The outgoing director of the NFL Player’s Association has some pointed observations about one of the league’s most controversial rules.

DeMaurice Smith, who is completing his 14th and final year as the Executive Director of the NFLPA, co-authored an article with third-year Yale Law student Carl Lasker that proposes ending the Rooney Rule and implementing other alternatives to improve hiring practices for coaches and executives.

The Rooney Rule, developed by the NFL in 2003, is a policy aimed at increasing diversity among NFL coaches and employees, originally requiring every team with a head coaching vacancy to interview at least one diverse candidate.

Smith and Lasker dub the Rooney “suggestion” a failure in its effort to create “racial and gender diversity” among NFL teams, offering 12 suggestions that aim to solve the league’s diversity issue and arguing that the NFL has no external accountability as it is currently constructed.

“The NFL has utilized the law, from its unique antitrust treatment to its former status as a nonprofit entity and beneficiary of taxpayer funding of stadiums, to operate seemingly above the law,” the authors argue.

“Our hope, therefore, is to lay out exactly why the Rooney Rule has failed to achieve its intended results and encourage either federal, state, or local governments to insist on exercising some accountability given the lucrative benefits conferred upon the NFL.”

Smith and Lasker propose myriad ways to change the NFL’s policies — starting with admitting the Rooney Rule doesn’t work and abandoning it.

They also propose adopting a “consistent, fair, transparent, and lawful system” for hiring and retention, as well as developing league-wide job descriptions for all open positions, and a policy that would require the league to keep all job positions open for at least 30 days.

Last, they argue the NFL should embrace the possibility of coaches unionizing, a proposition that seems far-fetched on the league’s end.

The article cites statistics from The Washington Post that say fewer than 20% of NFL teams employ coaches of color as well as an NFLPA survey of coaches of color that says 90% of coaches believe the NFL and its owners do not adhere to federal discrimination laws.

The NFL has faced backlash for its failure to live up to Rooney Rule recently, as former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores cited a “sham” interview with the Giants in a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination in 2022.

“The NFL’s system is broken,” Smith and Lasker say toward the end of their recommendations.

“To fix it, owners need to abandon the Rooney Rule as a failure and replace their unchecked discretion with comprehensive requirements to eliminate discrimination, ensure fairness, improve diversity, and build an equitable, transparent, and accountable system.”