Cowboys, Brian Flores & DFW Sports' Record on Race: How Bad Is It?

The racial race, Mavs' missteps and putting the Olympics on ice, all in this week's DFW sports notebook ...

WHITT’S END: 2.4.22

Whether you’re at the end of your coffee, your day, your week or even your rope, welcome to Whitt’s End …

*Ah, Dallas-Fort Worth, where in so many cases, the necks are red, the collars are blue and – despite America’s heightened awareness of race relations in the middle of Black History Month – the professional sports executives remain lily white.

Prodded by Brian Flores’ racially-charged lawsuit against the NFL this week, I examined how DFW’s teams are faring when it comes to finding/hiring/promoting black coaches, general managers and even owners.

Final score: Our front offices are as white as Thursday’s snow.

Of the approximately 20 leadership roles in the Metroplex’s five pro sports franchises – Cowboys, Dallas Mavericks, Texans Rangers, Dallas Stars and FC Dallas – blacks hold only three: Mavs’ CEO Cynt Marshall, Mavs general manager Nico Harrison and Cowboys’ vice president of player personnel Will McClay. (Jason Kidd, who is biracial, is the Mavs’ head coach.) Long dictated by a good-ol’-boy network of white men that wear Stetsons, occupy high political offices, sport names like “Tex” and “Bum”, and are vigilantly beholden to nepotism, DFW’s teams are still whiffing on C-suite diversity.

In their combined history, the five organizations have had blacks as 0 of 17 owners, 1 of 30 GMs, 6 of 60 head coaches and 11 of 90 top assistants.

Stars – In a sport that’s 90-percent white and during their 28 years in Dallas, they’ve had no black executives and only four black players (led by Trevor Daley’s 11-year career).

FC Dallas – None of its soccer coaches, GMs or ownership groups has been black.

Rangers – They’ve had seven owners, nine GMs, 23 managers, 19 pitching coaches and 14 hitting coaches. Of those 72 positions, only five percent have been filled by blacks. Willie Upshaw was the team’s hitting coach 1993-94 and Thad Bosley in 2011, though he shared the duties with Scott Coolbaugh. Mike Cuellar, for one co-duties season with Larry Hardy in 2001, is the franchise’s only black pitching coach. And Ron Washington served as the team’s only black manager 2007-14. He is the franchise’s winningest manager and the only one to take them to the World Series. Washington has 18 playoff wins; the Rangers’ other 22 managers combined have three.

Despite that success, Washington isn’t in the Rangers’ Hall of Fame. Johnny Oates, with a career postseason record of 1-9, was inducted in 2003.

Mavs – In an NBA in which 75 percent of the players are black, it’s not surprising that they lead the way in local inclusion and diversity. They have employed two black CEOs (Terdema Ussery was team president under both Ross Perot Jr. and Mark Cuban), DFW’s first and only black GM in Harrison, four black head coaches (Gar Heard, Quinn Buckner, Jim Cleamons and Avery Johnson) and numerous black assistants including current NBA head coaches Dwane Casey (Pistons), Stephen Silas (Rockets) and Jamahl Mosley (Magic).

Cowboys – Across three owners, three GMs, nine head coaches and 25 offensive/defensive coordinators, their only blacks have been Maurice Carthon (OC for Bill Parcells in 2003-04) and Brian Stewart (DC under Wade Phillips in 2007-08). McClay, who received a contract extension last month and is the Cowboys’ highest-ranking black executive, has been in the scouting department since 2009 and is one of the most important voices in talent acquisition.

Admits Cowboys owner Jerry Jones of the NFL’s diversity doldrums, “We can do better.”

Locally, it’d be difficult to do any worse.

*Hard to blame a guy who produced 40 points and 10 rebounds and just made his third consecutive NBA All-Star team, but Wednesday’s unfathomable Mavs’ home loss to the lowly Thunder falls on the broad shoulders (and thinning waistline) of Luka Doncic.

On the final two possessions of regulation, the superstar fell asleep on defense to surrender an easy, game-tying layup and then clanked a 30-foot step-back jumper at the buzzer.

I know they were missing two of their best five players in Kristaps Porzingis and Tim Hardaway Jr., but this was the worst loss of the season. Oklahoma City lost by an NBA-record 73 points earlier this season and was 2-12 in January. Worse, the loss comes on the hideous heels of the previous worst loss of the season.

Back-to-back defeats to the 12-41 Magic and 16-34 Thunder should prompt GM Nico Harrison to make some kind of move(s) at the upcoming trade deadline. Until the Mavs can take care of the little guys in the Winter, it’s impossible to imagine them beating the big guys in the Spring.

They didn’t get home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs last year because they lost three times to the sub-.500 Kings. This year when the jockeying for playoff positions heats up, they’ll be burdened by these inexcusable consecutive gaffes.

*Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher is mad at the SEC. And for the way they laid down for their coach’s hyped return to Lubbock, Texas’ Chris Beard should be mad at his Longhorns.

*Ok, for real, at this point Porzingis is nothing more than a part-time employee. After he misses Friday night’s game against the Sixers, he will have been available for work only 34 of 53 days this season.

Go to work 64 percent of the time and see what your boss calls you.

Porzingis is like your rich uncle’s luxury sports car, the one he almost exclusively keeps under a tarp and drives only on special occasions.

*No, thanks, I will not be spending my free time playing Wordle. Why? Because, as a writer/editor, I spend my working time playing Wordle.

*Winter wonders that, as a Texan, I wish I never needed to learn: Freezing rain falls in liquid form, but then immediately covers, coats and freezes upon hitting the ground, trees, power lines, etc. Sleet freezes in the air and falls as ice pellets, generally bouncing off objects. Therefore, freezing rain is much more dangerous and damaging. You’re welcome.

*Brady bites: The Cowboys never beat Tom Brady, going 0-6 … In 62 seasons, Dallas has the same number of playoff wins (35) as Brady in his 22 … He threw for more touchdowns after turning 40 (168) than Troy Aikman threw in his entire career (165) … With three Super Bowl rings, four rushing titles, multiple MVPs and – even 18 years after retiring – huge leads in all-time rushing yards and touchdowns, Emmitt Smith is the Cowboys’ closest thing to Brady. Sorry, Roger.

*Hot.

*Not.

*If I had a dollar for every time Mavs’ TV analyst Derek Harper finishes a sentence with a superfluous “ … as a player”, I’d live on an island and you wouldn’t read Whitt’s End.

If I had a dollar for every time I listened to Joe Rogan on Spotify, I wouldn’t have a dollar.

*Cowboys vs. Redskins: 73-45-2; Cowboys vs. Washington Football Team: 2-2; Cowboys vs. Commanders: TBD.

*Hard pass for me on the Winter Olympics in Beijing. Because of COVID, NBC isn’t even sending any of its announcers to China. Because of disgusting human rights violations, the country should not be allowed to host anything. (The country’s government is literally rounding up dissenters and subjecting them to re-orientation camps.) But we all know the International Olympic Committee is a corrupt organization Hell-bent on anything for a buck.

Right, long-time NBC Olympics host Bob Costas? “The IOC deserves all the disdain and disgust that comes their way for going back to China yet again,” he said. “They are shameless about this stuff.”

NBC paid the IOC $7.75 billion in 2014 for the U.S. TV rights to all Olympics events. That contract expires in 2023.

*When the NFL playoffs began, six of the 14 teams had a starting quarterback from a Texas high school. Now there is only one: Highland Park’s Matthew Stafford, who will attempt to become the fourth Texas-bred quarterback since 2010 to win the Super Bowl, joining Patrick Mahomes (Whitehouse) and Austin Westlake’s Drew Brees and Nick Foles.

*Definition of a bad night: Being a Mavs fan that watches them lose to the Thunder and then has to drive home on icy roads.

*New survey reveals that 17 percent (456,000) of Dallas homes still have a landline telephone. I’m guessing that 100 percent of those 17 percent still write checks at the grocery store.

*One time – because I’m weird AF – I wrote my own (thankfully premature) obituary in the Dallas Observer.

*Cowboys’ long-time public relations grand poohbah Rich Dalrymple is retiring. He’s been America’s Team’s media filter and Jones’ right-hand man since 1990. If he wrote a tell-all book that truly told all, it would be the juiciest sports read of all time. But he won’t. For million$ of reason$.

*Snow-day downtime? Perfect for doing my taxes and, of course, a little weekly, therapeutic writing.

*This Weekend? Friday I was supposed to go help christen the Dallas Open tennis stadium court at SMU, but … ice and stuff. That might be my catch-all excuse for a lazy, cozy couple of days. As always, don’t be a stranger.