NEW YORK -- The NFL, responding to pressure to promptly address the lack of minority head coaches and management officials (and to the implied threat of litigation if the dubious track record isn't improved), reacted as it typically does in such circumstances on Thursday.

It formed a committee to analyze the problem.

While the knee-jerk reaction is to suggest the committee approach is akin to offering an aspirin to a cancer victim, and there are the cynics who certainly will view it as such, this question supercedes any criticism: What else was commissioner Paul Tagliabue, whose social conscience has never been in doubt and who has attempted for years to prod owners into considering more minority candidates, supposed to do?

You get Johnnie Cochran involved in a case, as he is with the peskiest social issue confronting the NFL right now, and his presence makes it impossible to merely sweep a mess under the rug. Not that Tagliabue or his lieutenants would have done so. From a practical and a moral sense, Tagliabue long ago realized not only the negative perception but also the pragmatic shortcoming of stewarding a league where 70 percent of the rank-and-file is black, but in which less than a handful of head coaches are men of color.

Only three weeks ago, Tagliabue and the NFL owners were staring at a fall caucus with an agenda characteristic of these two-day affairs, which is to say that No-Doze would have been in major demand. But the dynamics of this meeting were dramatically altered when Cochran and Cyrus Mehri issued their report on the deficiencies of diversity in the league workplace.

Suddenly an issue on which the league preferred to work behind the scenes -- anyone who has covered the NFL the past several years is cognizant of the attempts by NFL officials to strongly suggest that owners identify and then interview worthy minority candidates -- was elevated to hot-button status.

To have adjourned this two-day meeting on Thursday without some degree of public acknowledgement that, yes, the league must do better, would have been a public relations faux pas. More important, it would have appeared to be insensitive to the problem, to have donned rose-colored glasses as the NFL response to a glaring issue that isn't about to go away now that people like Cochran and Mehri are piloting the bandwagon.

"Basically, the teams have got to intensify the efforts to be sensitive to these kinds of workplace issues," said Pittsburgh Steelers president Dan Rooney, arguably the NFL's most respected owner and the man Tagliabue chose (not surprisingly) to chair the new diversity committee. "I think we want to do the right thing."

The other committee members include owners Arthur Blank (Atlanta), Jeff Lurie (Philadelphia), Pat Bowlen (Denver) and Stan Kroenke (St. Louis). There is also a so-called "working group" comprised of high-ranking club executives, and that quintet includes Ray Anderson (Atlanta), Rich McKay (Tampa Bay), Bill Polian (Indianapolis), Ozzie Newsome (Baltimore) and Terry Bradway (New York Jets).

Notable are the inclusions of Blank and Anderson. The Falcons owner has a long history, dating back to his days as co-founder of The Home Depot, for championing diversity in the workplace. During his past career as an agent, Anderson represented black head coaches Dennis Green, Tony Dungy and Herman Edwards. Both of the Atlanta executives could be key in shaping the committee agenda.

Unfortunately, for everyone, honing the agenda will be anything but simple.

It is, after all, not as if the diversity problem is new to the league. For years, there has existed an awareness that the skewing of head coach and key front office positions away from minority candidates was both wrong and likely ineffectual. But saying there is a problem, and publicly vowing to repair it, haven't been enough to promulgate any sort of age of enlightenment.

The league likes to brag about how the number of minority coordinators has increased exponentially in the past decade. But long before that, there were a lot of worthy minority candidates, and most never made it into the interview process during the offseason hiring period. Simply casting a new light on an old issue doesn't make the solution any more obvious.

And, frankly, that is the league's conundrum in this regard.

During a break in the meetings Wednesday afternoon, Rooney cautioned the commissioner that he must keep one key point in mind: Owners do not take too kindly to being strong-armed into change. And owners, not the league, have the prerogative to hire and fire the people they want for key jobs.

It was, typically, a down-to-earth and practical insight by Rooney. It also gets right to the nut of the issue. The league doesn't hire and fire at the local level. And until the owners see fit to include minority candidates when they formulate their hiring "short lists," the problem will continue. It is, as one AFC general manager termed it, "a grassroots thing."

Certainly a seed was planted here. But the seed was planted before, quietly watered and fertilized, and the grass never took root. Tagliabue aptly noted Thursday that the league could no longer assume benign neglect would solve the problem. But it's just as unlikely, even given the august composition of the group, that the new committee will mitigate it.

There are a lot of brilliant men in the meeting room every time the league convenes a session like the one here. But it will take bravery, not brains, to meet the diversity challenge head-on. And history has indicated that the elite fraternity of NFL owners is more often strong-headed than strong-willed.

Len Pasquarelli is a senior writer for ESPN.com.