Under pressure from civil rights advocates three years ago, the NFL established a rule requiring teams to interview at least one minority candidate before hiring a head coach.
But this year, the so-called "Rooney Rule" is being supplanted by one of football's more time-honored tenets: If it works, consider copying it.
In a breakthrough year for black coaches, the Chicago Bears' Lovie Smith and Cincinnati Bengals' Marvin Lewis led recently downtrodden teams to the playoffs. Tony Dungy's Indianapolis Colts flirted with a perfect season.
Now their success - Smith and Dungy finished 1-2 in AP Coach of the Year voting - might be making less-successful teams more receptive to minority candidates.
"I don't think it's that simple," says Atlanta Falcons executive vice president Ray Anderson, a former agent to Dungy, Lewis and other top coaches. "But historically, there have been some 'copycat' tendencies in the league."
There are six black head coaches in the NFL: Smith, Dungy, Lewis, Arizona's Denny Green, Cleveland's Romeo Crennel and new Kansas City Chiefs coach Herman Edwards.
And judging by the way teams have conducted their coaching searches this offseason, more might be on the way - if not this year, then down the road.
With an unusually high number of open head coaching jobs this offseason, several teams have gone beyond NFL requirements to interview multiple minority candidates.
Even if most teams still end up hiring white coaches, the trend is seen as progress.
Cyrus Mehri, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer who partnered with the late Johnnie Cochran to pressure the NFL into establishing minority hiring guidelines for teams after the 2002 season, expects to see a record number of minority coaching interviews this offseason.
Mehri says teams might finally be getting the message: They shouldn't interview minority candidates simply because they have to. They should want to, because it might improve their teams.
"If you give people the opportunity and open your mind to a broader slate of candidates, you can get results," Mehri says.
In October 2002, Cochran and Mehri issued a report titled, "Black Coaches in the National Football League: Superior Performance, Inferior Opportunities." They threatened to sue if the NFL didn't take steps to help minority coaching candidates.
