Fall Of The House of Gruden
Oakland Raiders head coach Jon Gruden observes players during practice at their training facility in Napa Valley, Calif., August 7, 2018. The Raiders invited Travis Air Force Base Airmen to attend camp and were treated to a scrimmage between the Raiders and Detroit Lions and a meet and greet autograph session with players and coaches from both teams. (U.S. Air Force photo by Louis Briscese)
Jon Gruden has had many descriptors in his long association with the National Football League. In 2001, he was named to People Magazine’s “Most Beautiful People” list. He was, at one point, the youngest coach in the NFL with the then Oakland Raiders. He has been a Super Bowl champion coach with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. In 2018, Gruden signed the richest coaching contract in the NFL to helm the Raiders for a second time during their transition to Las Vegas.
And now he can add disgraced former NFL head coach to the ledger, as reported here by CBS Sports:
Jon Gruden is out as the Raiders’ head coach. Gruden has informed his staff he is resigning from his position in the wake of leaked emails in which he repeatedly used insensitive language, as NFL Media first reported, and CBS Sports’ Jason La Canfora confirmed.
Already under investigation by the NFL for a 2011 email in which he used a racial trope to criticize NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith, Gruden admitted Friday that he also used profane language to describe NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. According to The New York Times, however, Gruden’s questionable conduct extended far beyond those comments, with Ken Belson and Katherine Rosman reporting Monday that the 58-year-old “casually and frequently unleashed misogynistic and homophobic language” to denigrate NFL peers from 2010 all the way to 2018, when he rejoined the Raiders.
The issue that these comments go back over a decade — and clearly there was a drip-drip process forming of even more coming — will fade into the background with Jon Gruden resigning, though it probably shouldn’t. Like many scandals, now that it is out there will be a thread of “known knowns” of people who knew about these incidents for some time. That the initial comments that started this mess were directed at NFLPA executive direct DeMaurice Smith was bad enough on its own; not only the racial trope used but directing it at one of the most important figures in the league was very bad business on top of the bad optics and morally problematic aspects. With the NFL riding high right now, with soaring ratings and an income stream that makes the NFL the undisputed king of sports, such business and moral entanglements are just not going to be allowed.
Jon Gruden not only sinned, but sinned in the worse possible way for a multi-billion-dollar enterprise such as the NFL by having his transgressions documented with a paper trail. Add in that the NFL is a league with the majority of players being black while a majority of coaches, executives, and owners being white, there should especially be no tolerance for racial tropes said or written of any kind. The “old school” football folks might decry the passing of yelling obscenities at everyone in sight, but America’s most popular TV show — which the NFL is on top of being a sport — just isn’t going to tolerate such things in the modern day and age. Nor should they. Someone will no doubt write a think piece of how this is “cancel culture” again, but it is not. It’s evolution, of society just not putting up with such things as racial tropes and abusive language towards others in emails anymore because the glaring inappropriateness of them is clear to just about anyone objectively looking at the words that came from Jon Gruden.
“This is not about an email as much as it is about a pervasive belief by some that people who look like me can be treated as less” DeMaurice Smith wrote in a statement released following Jon Gruden’s initial apology and just hours before the resignation. “The email has also revealed why the comments by some with powerful platforms to explain this away are insidious and hypocritical. It is as if there is a need to protect football above the values of equality, inclusion and respect. The powerful in our business have to embrace that football itself has to be better, as opposed to making excuses to maintain the status quo. I appreciate that he reached out to me & I told him that we will connect soon, but make no mistake, the news is not about what is said in our private conversation, but what else is said by people who never thought they would be exposed and how they are going to be held to account.”
“I’m sorry, I never meant to hurt anyone” was the ending to Jon Gruden’s resignation statement late Monday night. Folks can make their own mind up to the validity of that statement, but the result is undeniable: not meaning to hurt anyone is not the same as policing yourself to make sure you do not. The status quo of tolerating racial and abusive language along with associated behavior isn’t good enough for the big business that is the NFL and shouldn’t be for the rest of society either.
Football is done with Jon Gruden, at least for now, because by his own actions Jon Gruden made himself ineligible to be a leader therein. If that means more accountability for powerful people’s actions when it comes to treating folks — all folks — with respect, then the end result is the advancement of equality further down the field of play. Which is long, long overdue.
The racism and gay slurs are inexcusable but in fairness we’ve all said some pretty harsh stuff about Goodell.Report
I know, I almost called him a Manfred once.Report
I used to think that eventually people would figure out that e-mails are like memos in the company files, not like a comment made in the hall where only a couple of people can hear you. These days, I’m inclined to think they’re not ever going to learn.Report
Concur – If you send an email using a company email address, or to anyone who has a company email address, or to anyone who auto-forwards certain emails to their company email address, one should assume it will be stored until corporate legal is pretty sure no SOLs are violated.
One of the things my wife does professionally is work with legal to develop the kinds of data storage protocols and policies for a company to implement.
Still, we should be glad that such people are either consistently ignorant, or arrogant, such that they always leave a paper trail.Report
I believe he was technically an employee of ESPN at the time doing MNF but the emails were to Bruce Allen, then GM of the Redski- er a ‘Washington Football Team.’Report
It’s more of a pixel trail.Report
I think I’ve finally mastered email.
Learned when I’d articulate in some detail (and rather colorfully — I am a liberal arts major, after all) a business process that was not performing properly… and Management would forward up-the-chain. Not exactly getting thrown under the bus, more like being thrown on top of the bus… while Mgmt was comfortable *inside* the bus.
Now my emails read like a cryptogram “about that thing we discussed Weds, have you seen any movement from you know who or are we waiting for the other one to do the analysis of the project first?”
Oh, and always ended with “Please advise” to suggest that the other person is driving the bus.
Now Teams? My only response is ‘Who dis, fed’Report
LMFAO!Report
I went to work at Bell Labs at the point when e-mail was just coming into common use, and Usenet was beginning to be a thing. We had it hammered into our heads — we were professionals, not careless college students, and should speak accordingly. For the most part, haven’t managed to shake that.Report
I also. I will only use ascii smiley faces, never emojis.Report
You may have noticed that I don’t use emojis. My ascii smiley face reflects that I have a pointy nose :^)Report
I had to have a conversation with one of my supervisors that boiled down to “Dude, if you ask ME a question but plan to just forward my response to a client. LET ME KNOW FIRST.”
Not because my emails are unprofessional or anything, it’s just….if I’m writing a quick explanation for why something isn’t working, or why some feature doesn’t do X or whatever, there’s a lot I don’t include when sending it to a guy who sits in on all the meetings and knows the stuff pretty well.
Which means he forwards a quick: “X doesn’t work like that. We could add it, but it’s been low priority, due to issues with Y and Z.” to a client who then has ALL THE QUESTIONS and it turns into 10 emails.
Whereas if he just says “A client wants to know why X doesn’t work the way he wants” I’ll write up a much lengthier email, stripped of jargon and internal context, to explain to the customer what X does and doesn’t do, and the limitations involved. An explanation the client will understand.
Emails, like any other form of writing, should be considered permanent records and should be tailored to the audience.
Too many people who should understand both seem to be confused by at least one of those two.Report
Heh, it’s the opposite for me… I feel like an English teacher with my tech team.
“Are you proud enough of this response for me to forward it to the customer? Will it bring joy and delight them?”
Romani eunt domus doesn’t cut it.Report
Comment of the day, just for that last line.Report
Gruden is the rare case where the email should have been a meeting.Report
That’s right, Raiders *SUCK*. If you wanted to keep your job, you should have beat the Bears.Report
It’s too bad for Gruden that he wasn’t arrested for domestic violence or drunk driving 10 years ago instead of writing these emails. Everyone knows that saying bad things is far worse than actually doing them.Report
White football coach is, at best, a casual racist and homophobe. Proof emerges, embarrassment ensues, head rolls. Dog bites man. Film at 11:00.Report
Yeah, this wasn’t as much ‘cancel culture’ as he well and truly lost the locker room.Report
I love how we’ve shifted “consequences of my actions” to “cancel culture” in general.
And the loudest whiners about it tend to be the very people screaming about taking responsibility and hating participation trophies, while screaming at their local school board that a teacher is teaching CRT in third grade and should be fired and all the books in her classroom burned.
Because that’s not cancel culture, amirite?Report
I’m not sure Doug has “shifted it” rather than remarked on it. Then again, I’m not sure you’re saying he is. Maybe you’re both referring to others.Report
Oh I wasn’t referring to Doug. I was merely noting that “cancel culture” seems to have become synonymous, among certain sets, with “It’s totally unfair that my actions or words can ever have any negative consequences ever”Report
Indeed.Report
I recall that Andrew and I had a conversation not very long ago about sinning and grace. The main focus was Ken Jennings and whether or not he had sufficiently apologized for his social sins as to become eligible to be accepted as the host, or at least a host, of Jeopardy!. While Andrew leaned towards “no,” and I leaned towards “yes,” it’s fair to say that the whole idea of the relative degree of social sins, acceptability of apologies, and extent of grants of forgiveness are super murky and unclear; no one really knows how this works.
I wonder if there will ever be grace available for Jon Gruden? If so, how long would it take? What does it look like – does he get invited back into the NFL some day? I tend to think no, he can’t ever come back from something like this. How does he ever step into a locker room with dozens of African-American players and convince them that deep down, they have his respect?
But who knows. I see some people get grace and some people don’t. Society seems to have never condemned, say, Michael Jackson (either before or after his death). We needn’t get into a debate about whether pedophilia or racism is worse; it’s sufficient to note that both are Very Very Bad. (And there does indeed seem to be condemnation of other famous people with similar sins as MJ: take as an example R. Kelly.) But one gets punished and the other doesn’t.
I don’t understand this at all. I don’t think anyone really does.Report
You’re making 10+ Million dollars a year and you blow yourself up over this.Report
Some people, when they are making $10+M / year get this idea in their heads that they can’t blow themselves up like this.Report
I know, I’d blow myself up for half that.
(Pretty sure this is a negotiated exit… he may not get all $10M, but I’m pretty confident he’s getting a good pay off to exit).Report
He’s on year 3(?) of a 10 year contract. If he gets two years pay then he’ll walk out with half of what he could have.
And he’s done. It’s retirement time.Report
Pretty sure a $50 million, less taxes, retirement fund is nice and comfy.Report
I don’t know how Chucky runs his life and finances, but it’s surprisingly easy to f**k that up.Report
I’m going to earn $10 million a year for the rest of my life so of course spending $9.5 million is fine. In fact it’s even ok to spend $12 million, I’ll make it up next year.Report
He’ll only have Frack you money… gave up the full F*ck you money.
When we’re talking about spending at those levels, we’re not really talking operational costs but investments that might indeed have to be unwound. Obviously he’s heading for fewer $$ than if he didn’t leave, but I expect he negotiated the right amount to manage the unwinding process.Report
My heart doesn’t bleed for him, but that doesn’t change that he paid mid 8 digits so he could (in writing and repeatedly) randomly insult his boss, his employees, and his customer base.Report
Every Technology Acceptable Use policy in the country contains language that sending sexually explicit material is grounds for disciplinary action and possible termination, as is any communication that might indicate animus towards a protected class.
Tangent: everybody defending Gruden is just making a tacit admission about what their Sent mail folder looks like. Gonna make sexual harassment or racially motivated firings much more likely to go to discovery, I would imagine.
“Well, getting fired because you were black and pregnant is patently illegal, but it can be difficult to prove.”
“Look at his Twitter history”
“Heh, okay, yeah this is probably worth going for discovery”Report
https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/162118/sizova-v-nist/?
This has been a controlling judgement in this sort of thing for federal agencies for almost 2 decades now.Report