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(NFL.com) The Rooney Rule has been a hot topic of conversation after a hiring cycle that included no minority hires among the 15 new head coaches and general managers this offseason.

At his state of the league news conference Friday, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell made it clear that the results were "not acceptable."

"The Rooney Rule has been very effective," Goodell said. "We have to look to see what the next generation is. We have to take it to another level."

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(AP) Now that the National Football League has a record number of head coaches who are black and Hispanic, can Fortune 500 companies borrow from the league's diversity playbook and see similar results among corporate executives?

Robert L. Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television, thinks so. He is urging corporate America to adopt a version of the NFL's Rooney Rule, which requires teams to interview at least one minority candidate when filling head coach and general manager positions.

Currently, seven NFL coaches are black and one is Hispanic. Five general managers are minorities. In 2003, when the rule was implemented, there were three African American NFL head coaches.

Unlike the NFL rule, which is mandatory for teams, Johnson is asking companies to voluntarily adopt a version of the rule.

In Johnson's version, which he calls the RLJ Rule, companies would include at least two African Americans among interviewees for positions of vice president and above and interview at least two black firms when searching for vendor and supplier services contractors.

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(Huffington Post) As Congress weighs the Obama administration's jobs package, RLJ Companies CEO Robert Johnson is pushing a proposal that he says marshals the capacity of the nation's biggest companies to significantly reduce black unemployment.

Johnson has dubbed his idea the "RLJ Rule." It calls on Fortune 1000 companies to voluntarily consider a more diverse pool of qualified candidates when filling senior level job openings and hiring contractors. Johnson has described it as the business version of the National Football League's Rooney Rule, a 2003 mandate that required teams to consider diverse candidate pools when filling senior positions.

Johnson, the United States' first black billionaire, has been critical of the way that the Obama administration and Congress have tried to address the nation's stubborn unemployment problem. He believes businesses can create solutions to social problems.

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