Not So Private Emails: The NFL Says Goodbye to a Racist Coach
“Dumboriss Smith has lips the size of Michelin tires.” Those are words written by the Las Vegas Raiders Coach Jon Gruden in a private email dating back to 2011. Gruden was talking about DeMaurice Smith, the executive director of the NFL Players Association, and this racist trope he used to describe Smith is common in anti-black imagery. Coach Gruden also used homophobic terms to describe various NFL owners, coaches, and reporters. For example, he called NFL commissioner Roger Goodell a “f----t” and a “clueless anti-football p---y.” These examples are just some of Gruden’s many racist, misogynistic, and homophobic comments through recently leaked emails sent between 2011 and 2018.
Many people are wondering how anyone got ahold of these emails in the first place. During a sexual harassment investigation involving numerous NFL employees in July of this year, Jon Gruden’s offensive emails happened to be discovered. The first few emails were leaked and brought to the public’s attention by the Wall Street Journal’s Andrew Beaton on October 8, 2021, and the pressure was instantly on for the NFL to respond. Then, on October 11, more emails were leaked, and at this point, the NFL most likely would have fired Gruden, but later that Friday after the second leak, Jon Gruden resigned from his position as the coach of the Raiders, only four years into his 10-year deal.
Jon Gruden became very well known in the football world during his career, leading Tampa Bay to a Super Bowl win in 2003 and becoming a major presence on ESPN. On October 12, post email leak, ESPN radio show Keyshawn Johnson, who was coached by Gruden when Tampa Bay won the Super Bowl, remarked, “He’s just always been a fraud to me. ... From day one, he’s been a used car salesman. And people bought it because he inherited a championship team built by Tony Dungy and Rich McKay.” Many other NFL players have unsurprisingly shown little sympathy for Gruden. Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rogers responded to the situation on the Pat Mcafee Show by saying, “These opinions do not have a place in the game.” Rogers made it clear that he does not believe Gruden’s emails are reflective of the league. We seem to be hearing from NFL players and employees that nasty emails aside, Jon Gruden wasn’t all he was cracked up to be as a coach.
Discrimination of any kind doesn’t belong in our world, not even in football’s classic “manly” sport. So although it’s disappointing that there are still people in this world that behave the way Gruden did, it is reassuring that the public and the football community agreed that what Gruden said was unacceptable. We can only hope that Gruden and the people around him learn from his mistakes and work towards making the NFL more positive and inclusive.
