and friends, the GMs have begun to question their role in all of it and how they should help drive change moving forward. That has included conversations about protests in the NFL this season, likely to be significant if the early social media pledges from players — Washington Redskins running back Adrian Peterson, Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield and Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray among them — are any indication. Much of it probably will take the form of kneeling during the national anthem, the gesture pioneered by Colin Kaepernick — who hasn’t played in the NFL since the 2016 season, when he started protesting.
“You look at his peaceful protest today, and you realize that he probably shouldn’t have been villainized,” Snead said. “That’s what we do know. And because of what he did, other people began to follow. And now, years later, we have to ask ourselves if we can work together and actually do it better this time. My hope is that we have learned from that and we can apply the lessons learned from that. We can do better.”
‘We were so judgmental’
Spielman, the son of a high school football coach, spent much of his childhood playing sports in Canton and Massillon, Ohio in communities that were predominantly black. His parents stressed the value of treating all people fairly, no matter their race. But it wasn’t until he and his wife adopted six black children that Spielman began to understand more fully what he describes as a disparity in how black and white people experience law enforcement in the United States.
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“When our kids are with me and my wife, they are living in a white-privileged world,” the 57-year-old said. “But when they’re not with us, they live in a totally different world. One of our kids got pulled over just because of the nice car he was driving, with the assumption that he stole that car. I can’t tell you how much that just breaks my wife’s and my heart.”
The recent experience for his son jibed with what he knows from interviewing thousands of players and coaches about encounters with the law: Black prospects seem to have more contact with police that appears unwarranted.
Dimitroff, a scout for three NFL teams before taking the Falcons’ GM job in 2008, agreed that he evaluates black prospects’ brushes with the law differently than others’.
“There’s no question I have in the past, and there’s no question I will exponentially more in the future,” the 53-year-old said. “Also, there have been some discussions of police brutality incidents that were incredibly difficult to hear. … I’ve heard a number of accounts that are gut-wrenching, and it stirs emotion because I have not personally had to deal with it. I can only imagine what an African American man in this country faces.”
The general managers acknowledged how the NFL has failed in terms of racial equality over the years. Spielman thought back to the first scouting report he wrote in 1990, two years after his NFL career ended and he landed a job scouting for the Detroit Lions. The player: West Virginia quarterback Major Harris.
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“The biggest issue back then was the black quarterback,” Spielman said. “And the conversation [around the NFL] was, well, black quarterbacks were going to be looked at in other positions. Thankfully, we’re evolving.”
Harris, a Heisman Trophy finalist who was considered short for the position at 6-foot-1, was adamant that he would play quarterback in the pros. After being drafted in the 12th round by the Los Angeles Raiders, he got his wish — with the Canadian Football League’s BC Lions later that year.
Telesco, 47, thought of the Wonderlic test, a decades-old intelligence test that has been criticized in some circles as outmoded and irrelevant yet remains a component of the NFL scouting combine. Telesco said he has long despised the test and puts little value in it.
“The Wonderlic is really based on — if you went to a pretty good high school and then went to college and really applied yourself, I think you’d score high on it,” Telesco said. “If you didn’t, you probably won’t. It doesn’t mean you’re not intelligent enough. I hate when the scores are leaked. I don’t think we need it anymore. There’s other things we can use.”
Dimitroff thought back to how scouts and front offices in the early 1990s equated a player’s tattoos with gang affiliation and how much has changed in the evaluation of family backgrounds, with teams now relying on research instead of outdated stereotypes. “We were so judgmental,” Dimitroff said.
‘Hopefully we can create change’
Days after Floyd’s death, Rams Coach Sean McVay called for a team meeting over video conference as an opportunity for players to discuss their raw emotions. Snead, 49, called it the best meeting he has ever been a part of. Afterward, Snead made a list of people to call. Taking the rallying cry “black lives matter” literally, Snead jotted down the name of the first of many black people who matter to him.
It was Rodney Garner, the current Auburn assistant coach who gave him his first job as a graduate assistant.
“I needed to thank all the black lives that have mattered in my life and also to spend some time listening to their feelings on all of this,” Snead said. “Rodney was very emotional, and I don’t think it was because I was calling him.”
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Among the people on his list were three Rams employees: director of player engagement Jacques McClendon, director of communications Artis Twyman and director of sports medicine and performance Reggie Scott. They talked about an issue that other staffers had brought up to Snead: diversity in the ranks. And not just on the coaching staff — a hot-button issue across the NFL — but in numerous aspects of the organization, including the front office. (Only two NFL teams have black GMs.) The group is in the early stages of creating a program to identify minority scouts at lower levels of football for a leadership training group.
“We want to make sure that we’re creating mobility pipelines from the entry level for minorities,” McClendon said. “We have all these inadequacies in front offices, when I know a bunch of capable men that played this game and we’re just not in a place to take advantage of that and create mobility for that group across the NFL. And it’s going to take people like Les Snead to do it.”
This month, the Chargers’ community relations department expanded its existing efforts by finalizing a summer program with the Los Angeles Unified School District to educate students on the opportunities for a career in football off the field.
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“Every kid wants to be the next [Chargers players] Keenan Allen or Derwin James or [Chargers Coach] Anthony Lynn, but there are a lot [more] opportunities in our league than just that,” Telesco said. “We want to expose these kids to all the opportunities available, give them the resources to learn and then hopefully some mentors to network with.”
Spielman said he had an online staff meeting in which the Vikings’ employees of color were encouraged to talk about their experiences. The meeting, scheduled for a half-hour, went for 100 minutes.
“It became very emotional because people understood that they never had experienced a lot of what many of our employees go through,” Spielman said. “We talked about what is uncomfortable, and it became very comfortable and open to talk about. That’s the way that hopefully we can create change.”
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Whether the change created by NFL leaders includes the signing of Kaepernick, who first raised these issues with his protests in 2016, remains to be seen. Lynn said last week that Kaepernick was on the Chargers’ list of quarterbacks to be worked out should they find themselves in need of one this year. For some in leadership positions, it’s apparent the needle has moved when it comes to the league’s most-discussed free agent.
“He’s shown he is capable of playing at a high level in this league,” Dimitroff said. “If a team with the right quarterback situation adds him, everyone is looking at kneeling very differently now.”
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