The Jon Gruden Email Saga

Where I Completely Bury the Lead and Probably What Comes Next

Jon Gruden was forced to resign as head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders Monday night because of racist and homophobic emails he sent over several years. 

Gruden resigned as head coach of the Raiders and is all done when it comes to working in any capacity in the NFL. Or at any media outlet that works with the NFL. There's ZERO chance he gets elected to the Hall of Fame. He's now radioactive. He also has nothing left to lose which may make him potentially dangerous (more on that later).

When I heard of the situation, I had two main questions about the circumstances. First - who released those emails? From the outside it looks like someone carrying out a serious vendetta against Gruden. Secondly - who was Gruden sending those emails to? You don't send emails to yourself and if Gruden was openly expressing racist and homophobic views - Gruden had to feel comfortable the person(s) he was corresponding with held the same viewpoints.

Turns out the emails from Gruden were leaked to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. The emails were said to be part of "a separate workplace misconduct investigation that did not directly involve him."  This investigation was on the toxic workplace otherwise known as the Washington Football Team. And the leaks, according to Occam's Razor, came from the NFL offices on Park Avenue in New York.  

So the answer to my first question has to be that the emails were leaked by the NFL's offices. But why? Well it turns out in those 650,000 emails reviewed by the league office in their investigation of Dan Synder's toxic workplace - Gruden had emails where he called NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell among other things a "f*ggot" and a "clueless anti football pussy." 

Roger Goodell and his Park Avenue sycophants are small minded people who are known to disregard facts (and science such as the Ideal Gas Law) to pursue their vendettas (as Tom Brady and the New England Patriots can attest). Even though the investigation into the WFT ended this summer last week "Goodell received a summary of their findings." The timing is more circumstantial evidence Goodell or his lackeys were the leakers 

The answer to the second question of who Gruden was communicating with turns out to be "Bruce Allen, the former president of the Washington Football Team, and others." The others it seems mostly were some prominent local Tampa business people who must be very happy today to have their names publicly involved with this.

Bruce Allen was an awful General Manager and would have never worked in the NFL again even before his part in this email drama unfolded. It will be interesting to see if there's any fallout to the businessmen who participated in the email threads. They're not employed or associated with the NFL. They were collateral damage.

The New York Times revealed that Gruden also used a homophobic slur to describe the Rams draft choice of Michael Sam and included in their story Gruden describing then Vice President Joe Biden as a "nervous clueless pussy." It was also reported that Gruden had a number of emails disparaging some current NFL owners. Wonder why details of those emails weren't disclosed?

With nothing left to lose Jon Gruden may decide to go on a full war path against the person he considers an "anti football pussy." Could Gruden file a lawsuit and get access to all the 650,000 emails in discovery? Could his team then leak some of the other of the leagues dirty laundry that's sure to pop up in a 650,000 email trove? This was an unforced PR error by the league and the leakers. 

Please do not misinterpret anything I've written here as a defense of Jon Gruden. His views expressed in his emails are indefensible. But what we have learned time after time is that the cover up is often worse than the crime and Jon Gruden's viewpoints were very bad. The eventual fallout from this story could be even worse for the league including maybe even finally costing the empty suit Roger Goodell his job (God willing).

Of course I could be completely wrong and instead of this being a vendetta against Jon Gruden - this could be the hors d'oeurve to the main course of Daniel Synder. If the Raiders have to universally rid themselves of Jon Gruden - how could Daniel Synder possibly be allowed to keep his franchise if even more egregious emails come out from his email account and those 650,000 emails the league recently reviewed?

Stay tuned.