Don't Praise the NFL for Jon Gruden's Resignation

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In the middle of this week's Monday Night Football game, Las Vegas Raiders' head coach Jon Gruden made the announcement via the team's Twitter account: "I have resigned as Head Coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. I love the Raiders and do not want to be a distraction. Thank you to all the players, coaches, staff, and fans of Raider Nation. I’m sorry, I never meant to hurt anyone."

The statement punctuated a tumultuous few days for Gruden, following the surfacing of emails connected to an investigation of "workplace misconduct" at the Washington Football Team. Of all the findings (at least the ones released), the splashiest headlines came from Gruden's correspondences made over the course of a seven year period. He made misogynistic comments about female referees, shared pornographic images with other NFL personnel, made racist comments about the executive director of the NFL Players' Association, and used homophobic language in relation to a gay player and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. A real "who's who" of shitty behavior.

Though Gruden's resignation was just that—a resignation—the response has been a stereotypical war of opinion. On the surface, it's convenient to say "good for the NFL for doing the right thing," though all the league has essentially done is retweet the news of Gruden's departure. It's even more convenient to cry cancel culture (the fastest way to lose an argument these days), despite the league's tendency to simply its slap stars on the wrist and move on. Unless you're Colin Kaepernick, of course.

But what happened to Gruden isn't "cancelation." Yet again, we've lost the plot on what repercussions are: the consequences you face for bad things you've done. What happened to Gruden is what should happen to a public facing figure with a 10-year, $100 million contract. He called someone a faggot, used racist terminology, and sent nude photos to colleagues in an official capacity. That's not being "politically incorrect." It's gross. It's unprofessional. And it's not in-line with the job. Releasing these correspondences and putting pressure on Gruden to resign because of it isn't a savior act from the NFL; it's the bare minimum of what should have been done. And for once, the NFL did that. A new, albeit low, standard.

The context for those standards lies in how the league has historically handled player misconduct, mainly its tendency to largely ignore the off-field indiscretions of its marquee players. Just this year, Houston Texan quarterback Deshaun Watson was accused of sexual assault by 22 different women. Twenty-two. Though not playing this season, he's still rostered. Kansas City wünderkind Tyreek Hill managed to dodge the shadow of his 2014 domestic violence arrest, where he choked his then-pregnant girlfriend. That doesn't account for a barrage of child abuse allegations from 2018 and 2019. Antonio Brown, despite allegations of sexual assault and battery, can be found on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' roster. The list goes on, and includes some of the league's biggest stars. Ben Roethlisberger and Peyton Manning, two of the most celebrated QBs in the history of the league, have both been wrapped up in sexual assault and misconduct allegations. Roethlisberger was briefly suspended, six games eventually reduced to four. The league and its fans moved on.

These megawatt stars with gigantic paychecks? They're the people whose names brandish the backs of little kids. They're icons of the sport, and because of the culture that the NFL has fostered, we'll never know for certain whether the legacies they've built are golden through and through or simply draped in cheap gold leaf. None of this is to say that Gruden's actions, reprehensible and unacceptable as they may be, are on the same scale as alleged rape or domestic violence, but if we can justify the dismissal of Gruden for years of terrible rhetoric, then surely the NFL can have a "come to Jesus" over its roster of players with shady pasts.

Also lost in the Gruden story is its catalyst: the investigation of the Washington Football Team and the claims of "workplace misconduct," following complaints from 40 Washington Football Team employees. In July, after an investigation of 650,000 emails was complete, the investigation was considered done. Case closed. We all went into the July 4th weekend and never looked back. Now, all these months later, a small subset of messages have come out, with Gruden at the forefront. Are we expected to believe that, of all 650,000 emails, Gruden was the only person to have crossed the line in a league with a storied past of closing its eyes when people...cross the line? It's convenient to have one man fall for terrible behavior as of the result of 650,000 emails. It's past the line of absurd that the NFL can't be bothered to release a report detailing what else was in these emails.

The NFL doesn't deserve a pat on the head for having a tangential hand in Jon Gruden's removal. Rather, this should be an inflection point for how the league handles bad behavior. The NFL should be pressed to do a better job of holding all members of its organization accountable. If bigotry-laden emails about the commissioner are good enough to call for a resignation, then surely some of these other incidents are as well.

Setting the bar at the bare minimum is frustrating at best. But it's still a new standard the NFL has to hold itself to. The next time someone who sells a lot of jerseys gets wrapped up in something awful, how they handle it will be wrapped in this context. Maybe then the league will give us something substantial to praise.

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