A Job is Not “An Honor”
For the second consecutive offseason, Chiefs Offensive Coordinator Eric Bieniemy was not hired to fill any of the NFL’s head coaching vacancy, a situation that seems ridiculous to everyone involved. Maybe the most ridiculous thing, though, was hearing Bieniemy call it “an honor and a privilege” to be interviewed, as if he should be grateful that these teams were even considering him.
It’s tempting to dismiss quotes like that as the kind of faux-humble, It’s an Honor Just To Be Nominated thing you have to say in these types of situations. But it’s important to be clear about the differences. A head coaching job is not an award. The reason Oscar nominees say it’s an honor just be nominated is that an Oscar is literally an honor—it’s an award bestowed on someone for a job well-done. You have to act humble about it because it is extraneous to the work itself, and the work is supposed to be able to stand on its own.
But a head coaching position isn’t like that—it’s a JOB. You don’t get hired for a job as a reward—you get hired because someone thinks you can do it well. It is primarily a forward-looking decision. Of course, it tends to be based on your past accomplishments, so I understand why Bieniemy would say it’s an honor—it DOES function, in part, as a recognition of his career to be considered. But it’s important to be careful about language like this, because it can have real negative effects.
For one, referring to a job as “an honor” reinforces the idea that people have to prove their personal worth to their employers. After Bieniemy was passed over, a lot of attention was paid to his past arrests as the possible explanation. This put his defenders in the position of trying to downplay those arrests, pointing out that they were 20+ years ago and that he’s a different person. After all, if a job is “an honor,” then you have to make the case that an individual is worthy of it. But NFL teams and sportswriters are not qualified to be moral arbiters, and treating them as such gives them way too much power.
This power can lead to all sorts of problems. In the case of Bieniemy and the NFL, the most obvious problem is the lack of Black coaches in the league. Giving teams that hire coaches the unilateral power to decide who is worthy of being an NFL coach naturally leads a process that reflects the biases of those teams. And so white owners tend to hire white General Managers who tend to hire white coaches who tend to hire white assistants. The system perpetuates itself, and using the language of “honor” gives it the illusion of merit.
Finally, this language promotes the idea that the job title itself is a form of compensation. After all, if something is really a privilege, then why would they have to pay you to do it? Of course, any head coach in the NFL is obviously going to be well-paid, but in less lucrative fields you can see this at work. Unpaid internships in competitive fields, unlivable wages at prestigious organizations, well-respected employers who abuse their staff—workers put up with all of these because they internalize the idea that they should be honored just to have their position at all. This has the effect of suppressing wages and squeezing people out of these fields.
Changing language won’t solve these problems, obviously. But it’s important to stop thinking of life as one long job interview, with every action potentially scrutinized by a future employer, with only those most willing to say what an honor it is to even be considered able to advance…