Disgusting Mess In D.C.
The big story of the week is a tale of two famous NFL people, Dan Snyder and Jon Gruden.
Snyder is an owner. In 2009, the Washington franchise paid a female ex-employee $1.6 million after she made a sexual-misconduct complaint against Snyder, per a confidential settlement reported by the
Washington Post. His franchise was accused by former team cheerleaders of making lewd videos from off-season cheerleader calendar shoots. Fifteen former employees and two reporters covering the team accused club officials of various forms of sexual harassment and, in several cases, said it was openly condoned by team executives. Former team marketing coordinator Emily Applegate told the
Post she and a female co-worker cried over sexual harassment in lunchbreaks. Applegate said she was told to wear a tight dress for one meeting so male clients “would have something to look at.” One suiteholder, the
Post reported, grabbed Applegate’s friend’s rear, while a reporter who covered the team, Rhiannon Walker, told the team that the director of pro personnel, Alex Santos, pinched her buttocks and told her she had “an ass like a wagon.” The
Post reported another scout, Richard Mann, told a female employee to expect a hug “and don’t worry, that will be a stapler in my pocket, nothing else.” Five former employees told the paper the president of business operations advised female employees to wear suggestive and revealing clothing and to flirt with suiteholders. “It was the most miserable experience of my life,” Applegate told the
Post. One former employee who described abuse from Santos said to the paper her experience with the team “has killed any dream of a career in pro sports.” A former cheerleader said she was encouraged by Snyder to join a close friend of his in a hotel room so they could “get to know each other better.” When the league investigated all of it, NFL counsel Lisa Friel concluded the “culture of the club was very toxic.” Commissioner Roger Goodell said the work environment in Washington “for many years” was “highly unprofessional.”
Gruden is a coach. He sent racist, homophobic and anti-woman emails, stunning in how naturally they appeared to flow from Gruden, to former WFT president Bruce Allen over a seven-year period.
Snyder’s franchise was fined $10 million, less than 3 percent of the team’s projected 2021 revenue. He was not suspended and not asked to liquidate the team. The league ordered him marginalized for a few months, with wife Tanya running daily team operations.
Gruden, who coached a majority Black team that employed the only openly gay player in the NFL, resigned as Raiders coach last Monday.
On opening day 2022, it is very likely that Snyder will be overseeing his franchise again. As of now, no long-term sanction will affect him in any way when he resumes full-time control of the team.
On opening day 2022, Gruden will be in exile somewhere, his career ruined, unlikely at 58 to ever coach in the NFL again.
I am not going to defend Gruden in any way—his emails are indefensible, and now that the sun has shone on them, he absolutely should not be coaching an NFL team. But I am going to ask this: What’s worse: An NFL owner running his team like a sixties frat house for at least a decade, with 40 women coming forward to decry sexist treatment by Snyder or his employees, lives and professional dreams shattered in the process; or a Neanderthal coach sending a slew of terrible emails?
Even if you say they are equally bad (I don’t see how) the fact is that Snyder goes on running his jillion-dollar business next year and Gruden hides in his man cave, unemployable.
This absurdly unfair outcome will stick to Roger Goodell for a long, long time.
And I’m not one who even thinks the NFL was behind the release of the emails. League officials might consider Gruden classless and a clown, I don’t know. But what is Goodell’s job?
Protect the shield. He’s not going to authorize the release of emails in the middle of a season that would indubitably sabotage a hot franchise in a new market. And he’s certainly not going to do it knowing there are other emails in the queue, emails the
New York Times and
Wall Street Journal published last week that showed an overly chummy relationship between Allen and the NFL’s second-in-command, trusted Goodell confidant and legal counsel Jeff Pash. The upshot of those emails painted Pash as a Washington patsy.
I don’t know where the emails came from. Several smart people in the league think the leaks come from the Snyder camp. Maybe he feels steamrolled by the league in its July penalty, though it was certainly exactly the opposite. Maybe (probably) he’s so anti-Allen that he’d have a jihad out for him and anyone close to him, which Gruden is.
Whoever did it, this point remains, as one prominent plugged-in source told me: “The discipline against Snyder was shockingly light. You suspend Tom Brady when you never proved without a doubt he deflated the footballs, and you don’t suspend Snyder for running that kind of operation in Washington. And Gruden gets ruined. It’s not like Roger’s protecting a guy who’s good for the league anyway. Where’s the fairness?”
The league did send the offending emails to the Raiders for their examination 10 days ago, putting the onus on owner Mark Davis to do something about Gruden. Once it was clear that the emails would surface publicly, and they did, with great detail in the
Times account, Davis had no choice. However it was termed, Gruden could not walk into his diverse locker room last week; he had to go. According to someone who knows Gruden’s mindset post-“resignation,” he is of two minds. One: He is miserable about the families of the 22 coaches and numerous staffers he brought to Vegas who will suffer, and perhaps lose NFL livelihoods, because of his hurtful emails. Two: He is angry (“stunned and fuming,” this person said, describing Gruden) that some investigation that had nothing to do with him resulted in the loss of his job. He does understand, I am told, that the release of these emails made it impossible for him to continue as coach.
I haven’t heard so many differing opinions from around the league on an issue in a while. But this one, from one of the smartest people in the NFL orbit, struck me: “This was a Mafia hit on Gruden.”
Often, I’m told, victims of organized crime rubouts never see them coming. Gruden never saw his coming either.
Former NFL coach Jon Gruden. (Getty Images)
What should happen now?
Transparency. The league claims it can’t release the emails because it promised confidentiality to the women interviewed in the probe. There’s a compromise. Hire a neutral party with an impeccable reputation to run an investigation of the 650,000 emails. Release those involving women who approve the release, and those that play a part in the evidence of harassment. Among women who do not authorize the release, use the information from those emails in a report with protection for the plaintiffs. And have a report ready when the offseason begins.
What will happen now?
The league will probably stonewall, figuring the white noise of exciting games and The Next Big Story will bury this one in time. That’s how the league works.
I found myself thinking in the past few days about the Washington franchise. When I was new in the business, in the late eighties, games at RFK Stadium in the District of Columbia were mega-events. The press box would shake in big moments. The owner, Jack Kent Cooke, was nutty and intrusive, but he hired Bobby Beathard and Joe Gibbs to win, and win they did—three Super Bowl titles between 1982 and 1992.
Snyder bought the team in 1999. In the 23 years before Snyder’s reign, Washington was 50 games over .500 in the regular season and won three Super Bowls. In the 23 years of Snyder’s stewardship, Washington is 55 games under .500 in the regular season. Playoffs? Just two wild-card wins. That’s it.
One offensive man, an owner, who is rotten at his job, skates.
Another offensive man, a coach, who is okay at his job, gets buried.
Life in the NFL.
