gzt: The NFL is an interesting case. Back in 2000 they had 67% black players and 6% black coaches.
There was a civil rights case against one or two NFL member teams because it seemed there was no way to break through into the senior coaching positions.
The resolution was interesting. An owner of a relatively progressive member team suggested the other member teams could just make sure to actually interview black candidates. This became the rule in the NFL association. The number of black coaches in the NFL hit 22% pretty quickly.
This situation could be seen as consistent with controlled research studies which found that employers rejected a disproportionate number of c.v's for interview simply because the only difference was a 'black sounding' name.
So this is kind of one step back from affirmative action. This NFL rule evened the playing field a bit for equality of opportunity.
The two scenarios NFL coaches and blind job applications are not equivalent, but it is clear that selection can be improved in the same simple way in both cases to achieve an improvement in equality of opportunity.
Edit: Posting to clarify an earlier point, not intending to respond to the post above in this instance...
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