Goodbye Gruden and ongoing Snyder investigation discussion

Red Right Ankle

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There’s no doubt a ton of this stuff going on in the league, every day. And Gruden rightly suffered consequences. The fact that this was bright to light through an unrelated investigation and then leaked in strange ways to the media, however, suggests the league office doesn’t have much interest in addressing it in any systematic or serious way. It’s going to have a chilling effect for a while, but if I had to guess most around the league won’t learn the right lesson.

As for Goodell, I’ll never understand the owners’ allegiance to the guy. The pessimistic view is that they keep him around because he’s amoral and part of the old boy’s club, but then his office selectively snipes prominent people. He’s really the worst of both worlds.
As long as he keeps the owners' dirt swept clean, they will keep him around. They don't give a shit about anyone else in the league but themselves. Coaches, NFL staff and players are tolerated until they are no longer useful, then they are gone. The moment Goodell stops carrying their water, he is gone.
 

Justthetippett

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As long as he keeps the owners' dirt swept clean, they will keep him around. They don't give a shit about anyone else in the league but themselves. Coaches, NFL staff and players are tolerated until they are no longer useful, then they are gone. The moment Goodell stops carrying their water, he is gone.
This is sort of my point though. If I was an owner I’d just be waiting for the shoe to drop and hoping it wasn’t me. Assuming, like many owners, I was oblivious enough to just keep doing the same things, acting entitled and wealthy. I can’t imagine Mark Davis would have wanted things to go this way (even if he’s not the direct consequence, this doesn’t reflect well on his brand either), but maybe I’m wrong about that.
 

Red Right Ankle

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This is sort of my point though. If I was an owner I’d just be waiting for the shoe to drop and hoping it wasn’t me. Assuming, like many owners, I was oblivious enough to just keep doing the same things, acting entitled and wealthy. I can’t imagine Mark Davis would have wanted things to go this way (even if he’s not the direct consequence, this doesn’t reflect well on his brand either), but maybe I’m wrong about that.
Firstly, they never think it's going to be them. They are billionaires, they imagine themselves as predators, not prey.

Secondly, they view the other owners as competitors. The others are probably enjoying this since it probably blows up the Raiders season.

That is why Goodell can get away with messing with one of them and the others allow it. So long as he never pisses off too many at once (since it requires a majority to oust him), he can rely on the other owners' selfish sociopathy to protect him.
 

Justthetippett

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Firstly, they never think it's going to be them. They are billionaires, they imagine themselves as predators, not prey.

Secondly, they view the other owners as competitors. The others are probably enjoying this since it probably blows up the Raiders season.

That is why Goodell can get away with messing with one of them and the others allow it. So long as he never pisses off too many at once (since it requires a majority to oust him), he can rely on the other owners' selfish sociopathy to protect him.
All fair and I don’t disagree. But some will likely run into trouble because of this mindset. And to come back to the point I was trying to make originally, this dynamic certainly won’t improve league culture.
 

Average Reds

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Schefter seems to be implying on ESPN that the NFL leaked the second batch of emails to the NYT after Davis didn’t take action against Gruden over the weekend.
I mean, it seems obvious that this is exactly what they did.

The NFL could not have been clearer about the fact that the emails where he disparaged Smith were only the tip of the iceberg. (Edit: To be clear, we can only know this in hindsight. However, given the sheer number of emails he exchanged over many years with Allen and others, Gruden had to know what the league had.) Which means that they were giving him a way out, in the sense that he could have resigned, issued an apology, and then embarked on a rehabilitation tour to put his life back on track.

When he decided to tough it out, they released everything and now he is destroyed.

Whatever one might think about the NFL, Gruden refusal to understand what was happening here is almost incomprehensible.
 
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ManicCompression

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This is quite a capper to your string of posts today which, taken collectively, amount to “Sure, what GRUDEN said is obviously wrong! But some people can say hateful things and just not understand that they’re hateful, and I want to make sure we’re not grouping them in with Gruden!” It’s not entirely clear to me why it’s so important to you to make this point over and over in a thread that was started because a very popular coach and NFL personality wrote that a Black man had lips the size of tires. But what is clear to me is that if you actually had any genuine interest in understanding why the term “grandfathered” is offensive you could have Googled it and educated yourself in perhaps a quarter of the time you spent today making your argument that just because someone says hateful things it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re hateful.
Because I do actually care about how we engage with each other and I find parroting phrases like "intent doesn't matter" to be counterproductive. Had RW made his point in another way, I would've left it alone, but I see this phrase everywhere online, in mainstream media articles, on television, and it's taken as fact when it doesn't make any sense at all, and I could list you tons of examples and hypotheticals why. Over the past year, we've seen time and again that creating opaque ways of communicating that obscure the meanings of words and phrases does an incredible job of creating well-educated, upper class in-groups, but it does a terrible job of moving along the project of improving relations in America.

There's no shortage of people online, in the media, in this thread calling Gruden a racist. I didn't feel like I needed to add to that discussion even though I agreed because there wasn't much more to say. But this I find as a point of disagreement, which is why I brought it up, and I think I managed to do so without making it personal (unlike yourself). If you don't want me to respond, don't reply to my posts, or send me a PM. It's pretty simple.
 

joe dokes

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That is why Goodell can get away with messing with one of them and the others allow it. So long as he never pisses off too many at once (since it requires a majority to oust him), he can rely on the other owners' selfish sociopathy to protect him.
Or, as Earl Weaver (or maybe Lasorda) used to say, "there's 24 guys on the team. 8 always hate me, 8 always love me, 8 dont give a shit. The trick is keeping the 8 who hate me away from the 8 who dont give a shit." There's probably fewer than one-third in the "hate" category in the NFL, but I'm sure there's quite a few who dont give a shit about stuff like power and the trappings of it, as long as the checks clear.

EDIT: Casey Stengel apparently said it first.
 
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Hoya81

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While the Gruden situation certainly required action on the league’s part, I’m not sure it’s smart in the long run for them to have revealed that there’s a trove of potentially explosive emails from a fairly tumultuous time in league history just sitting out there. What’s to stop the lawyers in the St. Louis relocation case from digging around and finding out what Kroenke told the other owners about ditching STL?
 

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Look at the WFT and their "investigation" All that happened was that no report was issued and Snyder became more powerful by buying out his partners and taking on more debt that the league allows. My guess is there was a "change the name and we will not release what is in this report" dealings going on.
Agreed---and that is precisely the PR-focused, short-term obsessed, somewhat shady approach Goodell has always taken to things. I agree that so long as league is as successful as it has been and he doesn't go after too many owners he will stay in place---and I also believe that the NFL could do better and play an even more central role culturally which will have benefits financially. But not with Goodell running things...
 

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Whatever one might think about the NFL, Gruden refusal to understand what was happening here is almost incomprehensible.

I disagree. Gruden was treading water, doing what he could to try and keep the job that came to define him.

What is incomprehensible to me is how Mark Davis had all of this material on Friday and let Gruden, and the franchise, drift for three days.
 

Average Reds

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I disagree. Gruden was treading water, doing what he could to try and keep the job that came to define him.

What is incomprehensible to me is how Mark Davis had all of this material on Friday and let Gruden, and the franchise, drift for three days.
It's entirely possible that I'm having trouble keeping up, but I thought the NFL sent the emails about Smith to the Raiders first and then released the others after Davis didn't act.

Regardless, all's well that ends.
 

loshjott

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It's entirely possible that I'm having trouble keeping up, but I thought the NFL sent the emails about Smith to the Raiders first and then released the others after Davis didn't act.

Regardless, all's well that ends.
I think the NFL sent all the emails to the Raiders on Friday expecting Davis to act over the weekend. Then when he didn't they leaked them to the NYT Monday.
 

Average Reds

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I think the NFL sent all the emails to the Raiders on Friday expecting Davis to act over the weekend. Then when he didn't they leaked them to the NYT Monday.
I have no words for the stupidity. None.

Edit: and I now see the Davis quote from The Athletic where he acknowledges that the emails were sent to the Raiders on Friday.

I can only conclude that the Raiders were willfully obtuse about the full content of those emails, which caused the NFL to leak what was actually in those emails.

Just … yuck.
 
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glennhoffmania

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I think the NFL sent all the emails to the Raiders on Friday expecting Davis to act over the weekend. Then when he didn't they leaked them to the NYT Monday.
I asked about this last night. Is there any confirmation about the timeline involving when the NFL received the emails and when they sent what to Davis? If they had the rest of the emails weeks ago but sat on them, and then leaked them to the NYT when it appeared that Gruden may survive, that seems incredibly shitty.
 

sodenj5

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I think the NFL sent all the emails to the Raiders on Friday expecting Davis to act over the weekend. Then when he didn't they leaked them to the NYT Monday.
Sounds a lot like Davis was willing to sweep it under the rug or cover for Gruden, and the NFL said, “GTFOH.”
 

loshjott

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Schefter didn't actually say the NFL leaked the emails to the NYT but he didn't have to. He said the Raiders had the emails on Friday and the NFL expected them to act. Then on Monday the Times printed the emails.
 

reggiecleveland

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Or, as Earl Weaver (or maybe Lasorda) used to say, "there's 24 guys on the team. 8 always hate me, 8 always love me, 8 dont give a shit. The trick is keeping the 8 who hate me away from the 8 who dont give a shit." There's probably fewer than one-third in the "hate" category in the NFL, but I'm sure there's quite a few who dont give a shit about stuff like power and the trappings of it, as long as the checks clear.
Attribute to Casey Stengel, so probably written by a NY writer who had ol' Case sign off on it.
 

Shelterdog

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Sounds a lot like Davis was willing to sweep it under the rug or cover for Gruden, and the NFL said, “GTFOH.”
Yeah that's my take. And someone (maybe another owner, maybe Goodell) was forcefull in telling Davis that he simply has to fire Gruden. The higher minded version of the speech would be along the lines of "the benefits of being an NFL owners are many-- you own a billion dollar franchise and OMG are you going to thrive in Las Vegas where we let you go. The cost is, every now and then, you have to take a hit for the league. And this is your opportunity to do so.
 

Deathofthebambino

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I think the simple answer is Davis didn't do anything Saturday or Sunday was twofold, they had a game on Sunday, and they had to go through their legal folks to figure out the best way to get out from under the remaining 60 million they had on Gruden's contract. As a legal folk, I can tell you that I'm not that accessible during a long weekend, but can't say for certain if that's the case here.

I don't find it particularly coincidental that Gruden resigned (thereby waiving the remainder of the contract). My guess is the meeting between Davis and Gruden went like this:

Davis: You're out, and if you don't resign gracefully, we are going to absolutely shred you in the press for months while we fight you over some clause or other in the contract, and then you'll lose anyway.

Gruden: Fine, I'll just resign.
 

reggiecleveland

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I may get in trouble for this, but oh well.

But, still amazed that we are surprised a guy his age used that homophobic language since it was once common in the macho world of sports. Also that these emails are unforgivable, but shooting players up with painkillers each week is fine.

I said this during deflate-gate, but the brilliance (or luck) of Goodell is keeping concussion, CTE, out of the news. Each minor scandal like this just pushed the pebble into next week, next month, and another year passes with little accountability over head trauma and player health in general.
 

Gunfighter 09

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Is Duece on the emails? If not, why the fuck would you fire him? He's qualified and has had the job for four years.

I have no words for the stupidity. None.

Edit: and I now see the Davis quote from The Athletic where he acknowledges that the emails were sent to the Raiders on Friday.

I can only conclude that the Raiders were willfully obtuse about the full content of those emails, which caused the NFL to leak what was actually in those emails.

Just … yuck.


I think there are two possible explanations for Davis' delays, beyond the most likely, that he was just dithering and taking his time on firing his friend:

- Davis had $60M reasons to get Gruden to resign, rather than fire him. I certainly think he had an obligation to spend a ton of time with the lawyers over the weekend working out the details on how this would go and how much it would cost. There is a chance that Davis actually asked the NFL to drop the additional emails, or was the source (he had them) of the additional emails to ratchet up the pressure to resign on Gruden.

- Davis was pushing back on the league office to get some assurances that the only information that becomes public from the Deadskins cesspool investigation would not just be Gruden. There have to be many, many other people in the league who are sweating a bit because they were on some of those emails. Is anyone willing to be bet that Gruden protege and member of the Deadskins staff, media darling Sean McVay wasn't on any of those emails? How about Kyle Shanahan? If I'm Davis, I want some assurances from the league that the Raiders aren't going to be the only ones wearing this.

Yeah that's my take. And someone (maybe another owner, maybe Goodell) was forcefull in telling Davis that he simply has to fire Gruden. The higher minded version of the speech would be along the lines of "the benefits of being an NFL owners are many-- you own a billion dollar franchise and OMG are you going to thrive in Las Vegas where we let you go. The cost is, every now and then, you have to take a hit for the league. And this is your opportunity to do so.
The Raiders shouldn't owe the league shit for Vegas. The league fucked them out of LA, even though they were the best possible solution to go there and Davis went and got the $750M by fleecing Sheldon Adelson himself. If Goodell said that to Davis, I hope Mark told him to fuck all the way off.
 

EvilEmpire

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I don't find it particularly coincidental that Gruden resigned (thereby waiving the remainder of the contract). My guess is the meeting between Davis and Gruden went like this:

Davis: You're out, and if you don't resign gracefully, we are going to absolutely shred you in the press for months while we fight you over some clause or other in the contract, and then you'll lose anyway.

Gruden: Fine, I'll just resign.
That sounds right.

Given that the newer emails coming out probably made it a lot easier for Davis to convince Gruden to resign, I don't think it is out of the realm of the possible that the league did something that Davis wanted done.

Edit: Beaten by GF09. So yeah, what he said. I agree.
 

TFisNEXT

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I may get in trouble for this, but oh well.

But, still amazed that we are surprised a guy his age used that homophobic language since it was once common in the macho world of sports. Also that these emails are unforgivable, but shooting players up with painkillers each week is fine.

I said this during deflate-gate, but the brilliance (or luck) of Goodell is keeping concussion, CTE, out of the news. Each minor scandal like this just pushed the pebble into next week, next month, and another year passes with little accountability over head trauma and player health in general.
I don't think it's super surprising Gruden used that type of language (esp in 2011). The surprising part is that he did it over official channels to league executives and left a paper trail. That would have been insane even in the 1980s/1990s. How fucking dumb is Gruden? Or maybe he's just a sociopath who thought he was above any consequences.

I also think most here would agree that the league is fine with distracting from player safety issues.
 

BigSoxFan

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I don't think it's super surprising Gruden used that type of language (esp in 2011). The surprising part is that he did it over official channels to league executives and left a paper trail. That would have been insane even in the 1980s/1990s. How fucking dumb is Gruden? Or maybe he's just a sociopath who thought he was above any consequences.

I also think most here would agree that the league is fine with distracting from player safety issues.
Yeah. Nobody is surprised that Gruden said/believes that stuff. But it shows a complete lack of restraint to send it over email.

I always thought of Gruden as an asshole but this obviously takes it to another level. For his sake, I hope he spends the time needed to reform.
 

Shelterdog

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I think the simple answer is Davis didn't do anything Saturday or Sunday was twofold, they had a game on Sunday, and they had to go through their legal folks to figure out the best way to get out from under the remaining 60 million they had on Gruden's contract. As a legal folk, I can tell you that I'm not that accessible during a long weekend, but can't say for certain if that's the case here.

I don't find it particularly coincidental that Gruden resigned (thereby waiving the remainder of the contract). My guess is the meeting between Davis and Gruden went like this:

Davis: You're out, and if you don't resign gracefully, we are going to absolutely shred you in the press for months while we fight you over some clause or other in the contract, and then you'll lose anyway.

Gruden: Fine, I'll just resign.
My hunch is part of the delay was Davis coming to terms with how much of the sixty million he has to pay out and the fact that it was an awful lot of it. Impossible to analyze without the contracts (and Otto could help more than anyone) Frankly I think it's almost all of the sixty--Gruden almost certainly has some good arguments (remember his emails were not when he was a Raider, it wouldn't be suprising if he had simialr off color emails with Davis etc before being hired so the issue was known, etc etc) and IF Chucky is smart and well advised (both obviously questionable but he has been in these negotiuations a bunch of times in his life) it's hard to imagine he'd resign and relinquish pay unless an agreement of some kind as to the 60 million was in place.

EDIT: Of course it's posisble that Gruden relinquished the 60 million on the theory that he's pretty rich already and doing so might help him get back into football. But I'll bet he didn't and he's getting a big payout.
 
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RIrooter09

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Yeah. Nobody is surprised that Gruden said/believes that stuff. But it shows a complete lack of restraint to send it over email.

I always thought of Gruden as an asshole but this obviously takes it to another level. For his sake, I hope he spends the time needed to reform.
Or maybe the league power structure is full of racists? It took 10 years for it to come out so obviously nobody on the receiving end was appalled.
 

nighthob

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This is quite a capper to your string of posts today which, taken collectively, amount to “Sure, what GRUDEN said is obviously wrong! But some people can say hateful things and just not understand that they’re hateful, and I want to make sure we’re not grouping them in with Gruden!”
That is, literally, not at all what he’s saying. And 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of humanity had no idea where the term grandfathered came from. And like pretty much all words, regardless of origin, was used by people in its present sense.
 

Jimbodandy

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Or maybe the league power structure is full of racists? It took 10 years for it to come out so obviously nobody on the receiving end was appalled.
This.

Gruden wasn't worried about his racist emails to the fucking "Redskins" (what they were called then) of all organizations to get him in trouble. Racists, misogynists, and homophobes stick together.

What Gruden didn't understand (or perhaps consider) is that emails are discoverable.

My company has a 6mo autopurge and annual "don't keep this shit around if you don't want it on the front page of the Globe" training for a reason.
 

BaseballJones

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The origin of words versus their present usage is always an interesting discussion. There are homophobic slurs and references, of course, that had completely different etymologies. The term "grandfathered" is one whose origins I was totally unaware of but pretty clearly it doesn't really have, in common parlance today, a racist meaning. Doesn't mean it never has (obviously), but I don't think any but a teeny tiny percentage of people would mean it or take it that way today.

On a related note, for years, following sports or playing fantasy sports, I always used the term "trading block". Then I went to the National Museum of African American History and Culture (the Smithsonian in DC) and I saw an actual trading block, where slaves were put on display for potential buyers. I had never put the two together until that incredibly powerful moment when it dawned on me.

And I've never used the term in sports since.
 

Dave Stapleton

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I may get in trouble for this, but oh well.

But, still amazed that we are surprised a guy his age used that homophobic language since it was once common in the macho world of sports. Also that these emails are unforgivable, but shooting players up with painkillers each week is fine.

I said this during deflate-gate, but the brilliance (or luck) of Goodell is keeping concussion, CTE, out of the news. Each minor scandal like this just pushed the pebble into next week, next month, and another year passes with little accountability over head trauma and player health in general.
Not to mention the fact that many of these e-mails actually serve to create the false impression that Goodell is hero or martyr due to Gruden disparaging him for his stances regarding concussions and gay players. I have no clue how supportive he has been with respect to LGBTQ movement but there's plenty of evidence he didn't exactly embrace concussion issues out of pureness of his heart.
 

Phil Plantier

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I'm very much personally interested in the idea of the sins of the father not being visited upon the son.

That is, literally, not at all what he’s saying. And 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of humanity had no idea where the term grandfathered came from. And like pretty much all words, regardless of origin, was used by people in its present sense.
I think your percentage of humanity is off by about 12.4%. I'm sure there was no intent there.
 

Humphrey

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Or, as Earl Weaver (or maybe Lasorda) used to say, "there's 24 guys on the team. 8 always hate me, 8 always love me, 8 dont give a shit. The trick is keeping the 8 who hate me away from the 8 who dont give a shit." There's probably fewer than one-third in the "hate" category in the NFL, but I'm sure there's quite a few who dont give a shit about stuff like power and the trappings of it, as long as the checks clear.
Casey Stengel, actually; who predates both those guys (someone beat me to this)
 

Humphrey

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I disagree. Gruden was treading water, doing what he could to try and keep the job that came to define him.

What is incomprehensible to me is how Mark Davis had all of this material on Friday and let Gruden, and the franchise, drift for three days.
Only the pre-Kraft Patriots would do something as stupid as fire the head coach the night before a game. Not that the Raiders went out Sunday and played well; you have to figure the players knew he was a dead man walking.
 

nighthob

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My company has a 6mo autopurge and annual "don't keep this shit around if you don't want it on the front page of the Globe" training for a reason.
There's an old adage like that, something along the lines of "Never write what you can say in a voicemail, never leave in a voicemail what you can say in person." Although that's more concerned with general legal issues rather than Gruden's disgraceful behavior.
 

Archer1979

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There's an old adage like that, something along the lines of "Never write what you can say in a voicemail, never leave in a voicemail what you can say in person." Although that's more concerned with general legal issues rather than Gruden's disgraceful behavior.
It's actually a rule of mine, never put in writing something that you don't want the last person in the world to see what you wrote at the worst possible time. But that's more or less acts as my filter, not my moral compass. The moral compass filters out ignorant crap like what has come out for Gruden.

Whether he said it in person, prose, or even thought it, its obvious that this transcends the old-school, locker room conversations and is just reprehensible.
 

Jimbodandy

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There's an old adage like that, something along the lines of "Never write what you can say in a voicemail, never leave in a voicemail what you can say in person." Although that's more concerned with general legal issues rather than Gruden's disgraceful behavior.
Agreed. But to answer the question "how could he be so stupid as to put it in writing", it's clear to me that he rightfully didn't fear being narced by the WFT. And he's probably not alone in his ignorance that discovery, however unrelated to him it may be, could fuck him.

"Why is he such a jerk" is a different question.
 

mcpickl

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I’m assuming that at some point since that silly interview in the early 1990s, Tirico figured out that his mom lied to him about who his dad was. He hasn’t repeated those remarks about being Italian in recent years.
As Freddy Linn said, Tirico has more in his past than some silly interview.

Google Mike Tirico sexual harrassment, and you'll find some stuff.
 

nighthob

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The moral compass filters out ignorant crap like what has come out for Gruden.
It does for most people, thankfully. I'm sincerely hoping that my earlier joke about him hosting OAN's first football show comes to pass as that sort of disgrace couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.
 

reggiecleveland

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Casey Stengel, actually; who predates both those guys (someone beat me to this)
Off topic alert
I have been obsessively reading sports books through the pandemic.
I contend that Yogi Berra actually said more of his famous quotations than Casey Stengel. Casey was a master of courting writers when sportswriters were king, especially NYC writers. He was really skilled at badmouthing players and portraying them as dumb while talking the credit for himself.
 

SumnerH

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That is, literally, not at all what he’s saying. And 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of humanity had no idea where the term grandfathered came from.
Our public schools (in freaking Maine, hardly a hotbed of racial equality) talked about grandfather clauses in the context of Jim Crowe back in the 1980s.

It's certainly not surprising that not everyone knows the history, but it's hardly some obscure fact that only a few arcane scholars know about.
 

BaseballJones

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Our public schools (in freaking Maine, hardly a hotbed of racial equality) talked about grandfather clauses in the context of Jim Crowe back in the 1980s.

It's certainly not surprising that not everyone knows the history, but it's hardly some obscure fact that only a few arcane scholars know about.
I grew up in Maine - graduated from HS there in 1987 - and we never learned about this at all. Or maybe I just wasn't paying attention in US History. (possible, since I spent most of the time in that class playing paper football in the corner with three friends)
 

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Jul 15, 2005
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Because I do actually care about how we engage with each other and I find parroting phrases like "intent doesn't matter" to be counterproductive. Had RW made his point in another way, I would've left it alone, but I see this phrase everywhere online, in mainstream media articles, on television, and it's taken as fact when it doesn't make any sense at all, and I could list you tons of examples and hypotheticals why. Over the past year, we've seen time and again that creating opaque ways of communicating that obscure the meanings of words and phrases does an incredible job of creating well-educated, upper class in-groups, but it does a terrible job of moving along the project of improving relations in America.

There's no shortage of people online, in the media, in this thread calling Gruden a racist. I didn't feel like I needed to add to that discussion even though I agreed because there wasn't much more to say. But this I find as a point of disagreement, which is why I brought it up, and I think I managed to do so without making it personal (unlike yourself). If you don't want me to respond, don't reply to my posts, or send me a PM. It's pretty simple.
No. That’s not how it works. When you decide to post your opinions publicly, and repeatedly, people get to respond to them, and to do so publicly. This is the second time that I have seen you respond to someone writing critically about one of your posts by telling them to send you a PM. Or, as you just said to me, they can simply not respond to your public posts. The message, of course, is that you want to say what you believe publicly—you want people to hear it—but you want any dissent to be made in private or to simply go unexpressed.

Something about the phrase “intent doesn’t matter” triggers you. You acknowledge seeing it everywhere in our society. To you, IT is the true threat to improved relations in this country, not the underlying offenses it describes. Just as, in one of your posts, you make clear that the real victim is not the person who has been offended, but the dear old grandma who keeps getting vilified:


Clearly there is an important difference between Richard Spencer saying something racist and a grandma offending someone by accident because she doesn't know the latest microaggressions.
There are no “latest” micro aggressions. You chose that terminology because you want people to know that you are dismissive of micro aggressions. You want people to believe they they’re being dreamed up one after another by the snowflakes in Cambridge and JP in order to wrongly paint grandma as a racist. In fact, micro aggressions are real and they have real emotional, psychological, and financial consequences for the many scores of millions of Americans who experience them. Do you disagree?

As RW has repeatedly explained to you, the only thing that he meant by “intent doesn’t matter” is that it doesn’t matter whether grandma intended to offend someone. What matters is that she did. And if grandma is able to see that and genuinely understand it, then she CAN learn and she CAN grow and she can apologize in a way that is meaningful to the people who were offended.

The passage of time is a difficult and tricky business. The world keeps moving even as we grow older and comfortable with what we knew to be true in our younger days. I personally have found it difficult to understand the emerging recognition of non-binary gender identity. It wasn’t immediately clear to me why my daughters and their friends kept using “they” to refer to people of all genders regardless of how they identify. Traditional gender roles certainly made sense to me when I was younger, and they still kind of do. But I have learned that they don’t necessarily make sense for the people who have come after me. And so I have learned to recognize and respect this new normal. Regardless of my intent when I refer to a non-binary person by their birth sex, I am causing them pain. It doesn’t matter that things were different in my day. What matter is that things are different today. I am not the victim when it’s pointed out to me that I have hurt someone. They are the victim for having been hurt by me.

So do I understand that this is a strange new world for grandma to negotiate? Of course I do. But if all grandma says is “I don’t know why people are offended by this. I’m not sure what’s offensive about it. I wasn’t *trying* to offend anyone,” then how can grandma learn, grow, or meaningfully apologize to the person she offended?

What makes it worse is if in failing to learn and grow, grandma makes light of her own ignorance as to why something is offensive. That’s what happened when you wanted us all to know your feelings about “grandfathered” being an offensive term. You could have just been clear about that but instead you used it as an opportunity to ridicule what you appear to believe is another ridiculous thing created by the snowflakes: gender-neutral language. But, again, if you truly were interested in knowing what’s offensive about the term, you could have just looked it up. But it read to me as if you weren’t.