49ers’ Choice Is a Step Back

Mostly, the recycling of NFL coaches is as routine as stuffing newspapers and plastic into a trash cart. It’s ugly, but it’s life, and besides, you can roll the entire mess to the curb.

Sometimes, though, there’s that one recyclable that makes the pile too high, the load too awkward. Halfway to the street, the cart spills on your shoes and messes up your lawn.

This is one of those times.

The San Francisco 49ers have hired Dennis Erickson as their new coach, a decision as fresh as a used milk carton.

Two of the three finalists were African American. Both were successful defensive coordinators. The 49ers claimed they were looking for diversity and defense.

Yet they hired the white retread with the losing NFL record?

Two of the three finalists were engaging and experienced. The 49ers were given a perfect opportunity to increase the shamefully low number of black coaches in a league that is dominated by blacks.

Yet they hired a white guy who had lost to UCLA?

For those keeping score at home -- and yes, it’s now time -- more than 70% of the players in the 32-team NFL are black.

Yet the league has only three black head coaches.

In no other professional sports operation in this country is the racial ratio so skewed.

So you think professional football has become your national game?

In what backward nation are you living?

Most of the time, the outrage over these “Deliverance”-style hirings -- “Hey, Bubba, you wanna paddle?” -- is best saved for such things as officiating and Sharpies.

After all, who can blame the Dallas Cowboys for hiring Bill Parcells over Dennis Green? Wouldn’t you?

And when the Detroit Lions rushed Steve Mariucci to the altar without courting anyone else? Well, he’s a home-state guy who had been coveted for so long, they fired their coach when he became available, and what’s wrong with that?

Some of this stuff makes sense.

What happened Tuesday did not.

Ted Cottrell, the respected defensive coordinator of the New York Jets, was a finalist.

Greg Blache, his veteran counterpart with the Chicago Bears, was another finalist.

So was Jim Mora Jr. of the 49ers, the son of the former NFL coach.

Three coaching rookies, two African Americans, all decent choices.

Yet the winner is a former failed NFL coach with a 31-33 pro record.

Dennis Erickson was hired not because he inspired the 49ers, but because he made them comfortable.

He was hired not because he was one of a kind, but because he was one of them.

From what used to be an enlightened franchise, you expected more.

From Terry Donahue, you expected much more.

How interesting that, in the year that his old school takes a chance on an inexperienced black coach instead of hiring another losing veteran, Donahue does just the opposite.

This wasn’t about race. Everyone around here knows that Donahue, the former UCLA coach and now the 49ers’ general manager, is color-blind and fair.

This was, instead, about fear. Donahue was afraid to take a chance on someone he had only recently met, someone who was not in his circle of associates, someone who just didn’t fit the mold.

It is this fear, however understandable, that keeps blacks from getting the same opportunities as whites in a profession that’s all about the mold.

You ever wonder why most football coaches have affected southern accents, no matter their birthplace?

You ever wonder why many cinch their belts high on their bellies, and wear their caps low over their heads, and even scowl the same?

Because owners hire coaches who look like other coaches.

This puts blacks in a “Catch-22” situation that only uncommon ownership inspiration will change.

The Jets showed such inspiration in hiring Herman Edwards, and look what happened.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Indianapolis Colts showed it in hiring Tony Dungy, and look what happened.

In the 29 total seasons coached by black coaches in the NFL, 20 have resulted in playoff appearances.

That’s 69% in a league in which only 38% of the teams make the playoffs each season.

Still, few of the all-white owners will hire someone who doesn’t look the part.

“We’re fighting for the soul of the NFL,” said Cyrus Mehri, a Washington, D.C., labor lawyer who has challenged the NFL’s hiring practices. “There’s the good ol’ boy way, then there’s the fair way.”

Mehri, whose group has pushed the NFL to require one minority interview, said the 49ers did it the fair way.

“We feel, in this case, the process worked,” he said.

But he has to say that, because the 49ers indeed did everything his group had requested.

But if the process worked, the result still was failure.

Cottrell told reporters after his first 49er interview last week that he had spoken with seven teams and had “legitimate interviews” with four of them. “Three of those teams talked to me and there was no way I was a serious candidate,” he said. “I was just there to fill in a time slot and make them look good.”

Make that four teams.

Everyone agrees that in the long and difficult march toward equal opportunity among NFL coaches, there should be no quotas.

But there certainly can be shame.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at [email protected].