thelesterlee
Jon Gruden won a Super Bowl 18 years ago and from that point on, he was a made man in the NFL. Taking over the color commentary for Monday Night Football when he ‘retired’ from coaching and leveraging his ESPN power to steal a 10-year $100 million contract from the Oakland Raiders to return to the sidelines, Gruden looked to be untouchable.
Untouchable despite having a 117-112 win-loss record. Average as hell. He took over a Tampa Bay Buccaneers team that Tony Dungy built up and he beat a Raiders team in the Super Bowl that he had coached the previous year so he knew all of their plays. One of the ultimate scammers in the game.
But after some old emails leaked from over the last decade, it’s been made very clear that it wasn’t his Super Bowl ring that made him untouchable. Nope, it’s being an old white guy with money that has allowed him to maintain this undeserved power.
Gruden made fun of the lips of the director of the NFL Player’s Association. That old school classic racism. They mocked the NFL for hiring women referees, they shit on the NFL for ‘forcing’ the Rams to draft an openly gay player, they said Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid should be gone because they kneeled during the National Anthem, they were pissed about Washington having to change the name of their football team from the color of skin of native Americans which is an odd hill these people continue to die on.
Basically every lazy boring conservative white guy take was in their email chain between Gruden, former NFL GM Bruce Allen, Sean McVay’s grandfather and the guy who runs Hooters. THE BOYSSSS. We just hate women, gays, brown people, diversity, and societal growth as a whole.
It’s impossible to defend these emails without inadvertently revealing that you agree with these assholes. “people shouldn’t lose their jobs because of emails they sent a decade ago”. Personally, I don’t email slurs because most of my emails are just begging people to pay me to write words. It wouldn’t behoove me to use the f-word but I suppose it worked for Gruden so I’ll give it a try next time.
But if you zoom out, this story is such a bigger deal for any non-white guy in any workplace. This is what your bosses are saying. This is what they think of you. They make fun of your lips, your lifestyle, your beliefs and don’t you dare be an attractive woman working for these men because they will send photos of you to each other.
And they are given power. Jon Gruden walked into Oakland and immediately traded Amari Cooper and Khalil Mack—two stars—because they wanted a raise. That annoying Italian electrician that always calls into sports radio complaining about ‘ungrateful athletes’ because they’re jealous of how much money they make. That same guy ran the Raiders and made terrible decisions out of spite.
Shout out to Jon Gruden for resigning. Fuck him. But that doesn’t end this problem. It’s a bandaid. How many more coaches and executives think and speak just like Gruden and why is the answer 99% of them?
But Gruden is out. Time for Derek Carr to step up as the leader of the team. Even though every in the NFL thinks he’s a loser. So yea, Raiders season is over.
