A VILLAINOUS NFL DEVIOUSLY SHIFTS ALL HEAT TO GRUDEN, ESPN
It’s underhanded not to release any of 650,000-plus emails pertaining to its investigation of Washington Football Team’s workplace culture — and let America pillory only Jon Gruden and Adam Schefter
A league doesn’t escape the clutches of cancel culture without being devious. It wasn’t long ago, remember, when the NFL was an endangered blob of chaos and dysfunction. Besieged by cries of racism during the Colin Kaepernick protest movement, exposed by scientific data that fed a brain-trauma crisis, dogged by player arrests — dying a 21st-century death, pretty much — Roger Goodell and the owners were loathed and seemingly not long for a new, progressive, refined world.
But America loves football more than it hates the antiquated, white billionaires in charge. Rather than cancel the league, the people kept watching. All they did was unwittingly enable a sick system. The NFL survived its storms and returned to monstrous levels of prosperity and prominence, undeterred by a pandemic to soar again as the country’s most popular form of entertainment. No longer pressed to look inward and examine the deep-rooted ills of its barbaric, bigoted culture, the league was allowed to move on in the shifty shadows, with Goodell blabbing something in his basement about respecting Black Lives Matter and lauding new safety rules. It was part of a public-relations campaign intended to protect the brand, the almighty shield. But was any of it sincere or real?
The answer today is a haunting, disturbing no — hell, no — as the league refuses to release a smoking trove of 650,000-plus emails beyond those that already have obliterated Jon Gruden’s coaching career and gutted the professional credibility of ESPN and its NFL insider, Adam Schefter. Oh, you think it’s coincidence that damaging emails about Gruden and Schefter were leaked — while the league refuses to publicly release any such emails about the abhorrent workplace culture of the Washington Football Team, the league’s investigation of which is why the email trove exists to begin with. This way, the national discussion is deflected onto Gruden and Schefter.
Very clever of the NFL, wouldn’t you say? Very dirty and sinister of the NFL, too. Make no mistake, Gruden should be banished to another planet, assuming one will have him, after a fresh batch of anti-gay and misogynistic emails were piled atop his racist trope targeting NFL Players Association leader DeMaurice Smith. Just the same, Schefter dropped a stinkbomb on what’s left of independent sports journalism, exposing the “league insider’’ trade as a co-operative sham when he asked WFT president Bruce Allen to approve a draft of an unpublished story concerning 2011 labor talks between the league and NFLPA. All of which only is exacerbated by the close relationship between Allen and NFL general counsel Jeff Pash, as reported by the New York Times and Wall Street Journal after reviewing emails.
“Please let me know if you see anything that should be added, changed, tweaked," Schefter wrote to Allen. “Thanks, Mr. Editor, for that and the trust. Plan to file this to espn about 6 am."
Somewhere, Woodward and Bernstein are shuddering. I am vomiting into a bag. Confirming what I’ve often written about ESPN’s most visible reporters, Schefter is part of a larger ecosystem in which the leagues control coverage via their media partners. So, Schefter indirectly works for the league and draws a paycheck from ESPN — though, not for long, as he prepares to flee Bristol for more riches from a gambling company, possibly Caesars Sportsbook, which just happens to be “The Official Casino Sponsor of the NFL.’’ Meaning, Schefter basically is hurling his excrement at every legitimate news organization by joining a sleaze pit of league officials, team decision-makers and player agents to break agenda-driven information to gamblers. And with his passage to Allen, Schefter has shown he has no integrity, which could lead to scandals if he takes information — which could come from New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft, Schefter’s business partner in another sports gambling company — and uses it for his own financial gain.
Not that the gambling companies care. They just want Schefter’s name value, with no concern about ethics. Soon to follow will be ESPN’s NBA insider, Adrian Wojnarowski, who also is in cahoots with the Bruce Allens and superagents of his league. Just the other day, Doc Rivers made a snide reference to this co-op arrangement when he discovered through an ESPN report that star holdout Ben Simmons was returning to the Philadelphia 76ers. “I’m gonna call Woj and find out what’s going on,’’ said Rivers, who only coaches the team. Conveniently, the report waited until ESPN’s “Monday Night Football’’ telecast had reached halftime.
For the record, a journalist is not supposed to be a functioning part of the organization to which he/she is assigned. A journalist’s job description is to COVER sports or, in the case of a columnist such as myself, SCRUTINIZE and COMMENT ON sports. Schefter stumbled over his own “rubber lips,’’ the term Gruden claims he uses to describe liars, when he tried to explain: “Fair questions are being asked about my reporting approach on an NFL Lockout story from 10 years ago. Just to clarify, it's common practice to verify facts of a story with sources before you publish in order to be as accurate as possible. In this case, I took the rare step of sending the full story in advance because of the complex nature of the collective bargaining talks. It was a step too far and, looking back, I shouldn't have done it. The criticism being levied is fair. With that said, I want to make this perfectly clear: in no way did I, or would I, cede editorial control or hand over final say about a story to anyone, ever."
What a load. If it’s common practice to verify facts through sources, it is not common practice to send an unpublished story to those impacted by the story. Instead of sucking up to Allen, shoudn’t Schefter — who hears all — have been investigating the frat-house enviroment inside Allen’s front office, further revealed through Allen’s horrific email exchange with Gruden? I do not believe a word Schefter says in his mea culpa. I do not believe a word Gruden says in his mea culpa. And the league knew America would react accordingly toward both sacrificial lambs, because the NFL has all the leverage in controlling what is reported and what is not in this institutional debacle.
Television ratings are sizzling, defying downward viewership trends in a streaming age. Live crowds are back in full-scream mode, packing stadiums without masks and, in too many cases, COVID-19 vaccinations. The legal wagering craze is following in lockstep, with gambling companies smothering telecasts with so many sleazy ads that we almost forget games are decided on the field, not inside sportsbooks. In the offseason, media companies agreed to pour $113 billion into league coffers, with a new labor agreement set through 2030.
So, emboldened by unfathomable comfort levels in these otherwise uncertain times, the NFL’s insufferable hubris took over. Instead of purging one of its own — Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington Football Team, a name he accepted while kicking and screaming amid pressure to banish the racist nickname Redskins — the league moved him to the detention hall for a while. In an 11-month independent investigation prompted by a Washington Post series, the NFL discovered a widespread pattern of sexual harassment and bullying within the franchise. Yet Snyder wasn’t forced to sell the team, a path the NBA took to eliminate a racist owner, Donald Sterling. WFT was fined $10 million, chump change, and Snyder was not suspended. He must stand by for a matter of months while his wife, Tanya, takes over day-to-day operations and represents the team at league meetings.
The union is demanding transparency from the NFL. “We have had communications with the league, and the NFLPA plans to request that the NFL release the rest of the emails,” Smith told USA Today.
The same demand was made by lawyers representing more than 40 former Snyder employees. “In response to a yearlong investigation in which more than 100 witnesses were interviewed, and which we believe substantiated our clients’ allegations of pervasive harassment, misogyny and abuse at the Washington Football Team, the NFL has chosen to protect owner Dan Snyder,” attorneys Lisa Banks and Debra Katz said in a statement. “This is truly outrageous, and is a slap in the face to the hundreds of women and former employees who came forward in good faith and at great personal risk to report a culture of abuse at all levels of the Team, including by Snyder himself.”
All you need to know is that the NFL, behind the Goodell facade, is run by Jerry Jones and Kraft. And Snyder is an ally and friend of Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys and richest of the antiquated, white billionaires in charge. They’ve been on yachts together. They’ve filmed TV pizza ads together. And years ago, when then-President Obama was pressuring Snyder to change the Redskins nickname, Jones appeared before the media during a Cowboys-Washington game.
“It would be a real mistake — a real mistake — to think Dan, who is Jewish, has a lack of sensitivity regarding anybody’s feelings,’’ Jones said. “I promise you that.”
Yes, he said that.
And you wonder why the NFL won’t release the abundance of emails on the Washington team’s server. If we ever read them, there might not be enough owners, executives and coaches to conduct a league.
It’s much more convenient for Gruden and Schefter to be the only bad guys, protecting the bigger bad guys.
Jay Mariotti, called “the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he has gravitated by osmosis to film projects.