I Don't Have A Racist Bone In My Body

Some of my best friends are...oh, never mind....

Jon Gruden, the coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, in 2011 used racist terms to denounce DeMaurice Smith, the executive director of the N.F.L. Players Association….

The email was written in 2011 in an exchange between Gruden, who is white and was an analyst for ESPN at the time, and Bruce Allen, who was then the president of the Washington Football Team.

“Dumboriss Smith has lips the size of michellin tires,” Gruden wrote about Smith in the exchange.

The email was discovered during a review of workplace misconduct at the Washington Football Team that ended this summer. During the past few months, the N.F.L. commissioner, Roger Goodell, told league executives to look at more than 650,000 emails, including the one that included Gruden’s comment. This week, the executives presented a summary of that review to Goodell and shared with him the Raiders emails pertaining to Gruden.

“The email from Jon Gruden denigrating DeMaurice Smith is appalling, abhorrent and wholly contrary to the N.F.L.’s values,” Brian McCarthy, a league spokesman, said in a statement.

A very sensible man once gave me a sound piece of advice about writing emails. He said, “Always write an email as if one of three things might happen: One- your mother might read it. Two- it might end up as evidence in court. Three- it might end up in the New York Times.” Of course, there’s nothing out of the ordinary about this guidance; it’s just basic common sense. It boils down to a straightforward and salient point: “Don’t be stupid.” Former Las Vegas Raiders Coach Jon Gruden is Exhibit A when it comes to ignoring this advice.

Why? We’ve all had anger-driven, wholly inappropriate thoughts about a person or group of people at some point in our lives. Some folks deal with that impulse every single day. The difference between them and Gruden is that they keep their thoughts to themselves OR they give voice to their ideas in a safe milieu in which they can trust their listeners, knowing that NO one has hit RECORD on their phone.

Gruden not only wrote down some pretty repulsive and grotesque thoughts about other people in email form, BUT HE DID SO OVER SEVERAL YEARS. This is not someone who had a terrible, horrible, awful, very bad day and lashed out in anger. This is someone showing his true colors. Jon Gruden, despite his protestations to the contrary, showed us who he truly is.

He wasn’t employed by the NFL or any of its teams when he wrote the emails, but he worked for ESPN on the network’s Monday Night Football broadcasts. Gruden had previously coached the Oakland Raiders and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, leading them to a Super Bowl championship in 2003. He retained a good deal of influence within the NFL at the time, which makes the things he wrote even more shocking and disturbing.

Gruden’s messages were sent to Bruce Allen, the former president of the Washington Football Team, and others, while he was working for ESPN as a color analyst during “Monday Night Football.” In the emails, Gruden called the league’s commissioner, Roger Goodell, a “faggot” and a “clueless anti football pussy” and said that Goodell should not have pressured Jeff Fisher, then the coach of the Rams, to draft “queers,” a reference to Michael Sam, a gay player chosen by the team in 2014.

In numerous emails during a seven-year period ending in early 2018, Gruden criticized Goodell and the league for trying to reduce concussions and said that Eric Reid, a player who had demonstrated during the playing of the national anthem, should be fired. In several instances, Gruden used a homophobic slur to refer to Goodell and offensive language to describe some N.F.L. owners, coaches and journalists who cover the league.

Yes, we’ve all had inappropriate thoughts and reactions we wouldn’t want anyone else to know. The difference between most of us and Jon Gruden is that we keep those thoughts buried within ourselves. We recognize that those opinions would come across as highly offensive, and we don’t put them in writing. Gruden not only wrote several emails; he hit SEND.

The unfortunate aspect of this episode is that it wasn’t initially about Jon Gruden. Instead, it began as an investigation of workplace misconduct within the Washington Football Team (WFT). Gruden was on the sending and receiving end of some of the 650,000 emails the NFL reviewed during that investigation.

Gruden told ESPN on Sunday that the league was reviewing emails in which he criticized Goodell, and explained that he had been upset about team owners’ lockout of the players in 2011, when some of the emails were written. Gruden said in that interview that he had used an expletive to refer to Goodell and that he did so because he disapproved of Goodell’s emphasis on safety, which he believed was scaring parents into steering their sons away from football.

But Gruden’s behavior was not limited to 2011. Gruden exchanged emails with Allen and other men that included photos of women wearing only bikini bottoms, including one photo of two Washington team cheerleaders.

Before resigning his position as coach of the Raiders, Gruden stated at a press conference that he didn’t remember what had happened 10-12 years ago. I’m sorry, but I’m going to call “bullshit” on him. While Gruden is understandably trying to paint himself in the best possible light, I’d submit that he remembers what he wrote to Bruce Allen. No, he likely can’t quote the emails verbatim, but he remembers the broad outlines of what he wrote. He’s embarrassed, perhaps angry with himself or at those he perceives as his “persecutors,” and he’s trying to deflect the developing shit storm.

Even when he wrote the things that cost him his job, his opinions were inappropriate and offensive. Perhaps the intense focus and awareness of those issues didn’t exist then as they do now, but they were wrong then, and they’re wrong now.

Is this merely an isolated case of an entitled, spoiled, and uber-arrogant White guy venting his spleen? Did he feel safe knowing that he sent the emails to Allen- someone of a like mind? Did he think they’d never see the light of day for that reason? Even between 2011-18, Bruce Allen would’ve been aware of the intensely awkward position Gruden was placing him in. Allen should’ve responded accordingly and told Gruden to knock it off.

Of course, Allen may have done exactly that (it’s unlikely, but certainly possible). We don’t know, because the NFL is resisting the NFL Player’s Association’s (NFLPA) request to release the 650,000 emails obtained during their investigation of the toxic work culture within WFT. It’s possible that the NFL recognizes the Pandora’s Box the email trove represents and that making the emails public could mean a public relations and legal nightmare.

It strains credulity to believe that Gruden is an isolated knuckle-dragging troglodyte. It’s far more likely that he’s the tip of a massive iceberg and that once the emails become public, the PR carnage will be EPIC.

But that’s not the real problem. As much as I love NFL football, the entire league could sink into the sea as far as I’m concerned if it refuses to address and change its “old (White) boy club” mentality. If the NFL and its teams refuse to create and foster an atmosphere of inclusion, acceptance, and tolerance, then they can go straight to Hell and be sodomized by pitching wedges for eternity.

There should be no place for Jon Gruden or those who express similar racism, homophobia, hatred, and ignorance in the NFL…or American society. The only way the league will convince the public that they are positively dealing with these issues is to release the 650,000 emails and let the chips fall where they may.

The NFL is in for an absolute shit show. They know what’s coming their way and they’re understandably terrified. There’s an almost unimaginable amount of money at stake, as well as ownership of Sunday, the day the NFL has established unquestioned dominion over. But, eventually, the league will have no choice but to release the emails and face the inevitable PR debacle heading their way.

Jon Gruden is a problem for the NFL (and American society writ large), but he’s not the only problem. I believe he’s the plug in the bathtub- and the 650,000 emails are the water. Gruden did the right thing by resigning. He effectively pulled the plug and began the long, ugly process of draining the tub.

Still, what things will look like when the water’s circling the drain remains an unanswered question.

Grab your popcorn….

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