PHOENIX (AP) — First-year Atlanta Falcons general manager Ian Cunningham said he'll continue to push for more diversity in the NFL's leadership positions, even after Florida's attorney general wrote that the league's minority hiring guidelines violate Florida state law.
Attorney General James Uthmeier sent a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell saying the league's 23-year-old Rooney Rule amounts to “blatant race and sex discrimination.”
“Just from my position, especially being a Black man, there’s still work to be done,” Cunningham told The Associated Press on Monday at the NFL’s league meetings. “Now that I’m in this position and have this platform, I’m going to be intentional about what we do from a grassroots effort to a director level.
“I do think it’s important to give people of all races and sexes a chance to be in a position to further their career.”
The Rooney Rule requires teams to interview at least two minority candidates for head coach, general manager and coordinator positions. At least one minority candidate must be interviewed for the quarterbacks coach position.
The 40-year-old Cunningham was hired as the Falcons general manger in January after four seasons as an assistant GM with the Chicago Bears. He’s also spent time in the front office for the Baltimore Ravens and Philadelphia Eagles.
Cunningham said he didn't have a comment on Uthmeier's specific concerns, saying he didn't have all the details.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Todd Bowles — who is one of just three Black head coaches in the league — also said he needed more information before deciding if Uthmeier's complaint had any merit.
“The political part of it, if he wants it out, and he has reasons why, I got to hear cases and all that," Bowles said. "If I were the judge sitting behind a bench, I would probably have more info right now what he thinks, but I don’t.”
Uthmeier asked Goodell to confirm by May 1 that the NFL was no longer enforcing the Rooney Rule in Florida, or the league could face civil rights action. There are three NFL teams in Florida — the Buccaneers, Miami Dolphins and Jacksonville Jaguars.
“NFL fans in Florida don’t care what color their coach’s skin is," the letter said. "They care what colors their coach is wearing — and that those colors are winning on the football field. The Rooney Rule and its offshoots are illegal in Florida.”
The NFL will have only three head coaches and four general managers who are Black next season. There were 10 head coach openings this season and none of them were filled by a Black coach.
Robert Saleh, who is of Lebanese descent, was the only minority to get a job during the most recent head coach hiring cycle when he was hired by Tennessee.
This was just the fifth time since the start of the Rooney Rule in 2003 that no Black head coaches were hired during an offseason coaching cycle. The only other time it happened in a year with more than five changes was 2013, when there were eight openings.
Goodell isn't scheduled to speak at the NFL's annual meetings until Tuesday, but said in February that increasing diversity is still one of the league's goals.
“We need to continue to make progress,” Goodell said. “I believe that and I believe diversity is good for us. ... I think we have to become a more diverse league across every platform, including coaching. But we still have more work to do.”
AP Pro Football Writer Rob Maaddi contributed to this story.
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Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles listens to a question from a reporter at the NFL football annual meetings, Monday, March 30, 2026, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles smiles as he answers a question at the NFL football annual meetings, Monday, March 30, 2026, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks swung Monday as oil prices kept climbing because of uncertainty about when the war with Iran could end.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.4% and deepened its loss since the war began to pull 9.1% below its record set early this year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 49 points, or 0.1%, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.7%.
Caution was prevalent throughout financial markets. After jumping to an initial gain of 0.9%, the S&P 500 quickly erased nearly all of it before seesawing lower. Stock indexes rose in Europe but fell sharply in some Asian markets, while the price for a barrel of benchmark U.S. crude rose 3.3% to settle at $102.88
The mixed movements followed a whirlwind of action in the war over the weekend, including an entry into the fighting by Houthi rebels in Yemen. None of it gave any clarity for the main questions weighing on financial markets: When will oil and natural gas resume their full flows from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide, and will it be soon enough to prevent a brutal blast of inflation?
Shortly before the U.S. stock market opened for trading Monday, President Donald Trump said on his social media network that “great progress has been made” with “A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran.”
But he also threatened the possibility of “blowing up and completely obliterating” Iranian power plants if a deal is not reached shortly and if the Strait of Hormuz, an integral waterway for the flow of oil, is not opened immediately.
The statement fit and condensed last week’s pattern, where Trump would tout progress being made in talks and offer some optimism for the market, only for doubts to rise quickly afterward about whether the war can end soon.
All the back and forth has some investors saying they’re giving Trump’s pronouncements less weight than before. But stock prices are nevertheless cheaper than they were before the war, which has some investors looking for an opportune time to buy.
The S&P 500 finished last week 8.7% below its all-time high, which was set in January. The Dow and Nasdaq both were more than 10% below their records, a steep-enough fall that professional investors call it a “correction.”
Taking into account how much profits are expected to grow in the coming year for companies in the S&P 500, the index looks roughly 17% cheaper than before the war, by one measure. That’s in a similar range as where prior growth scares for the market ended, as long as they didn’t result in a recession or the Federal Reserve hiking interest rates, according to strategists at Morgan Stanley.
That’s one of the signs that the strategists led by Michael Wilson point to as “growing evidence the S&P 500 correction is getting closer to its ending stages.”
Of course, the Federal Reserve could upset that if it decides oil prices are threatening to stay high for long enough that it needs to raise interest rates. Higher interest rates would help keep a lid on inflation, but they would also slow the economy and push down on prices for all kinds of investments.
Treasury yields have been leaping in the bond market since the war began because of such worries, but they eased somewhat on Monday.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.35% from 4.44% late Friday. That’s a significant move for the bond market and offers some breathing room for Wall Street. But it remains far above its 3.97% level from before the war.
On Wall Street, Sysco fell 15.3% to help lead the market lower after it said it was buying Jetro Restaurant Depot for $21.6 billion in cash and enough Sysco shares to value the company at about $29.1 billion.
Alcoa rose 8.2% for one of the market’s biggest gains on speculation it could get more business after attacks damaged rival aluminum facilities in the Middle East over the weekend.
All told, the S&P 500 fell 25.13 points to 6,343.72. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 49.50 to 45,216.14, and the Nasdaq composite sank 153.72 to 20,794.64.
In stock markets abroad, the FTSE 100 in London climbed 1.6%, and the CAC 40 in Paris rose 0.9%. That followed drops of 3% for Seoul’s Kospi, 2.8% for Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 and 0.8% for Hong Kong’s Hang Seng.
AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott and AP journalist Ayaka McGill contributed to this report.
This story has been corrected to show that the S&P 500 finished last week 8.7% below its record.
Christopher Lagana, left, and Dilip Patel work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Monday, March 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Bobby Charmak works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Monday, March 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
People walk past the New York Stock Exchange, Friday, March 27, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
A general view shows the New York Stock Exchange, Friday, March 27, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Workers walk in an area at a degassing station in Zubair oil field, whose operations have being reduced due to the Mideast war triggered by the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran, near Basra, Iraq, Saturday, March 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
A person walks by an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index in Tokyo Monday, March 30, 2026. (Yusuke Hashizume/Kyodo News via AP)
A dealer walks near the screens showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won and the Korean Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (KOSDAQ) at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, March 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Dealers work near the screens showing the foreign exchange rates at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, March 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Dealers work near the screens showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), right, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, March 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
