On Feb. 4, the Detroit Lions hired former San Francisco 49ers head coach Steve Mariucci in an attempt to turn around the team’s dismal showing over the past two seasons. It has probably been the smartest move made in the National Football League’s brief off-season, andstill it may end up putting the Lions’ neck in a noose.-

Detroit is under fire from the NFL Committee on Workplace Diversity — a group headed by Pittsburgh Steelers’ owner Dan Rooney and created under pressure from the Reverend Jesse Jackson and civil rights attorneys Johnnie Cochran, Jr. and Cyrus Mehri. They claim the Lions did not “seriously interview” any minority candidates for their head coaching vacancy.-

Mariucci, with his keen developmental skills and conservative play-calling, was a perfect fit for the Lions’ head job — and that’s the problem. In the mind of Matt Millen, Detroit’s general manager, Mooch was the only guy for the job. But under the new diversity committee rules, any team with a head coach opening that doesn’t interview at least one minority candidate could face punishments.-

In comparison, look at the media shuffle the 49ers put on during their lengthy search for a head coach: African-American defensive coordinators Greg Blache of the Bears and Ted Cottrell of the Jets were dutifully brought in for interviews, paraded before the cameras and ushered out the back door.-

In other words, the 49ers escaped scrutiny by following the diversity committee’s guidelines to the letter, but who did they end up hiring? Caucasian coaching fraternity member Dennis Erickson, who is exactly the kind of mediocre plugger whose constant re-hiring prompted the committee’s formation in the first place.-Erickson racked up a sub .500 record in his four previous NFL seasons.

And that’s the whole problem with the mandatory interview requirements — it accomplishes nothing. It is a token solution, demeaning to all involved, and the African-American coaching candidates receiving token interview requests have been understandably disinterested.-

There is no mandate for teams to actually hire black head coaches, just to bring candidates in for interviews, whether they’re genuine or not. The recent push to interview minority candidates has given rise to a new kind of coaching candidate over the past few years — the perennial token.-

Just as defensive guru Marvin Lewis endured years of token interviews before finally landing the head spot with Cincinnati, look for ex-Minnesota coach Dennis Green’s name to be brought up and dropped over the next few off-seasons.-

For their part, the Lions claim they approached five minority candidates regarding interviews (including their own defensive coordinator, perennial token Sherm Lewis), but all of them correctly viewed Mariucci’s hiring as inevitable, and turned the team down.

-And why wouldn’t they? Detroit was only looking to save its own ass, and any interview would have been an insult to several genuinely qualified coaching candidates. Who wouldn’t be insulted by being brought in for a pointless job interview conducted only to satisfy a racial quota?-

Most importantly, why shouldn’t the Lions be allowed to hire the guy they want, especially a proven winner like Mariucci, without jumping through pointless hoops to get there? –

Rev. Jackson has complained that the Lions never seriously considered anyone besides Mariucci. But based solely on track record, — Mariucci is a Michigan native with a history of resuscitating teams and developing young quarterbacks — wasn’t he far and away the best candidate available?-

Don’t look for answers from the NFL or its “diversity committee” — the league still hasn’t even said what kind of punishments could be doled out. Any penalties against Detroit — some have proposed seizing draft picks or imposing fines — would be the first of their kind.-

Critics have even found fault with the Dallas Cowboys’ recent hiring of Bill Parcells, one of the most succesful NFL coaches in the past two decades. I can’t think of a single struggling football team that wouldn’t want Parcells at the helm, yet Cochran and Mehri still dubbed his hiring “cronyism.”-

Unfortunately, the ludicrous accusations of Mehri, Cochran and Rooney have only served to trivialize a serious problem. Professional football has lagged way behind baseball and basketball in hiring minority head coaches.-

Six of the 30 professional baseball teams (20 percent) are currently skippered by non-white managers. Even after the recent firing of Cleveland’s John Lucas, pro basketball is ahead of the curve, with 11 of the NBA’s 29 teams (38 percent) employing an African-American head coach.-

By contrast, only three out of the 32 teams (nine percent) in the NFL are coached by African-Americans — Tony Dungy in Indianapolis, Herman Edwards with the New York Jets, and now Marvin Lewis in Cincinnati.-

That’s pathetic, and football is justifiably ashamed of itself. Of course lagging behind in minority hiring is hardly a recent development for the sport.

Football was the last of the three major sports to hire a black head coach, when Art Shell was hired to take over the Raiders in 1987. Teams have been slow to hire and quick to fire African-American coaches ever since.

Thus far, the NFL’s diversity committee has only offered token solutions to the racial gap in its head coaching ranks, and would only further undermine itself by punishing the Lions and Cowboys.

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