Former Dolphins head coach Brian Flores got candid about the explosive lawsuit he filed against the NFL, saying he was “humiliated” by going into an interview with the Giants for a head-coaching position he knew he wasn’t going to get.

“It was a range of emotions,” Flores said on “CBS Mornings” Wednesday. “Humiliation. Disbelief. Anger. I worked so hard to get where I am in football to become a head coach. To go in on what was a sham interview, I was hurt.”

Flores was scheduled to interview for the Giants’ then-vacant head-coaching position, but learned through a text conversation with Bill Belichick — his former boss with the Patriots — the team had seemingly already made the decision to hire Brian Daboll. Belichick appeared to be under the impression he was texting Daboll, and attempted to congratulate him on the hire.

Flores’ attorneys, also appearing on CBS, asserted the Giants were “just trying to comply with the Rooney Rule,” a rule enacted by the league that requires teams to interview at least two minority candidates for head-coaching and football-operations jobs.

A rule, Flores stated, that has been twisted far beyond its original meaning.

“The Rooney Rule was intended to give minorities an opportunity to sit down with ownership,” Flores said. “What it’s turned into, it’s just guys checking a box.”

Why, then, did Flores still attend the Giants interview, knowing it was a sham?

“Call it the audacity of hope. I have a belief that there’s good in people. I just do,” Flores said.

The Giants responded on Tuesday when the allegations first surfaced against their franchise.

“We are pleased and confident with the process that resulted in the hiring of Brian Daboll,” the team said in a statement. “We interviewed an impressive and diverse group of candidates. The fact of the matter is, Brian Flores was in the conversation to be our head coach until the eleventh hour. Ultimately, we hired the individual we felt was most qualified to be our next head coach.”

Flores, who interviewed for the still-unfilled Saints and Texans head-coaching jobs, indicated he wouldn’t drop his suit if hired by either team.

“This is about changing the hiring practices in the National Football League, and that’s what this lawsuit is about,” Flores said Wednesday on CNN. “I want to coach football. That’s what I’m called to do.”

The Giants weren’t the only team to face allegations in Flores’ suit. He accused the Broncos front office of appearing “disheveled” during a 2019 interview, which Flores asserted was a “sham” as well. He also claimed in the suit that Dolphins owner Stephen Ross offered him $100,000 per loss during the 2019 season to improve the team’s draft position.

“That’s not something you make up,” Flores said of the conversations with Ross.

Former Browns coach Hue Jackson said he’d be willing to join Flores’ lawsuit, hours after seeming to indicate Cleveland owner Jimmy Haslam paid him to lose games.

Jackson, appearing on “SportsCenter,” did not claim he was specifically paid to tank, but clarified he was put in a position to lose with an inexperienced team so the franchise could build a winner. The current Grambling State coach said he received an unpublicized contract extension despite going 1-31 over his first two seasons with the Browns, only to be fired after a 2-5-1 start in 2018.

“Teams that win are just not the youngest team, not that the youngest teams can’t win, so I didn’t understand the process,” he told ESPN. “I didn’t understand what the plan was. I asked for clarity because it did not talk about winning and losing until Year 3 and 4. So that told you right there that something wasn’t correct but I still couldn’t understand it until I had the team that I had.”

In response to a tweet referencing Flores’ allegations, Jackson wrote Haslam “was happy while we kept losing.”

When a fan tweeted, “Jimmy Haslam wasn’t offering 100k per loss or Hue would be on the Forbes list,” Jackson replied, “Trust me it was a good number!”

In a separate tweet Tuesday, Jackson added that he stands with Flores and “can back up every word I’m saying.” The message Jackson replied to was from Kimberly Diemert, the executive director of his foundation, per Pro Football Talk. In her tweet, she claimed Jackson and fellow Browns execs were paid bonus money to tank in 2016 and 2017.

The Browns denied Jackson’s allegations.

“The recent comments by Hue Jackson and his representatives relating to his tenure as our head coach are completely fabricated,” the Browns said in a statement. “Any accusation that any member of our organization was incentivized to deliberately lose games is categorically false.”