In February, the NFL swiftly defended itself against Brian Flores’s lawsuit alleging racist and discriminatory hiring practices by calling the coach’s claims “without merit.”
For a corporation armed with enough lawyers to out-business-card Patrick Bateman, it was an incredibly poor choice of words, because beneath Flores’s headline-grabbing claims about cash payments offered for losing (which the Dolphins have denied) and clumsy Bill Belichick text messages, Flores was simply speaking a truth head coaches of color face each and every day—a truth that represents the rotting core of the league’s diversity efforts.