Are MLB and the NFL simply too rich to fail?

There have been no games in either league for more than a month, but there has been plenty of conflict and drama in both Major League Baseball and the National Football League. On one hand, we had MLB locking out its players – delaying the start of the 2022 season – to put maximum pressure on the players’ association. On the other, the NFL is preparing its response to former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores’s racial discrimination lawsuit.

What’s the connection? Well, both situations involve entities that represent the interests of team owners – all fantastically wealthy – in very real public relations battles. In both situations, the NFL and MLB have acted as if they have the edge thanks to their very substantial financial resources. It’s entirely possible that they’re both right, although MLB may be pushing things farther than it realizes.

Let’s start with Flores’s lawsuit which alleges, among other things, racially discriminatory hiring practices in the NFL. More specifically, it calls out the Rooney Rule, which requires NFL teams to consider a minority candidate when looking to make a head coaching change. Critics have long suspected that, in practice, the Rooney Rule is a loophole-filled directive that has mostly resulted in teams conducting sham interviews with candidates that they have no intention of hiring. The details in Flores’s lawsuit, particularly damning text messages from New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, appear to back this up.

Flores, who currently has an assistant coaching job with the Pittsburgh Steelers, claims that he refused an offer worth millions of dollars to sign a non-disparagement agreement with the Dolphins. If true, it would be difficult to imagine this wasn’t a common