Sports Already Had a Diversity Problem. Brian Flores Brought It Attention.

Now, a bombshell lawsuit filed this week has shined floodlights on the problem. Recently fired Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores sued the NFL and three teams alleging that Black coaches, such as himself, are discriminated against when it comes to getting or keeping coaching opportunities.

Less than two weeks before the Super Bowl, the accusation instantly reignited a debate about the diversity—or lack thereof—at the highest levels of the NFL, a league that has had the words “End Racism” stenciled on the field at stadiums around the country for the past two seasons.

It’s a problem engulfing football, where racial tensions have been especially acute for years, but America’s most popular sport isn’t alone. Major League Baseball, college sports and even the English Premier League have struggled to diversify their senior ranks.

It’s a glaring problem because sports is an industry in which the labor force is often heavily reliant on people of color—and management remains overwhelmingly white.

The Institute For Diversity and Ethics in Sport, a part of the University of Central Florida’s College of Business Administration, releases a racial and gender report card for many sports each year. In 2021, the group reported that while 41% of NFL assistant coaches in 2021 were people of color, that figure fell to 15.6% for head coaches.

The discrepancy frequently leads to questions about why more of those assistants aren’t offered top gigs. Eric Bieniemy, for instance, has appeared to be a leading candidate for several years given his success as the offensive coordinator for the Kansas City Chiefs. He has yet to be hired as a head coach.

Two of the five nonwhite head coaches from this past season have since been fired: Flores and the Houston Texans’ David Culley, who was ousted after only one season. The head coaches hired in the past few weeks have all been white, while several teams still have vacancies—and Flores may still be a candidate for some of them.

It’s not much better in baseball. Just two current managers are Black and only four are of Latino descent. There are no Black general managers, and only one is Latino: the Detroit Tigers’

Al Avila,

who is from Cuba. (Before the 2021 season, the Miami Marlins hired Kim Ng as their general manager, the first woman to hold that position in MLB history. Ken Williams, the executive vice president for the Chicago White Sox, is Black.)

The same paradigm exists in the college ranks. None of the football coaches in the Southeastern Conference, the richest and most powerful league in college sports, is Black. TIDES’ most recent report card for college sports said that in 2020, just 10.6% of Division I football head coaches were people of color. About half of the players at the FBS level were Black.

It’s also not unique to leagues based in the United States. There is just one Black manager in the English Premier League.

The result across the industry is a largely white group of executives and bosses managing a large portion of nonwhite athletes. A significant majority of players in the NFL and NBA—which had 15 coaches of color to start the season—are Black. In baseball, the percentage of Black American players has dropped dramatically over the past several decades, but nearly a third of the league hails from Latin American countries like the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.

The NFL has repeatedly launched and altered initiatives in the hopes of promoting a diverse array of candidates. It hasn’t exactly worked. There are currently only three minority NFL head coaches. The Pittsburgh Steelers’ Mike Tomlin is the lone Black head coach.

One of the most recent initiatives aimed at promoting diversity at the highest levels aimed to reward teams for developing minority talent that goes on for a top job elsewhere. If a team loses a minority coach or executive as a head coach or general manager elsewhere, that team receives compensatory draft picks. The idea is to incentivize promoting minority candidates into jobs, such as offensive coordinator, that lead to head-coaching gigs.

The league’s hallmark policy is known as the “Rooney Rule,” named after the late Steelers owner

Dan Rooney.

It was enacted before the 2003 season and required teams to interview at least one minority candidate for head coach and general manager openings. When that didn’t consistently produce the desired effect, the NFL has made changes over the years to require two such candidates. Additionally, one is required for coordinator openings.

That same practice is also the center of Flores’s lawsuit. The former Dolphins coach, who led the team for three years, alleged that he was given sham interviews by the New York Giants and Denver Broncos in order to satisfy the Rooney Rule. Both teams said the accusations were false.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Southern District Court of New York, seeks to establish a class-action on behalf of other coaches and general managers. The suit alleges that the dearth of Black people in prominent roles—including head coaches, general managers and coordinators—is the result of race discrimination.

The Flores suit alleges that, even when such coaches get a head coaching role, they remain discriminated against in other ways—by receiving lower pay or being more likely to be fired than a less successful white coach, the suit alleges. It says that fired Black coaches, a group that includes Flores, are less likely than white ones to receive a second head-coaching opportunity.

“

Brian Flores

‘s lawsuit is just the latest, dramatic call to action for the NFL and its team owners,” said a statement from the Fritz Pollard Alliance, a group named after the league’s first Black coach that promotes minority hiring in the NFL. “Men and women of color in the NFL community have long known that the odds of advancing in the coaching ranks and in the front office are stacked against them.”

Flores, 40 years old, rose through the ranks as an assistant coach with the New England Patriots before Miami hired him in 2019. After going 5-11 in his first season, the Dolphins had winning records in each of the last two years before his firing.

Flores’s lawsuit alleged that his relationship with Dolphins owner Stephen Ross was strained over a couple loaded issues. It accused Ross of offering to pay Flores $100,000 per loss in 2019 so that the team could tank and get a top draft pick. It also accused Ross of trying to get Flores to meet with a “prominent quarterback” in violation of league rules and that it upset Ross when Flores refused to do so.

The NFL called Flores’s accusations “without merit.” The Dolphins also denied his claims.

“We vehemently deny any allegations of racial discrimination and are proud of the diversity and inclusion throughout our organization,” the team said in a statement. “The implication that we acted in a manner inconsistent with the integrity of the game is incorrect.”

Write to Andrew Beaton at andrew.beaton@wsj.com and Jared Diamond at jared.diamond@wsj.com