Watch This Idiot Flush His Career Down the Drain
On Jon Gruden
Dear Readers,
If you’ve been paying some attention to the news this week, you might know that a couple of stories have broken past the sports pages: first, Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving’s refusal to get the Covid vaccine, and (now former) Las Vegas Raiders Coach Jon Gruden saying some truly horrible things in emails. While the Kyrie saga has some interesting contours that we might discuss at a later date, we couldn’t turn down the chance to discuss Gruden. Hope you enjoy!
-Ian and Calder
Jon Gruden Watched His Career Go Up in Flames This Week. What of it?
This past Monday, Las Vegas Raiders Coach Jon Gruden was forced to resign his post after a trove of emails—related to a separate misconduct probe involving the Washington Football Team—were made public that showed Gruden frequently making homophobic, misogynistic, and racist statements. In betting parlance, he had hit the trifecta.
We’d like to start a little before Gruden’s departure, though, when he seemingly believed he might be able to weather the storm. On October 8th, the Wall Street Journal reported that Gruden had made racist comments while referring to DeMaurice Smith, a Black man who leads the NFL Players’ Association. In 2011, Gruden wrote to Washington executive Bruce Allen that “Dumboriss Smith has lips the size of michellin tires.” You would think he could at least spell Michelin right.
Gruden apologized, arguing that while he didn’t recollect the email, it was sent in the middle of heightened tensions, he never should have used that phrase, and he “never had a blade of racism” in him.
The scary thing is, he probably believes it. We doubt he believes himself to be homophobic either, despite saying that the NFL should stop pressuring teams to draft “queers” after one (1) openly gay player was drafted and repeatedly calling NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell a “faggot.” He also probably doesn’t think he’s misogynistic, even though he repeatedly complained about the emergence of female NFL referees and gleefully shared topless photos of Washington Football Team cheerleaders.
For Gruden, all of this talk was completely normal. He used slurs regularly in email correspondence with multiple people over multiple years. He was totally unafraid to express his vulgar beliefs because he knew that the many people with whom he was talking would find them innocuous. You can see some hints of this in how Gruden responded to the original racist email. The fact that he said that he had “no recollection” of sending something that cartoonishly racist should have been the first sign that there was much more where the Michelin tires remark came from.
Gruden, we would imagine, believes that he’s been unfairly targeted. Somewhere, no doubt, he is holed up in his multi-million dollar home complaining about cancel culture. Conservative sports commentators have said as much in public, griping about players still in the league after abusing their wives while Gruden unjustly suffers. (Never mind, of course, that those same personalities would be raising a stink if the NFL ever did anything to address domestic violence concerns.)
But there is some sort of sick truth to this argument. Having said what he said, Gruden does not deserve a place in the league (or, to be honest, in civil society)—and neither does anyone else who shares his sophomoric bigotry. At the same time, because it is so overtly appalling and unacceptable, Gruden’s behavior implicitly raises the bar for what counts as a fireable offense in the NFL. Drop a bunch of unspeakable slurs in your emails? You’re gone. Sign off on a “race-norming” policy that prevents Black players from accessing the health care they deserve to deal with the long-lasting neurological effects of playing professional football? Eh, don’t sweat it. Own a team whose mascot is literally a racist cartoon? You’ll find good company in KC. Oversee a league that persistently undervalues Black coaches? Why hello, Mr. Commissioner.
Gruden’s time is up, and thank god for that. But in an important sense, Gruden is a useful distraction for the NFL. (At this point, it’s worth remembering that his emails only came to light as part of a broader league investigation into claims of workplace harassment at the Washington Football Team.) The NFL has now “concluded” that there were no other emails in that trove worthy of discipline. Based on how comfortable Gruden was firing his own emails off to a wide array of people over many years—and how comfortable the NFL has been with lying to our faces in the past—we find this extremely hard to believe. Will the revelations about Gruden hasten the league's reckoning with its racists and exploitative practices, or will it just give the folks in charge an excuse to keep doing the really nasty stuff while being a little more careful not to leave an email trail? We’re betting on the latter.
RODNEY’S ROUNDUP
Do you want to read about . . .
. . . football’s Frankenstein? “Football made Jon Gruden. Now the NFL must reckon with its creation,” by Sally Jenkins in The Washington Post (October 12, 2021).
. . . one college football coach’s anti-vax madness? “Nick Rolovich Is Marching Towards The Abyss,” by David Roth in Defector (October 15, 2021).
. . . a surprisingly nuanced take on the Kyrie Irving situation? “The Kyrie Conundrum,” by Brian Phillips in The Ringer (October 15, 2021).