Cleveland Harris, N.F.L. Coach Who Pushed for Diversity, Dies at 79

Cleveland Harris had a dream.

As one of the best coaches of the National Football League, he had the reputation of obtaining the best of his players, who venerated him.

A day was expected to become a chief coach, at that time a rarity for a black man in the NFL

After the 1996 season, the League had 11 chief training vacancies. Harris, who grew up in southern Jim Crow, was never just a consultant. The 11 positions were occupied by white men.

There he never fulfilled his dream of being a chief coach, he pressed the league to make changes that help future black chief coaches.

He died at 79 of January 6 at his home in Atlanta. His daughter Tarana Mayes said the cause was cancer.

In 1997, Harris, known as Chick, directed a group of nine black assistants in a meeting with the Liga Commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, with the aim of finding a system in minority candidates of what minority candidates would be considered for chief training work. The League was largely composed of black players, but had only had four black coaches in the modern era.

“We tried to give the commissioner information about our feelings and tell him how people felt throughout the country,” said Harris, then the coach of the Carolina Panthers, the journalists later. “Any dialogue can increase consciousness.”

Tagliabue said Harris had been diplomatic and reasonable. “Hey, it didn’t seem very harmful,” he recalled in an interview. “He was the guy to reason and listen. He was a very articulated guy. But was there angry at the meeting? Yes.”

Gerald Carr, then the reception coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, who attended the meeting, said Harris had been “integral” for the meeting.

“He described the way: how do we get there? And how do we get in front of the owners?” Carr. From that discussion, the idea of ​​establishing a process arose in which the main minority candidates would meet with the owners in their regular meetings. “We wanted them to know us, not just meet us,” Carr said.

Herman Edwards, who was then the assistant coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, said the group had not requested any special consultation for black coaches. “The idea is to be hired about your ability to train, not just because you are black,” he said. “But you have to have the opportunity.”

In 2001, New York Jets hired Edwards as their first black chief coach.

The 1997 meeting pushed the league to take action. In response to a 2002 study commissioned by lawyers and activists Cyrus Mehri and Johnnie Cochran Jr., entitled “Black coaches in the National Soccer League: Higher performance, lower opportunities”, the League created a diversity in the workplace.

In early 2003, to promote minority hiring, the two men created the Fritz Pollard alliance, a defense group called by the player who in the 1920s became the first black coach of the league. And that year, the League adopted the Rooney rule, which required the teams to interview at least a minority candidate for any chief coach. (The rule bears the name of Rooney, president of the Diversity Committee and the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers).

Since then, the rule has expanded to include the opening of coordinators and general managers. It requires that the teams interview at least two minority candidates for those positions.

Some critics have assaulted Rooney’s rule as showcase, saying that some teams still ignore minority candidates or interviewing them knowing that they won to be hired. However, in the years elapsed since the effect of the rule, around 30 minority assistant coaches have increased to intermediate and coaching in full -time coaching.

Cleveland Harris was born on September 21, 1945 in Durham, North Carolina, and raised by his single mother, Shirley Sims, a domestic worker, who was 14 years old when he gave birth. His father was Cleaout Harris.

Cleveland, who became known as Chick at an early age, loved football and saw games at the Central University of North Carolina, a historic black school in Durham. Typically for that moment and place, he had no white friends and had to sit in the back of public buses.

So it was a novel experience when, on a scale in Chicago on a train trip to Long Beach, California, in 1957, when he was 12 years old, he sat in a restaurant with mostly White people.

“I arrive at the counter and Tok a place there,” he said in 2020 in an interview with Mrs. Mayes, his daughter, in Story Corps, the oral history project. “And they asked me what I wanted, and I told them I wanted fried chicken.”

They brought him fried chicken. Without problems, you don’t ask questions. It was a revelation.

After high school, Harris enrolled in the Long Beach Community College in California, where he played football as a receiver in 1963 and 1965. After moving to the University of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff, he played defensive and running in the seasons of 1967 and 1968. He graduated in 1970 with a degree in education.

It is his career as a coach as a postgraduate assistant for the football team in Northern Arizona. As of 1970, he went to attending training work at the State University of Colorado and what is now the State University of California, Long Beach; With the Detroit wheels of the World Football League of Live Live; And at the University of Washington.

Chuck Knox, then the chief coach of the Buffalo Bills, hired Harris as a setback coach in 1981. He stayed in Buffalo for two years, then moved with Knox first to the Seattle Seahawks in 1983 and then to the Rams, after two. coordinator.

“Chick Harris has done an outstanding job,” said Knox then. “Bring experience, dedication and the ability to motivate players.”

Harris was known for obtaining the best of the runners, including Curt Warner of the Seahawks, Jerome Bettis of the Rams and Arian Foster of the Houston Texans.

He left the Rams in 1995 for the Panthers, where Dom Capers was the chief coach, and then followed the Texans in 2002.

“No matter the situation, it was optimistic and had an infectious personality,” Capers said. “It could be hard and demanding, but players loved Chick.”

When the Texans hired a new chief coach in 2014, almost all attendees were dismissed and Harris retired. After that, he conducted clinics for high school and university players.

In addition to Mrs. Mayes, another daughter, Kara Harris, survive; Your son, Tyler; Four grandchildren; and three half of the sisters, Callista Cass and Robin and Cheri Womack. Their Mariations to Cheryl Avants and Karen Brown ended up in divorce.

In total, Harris trained at the NFL for 33 years. In a moment, Mayes said, his goals were unlimited. In 1987, he spoke a speech in Seattle about his dream of becoming a chief coach.

When that did not happen, Mayes said, he focused on being the best assistant coach who knew how to be. And after being appointed offensive coordinator of the Rams, he added: “I am not sure that the aspirations remained.”

“Dad was always more concerned about the concept of the team and his players,” he said. “Returning to the runner coach allowed him to serve his teams and his players.”