DeMaurice Smith wants NFL to eliminate Rooney Rule in final move as NFLPA executive director

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DeMaurice Smith is entering his final days as NFL Players Association executive director after 14 years in the position following the election of Lloyd Howell to succeed him. 

But Smith isn't leaving without one last battle with NFL owners. 

In a 100-page paper, which Yahoo Sports obtained, Smith and Carl Lasker, a Yale law student and teaching assistant to Smith, called for the Rooney Rule to be eliminated because they believe it's failed to serve its purpose. 

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DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the NFL Players Association, speaks at a press conference prior to Super Bowl LVI at the NFL Media Building on the SoFi Stadium campus in Inglewood, Calif. (Cooper Neill/Getty Images)

The Rooney Rule was deemed a failure by Smith and Lasker, but many others have said the same thing over its 20 years in existence. 

The rule was put in place, as the league’s football operations website says, to "increase the number of minorities hired in head coach, general manager, and executive positions. This diversity enriches the game and creates a more effective, quality organization from top to bottom."

But after seeing the number of Black head coaches virtually remain stagnant — the number was two when the rule was put in place and there are three ahead of the 2023 season — Smith and Lasker believe it’s time for something different. 

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"The system is broken from the inside out and outside, and any effort to affect it that didn’t obligate NFL owners to adherence or reform was doomed from the start," Smith told Yahoo