Jaguars Assistant Coach Chris Doyle Resigns After Backlash

Earlier on Friday, Rod Graves, the executive director of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, which is named for the first Black head coach in the N.F.L., released a statement that said: “Doyle’s departure from the University of Iowa reflected a tenure riddled with poor judgment and mistreatment of Black players. His conduct should be as disqualifying for the N.F.L. as it was for University of Iowa.”

Doyle, who was Iowa’s strength and conditioning coach, reached a separation agreement with the university in June, ending two decades of work there.

The Jaguars’ hiring of Doyle, who is white, came at a time of intense scrutiny of the N.F.L.’s hiring practices and questions about whether minority candidates for coaching jobs have equal opportunities to be hired.

“I’ve known Chris for close to 20 years,” Meyer said on Thursday when questioned about hiring someone who had been accused of mistreating athletes, particularly Black players. Doyle was the strength coach at the University of Utah in the late 1990s, a few years before Meyer was hired as the head coach there.

“Urban Meyer’s statement, ‘I’ve known Chris for close to 20 years,’ reflects the good ol’ boy network that is precisely the reason there is such a disparity in employment opportunities for Black coaches,” Graves said in his statement.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/12/sports/football/jacksonville-jaguars-chris-doyle-fritz-pollard.html