When assistant coaches are gagged, their futures are caught in a bind.(NFL)

The NFL has gone to great lengths to promote the advancement of minority candidates for head coaching positions. The Rooney Rule requires each team with a vacancy to interview at least one minority candidate. It's a fine rule because even if a minority candidate doesn't get a job after a particular interview, it gets him into the mix for the future by increasing his exposure and acquainting him with the process. The result, ideally, will be more men like Lovie Smith and Marvin Lewis in positions they deserve.

There is another group of assistant coaches, however, that needs a similar boost from the league. Men such as Sean Payton, assistant head coach of the Cowboys, and Cam Cameron, offensive coordinator of the Chargers, work for head coaches who refuse to let their assistants, with only occasional exceptions, speak to the media. Dallas' Bill Parcells, San Diego's Marty Schottenheimer, New England's Bill Belichick, Miami's Nick Saban, Cleveland's Romeo Crennel and the Giants' Tom Coughlin want media inquiries about their teams to start and end with them.

It might help a team to some degree if the head coach controls the information flow. At least mixed messages aren't sent inside and outside the team. But that's the only benefit I see.

And I see some big negatives. One, it makes it hard for us in the media to do our jobs. When Joe Buck and I prepare to broadcast a Cowboys game, Payton can't talk to us. When a SPORTING NEWS reporter goes to San Diego to do a story on the Chargers, Cameron is off-limits. Shoot, these coaches can't even talk to beat reporters for the local newspapers.

This is a problem. I talk to plenty of people and watch lots of film, but to fully understand what a team is doing on the field, I need to interview the coaches who design the schemes. That helps me to convey strategy properly to viewers.

More important for the coaches themselves, though, is how this affects their careers. If the media aren't talking to these guys, we're not talking or writing about them, either. As a result, they work in relative anonymity. That makes it hard for them to raise their profiles in the coaching community and leaves them flying under the radar at hiring time. Yes, their time sometimes does come eventually, as it did when former Belichick assistants Crennel and Charlie Weis (Notre Dame) got head coaching jobs after last season. But if they had been in the public eye all along, they probably would have ascended sooner.

The NFL took a big step forward on behalf of assistant coaches with the Rooney Rule, but it shouldn't stop there. All assistants, particularly coordinators, deserve an equal opportunity for exposure. The league should institute a rule that prohibits head coaches from gagging their assistants.