NEW ORLEANS – NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell held his annual pre-Super Bowl news conference on Monday. While he was hit with the standard questions about the state of the league, Goodell was peppered with a preponderance of questions about the NFL’s commitment to its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives.
In Washington, a new administration has waged war on federally funded DEI initiatives. The gist of the questions directed at Goodell on Monday was whether the assaults will weaken the NFL’s resolve.
Goodell gave assurances that the NFL would remain steadfast in its efforts, not be bullied or intimidated in moving away from diversity and inclusion.
“Our policies have been designed to be well within the law,” Goodell said. “There are no quotas in our system. This is about opening that funnel and bringing the best talent into the NFL. We also believe that we’re doing the right thing for the NFL, and it’s our policies are consistent with the current administration as well as the last administration.”
But in an aggressively anti-DEI climate, is the NFL immune from attack?
“It’s a fair question, and immune is a bit of a strong word,” said Rod Graves, executive director of the Fritz Pollard Alliance. “I don’t know that anyone’s immune.”

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I spoke with Graves a few hours before the Goodell news conference, curious to discuss what he wanted to hear from the commissioner.
The Alliance was founded in 2003 with the idea of pushing the NFL to support the rise of Black quarterbacks and putting African Americans in the pipeline to become head coaches and front office executives. Although the results have been mixed, the NFL has worked with the Alliance to support league-sponsored DEI initiatives to create diversity on the field and in executive offices.
Graves is confident that the NFL is moving forward.
“I don’t see it going backwards,” he said. “I think the question is how much more aggressive are we going to be? I mean, we still got a lot of work to do. When you look at the offensive coordinator position, when you look at the offensive line position, when you look at the retention time for coaches and all these questions that have come out of this cycle, how much more are we going to do to rectify those errors? That’s really my concern. But I don’t see us reversing anything.”
There are clear signs of retrenchment outside of the NFL. The assault began in 2023, the conservative super-majority Supreme Court all but ended race-based affirmative action in higher education in the Students for Fair Admissions case. The decision was a declaration of war on all DEI initiatives and the departments designed to implement them.
The war has escalated this year with a new administration aggressively dismantling federally funded DEI initiatives.
What once was the unthinkable has become the norm.
“Up until Election Day, I was thinking some of this stuff was farfetched,” Graves said. “But today, I don’t think anything’s off the table, as ridiculous as it might sound. We’re in some uncharted territory. And it’s sad to think that we might be taking steps backwards and that we have taken steps backwards as far as the political scene is concerned. But it’s happening, and I just never envisioned that that would be the case.”
Will it be the case in the NFL? Will the new administration exert influence on some NFL teams to back away from DEI initiatives?
“The administration’s position on DEI obviously is a concern,” Graves said. “But how it’s going to affect the National Football League is still yet to be determined. It’s my expectation given the league’s position in the past and recent conversations that have been had, my expectation is that the league is going to continue to support diversity as a general priority.”
The fact that Goodell spent a large part of his news conference answering questions about the NFL’s commitment to its diversity initiatives underlines a level of concern.
The commissioner was adamant. “I believe that our diversity efforts have led to making the NFL better. It’s been its attractive better talent,” he said.
“We think we’re better. We get different perspectives — people with different backgrounds, whether women or men or people of color. We make ourselves stronger, and we make ourselves better when we have that, and it’s something that I think will have a tremendous impact on this league.”

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Over the last few years, the Alliance and the NFL have worked collaboratively to increase diversity at the team and league level. During Monday’s news conference, Goodell reaffirmed the league’s commitment.
“We got into diversity efforts because we felt it was the right thing for the National Football League,” Goodell said. “We’re going to continue to those efforts, because we’ve not only convinced ourselves, but I also think we’ve proven ourselves, that it does make the NFL ready. Our efforts are fundamental in trying to attract the best possible talent into the National Football League, both on and off the field. We see how it’s benefited the National Football League, and so I think we’ll continue those efforts.”
The Alliance and the NFL have collaborated over the years and the league has funded a number of initiatives, like the accelerator program. Launched in 2022, the program serves as a platform for NFL teams and owners to engage with talented and qualified coaching and executive candidates from diverse backgrounds.
“I think we’ve really been on this course for the last couple years, to focus more on the position of fair, competitive and open processes and we still advocate for that,” Graves said.
“As long as the system is positioned to identify worthy talent and to nurture candidates that are in position to excel, and to select those talented people when positions are open, that’s the process that we’re focused on. And that’s inclusive of everybody. Not just African Americans, not just women, but a process that embraces opportunities for everyone in that area,” he said.
The Alliance meets with Goodell and other NFL executives once or twice a year. It participates in compliance issues when questions come up about whether the league or teams actively satisfied the Rooney Rule requirements or whether the Alliance was comfortable with how the interview process was executed.
The relationship is as imperfect as the hiring and firing cycles, but Graves said that, on balance, he trusts Goodell.
“I expect him to uphold the values of the league as we know them,” Graves said. “And I believe that that will be his public position, and we’ll just have to hope and pray that that is supported by ownership.”