Brian Flores’s racism lawsuit leaves Super Bowl struggling for attention

The sky over Los Angeles is forecast to be clear and blue and the temperature around 30C when the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Rams run out for Super Bowl LVI on Sunday. It should be a chance for the NFL to celebrate weathering Covid‑19 with television ratings up 10% from 2020, as well as an opportunity to pay tribute to the greatest Super Bowl champion of all time, Tom Brady, who has announced his retirement after seven championships and 10 trips to the big game.

But this is the NFL, which often appears closer to a soap opera than a sports league. On the day Brady signalled the end of his career, the league duly delivered its latest plot twist. As is often the case in the league and the US as a whole, it had much to do with race and inequality: Brian Flores, the former head coach of the Miami Dolphins, filed a lawsuit claiming the league “is racially segregated and is managed much like a plantation”.

Flores, who is Black, was fired by the Dolphins in January despite the team posting a second straight winning season for the first time since 2003. The lack of minority head coaches in a league with nearly 70% of players are Black has long been a point of criticism.

The NFL’s Rooney rule, which states that teams must interview at least one minority candidate for major coaching vacancies, has done little to correct that deficiency. When the rule was introduced there were three Black head coaches in the NFL; on the day Flores filed the lawsuit there was one.

The NFL quickly denied that its multibillion annual revenue is built on plantation dynamics – that is, rich white men profiting from the bodies of young Black men. But at his annual pre-Super Bowl address the NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, admitted work needs to