The NFL’s Big Transparency Problem Part I

What does a DEA raid, a vote for the head of the players’ union and Jon Gruden’s emails from 10 years ago have in common?

What a tangled web…

The DEA performed a raid on the Washington Football Team’s head trainer, at both his residence and his office at team headquarters last week. However, 650,000 emails had been tucked away for nearly four months prior. Regardless, the first domino to fall was a coach from a different franchise.

DeMaurice Smith is the head of the NFL players union and never before has he faced more opposition retaining his position than now. Smith was in danger of not having enough votes to reach the threshold of 22 votes to secure his next term. Many players felt he caved in to ownership during the collective bargaining negotiations. Calls for new leadership were getting louder than ever before. That was until Friday morning, prior to the vote, once the news broke Smith ended the day with exactly what he needed to be reelected. I’m in no way insinuating he had any involvement in it, but the timing sure was strangely beneficial to him.

The Wall Street Journal broke the initial news detailing Las Vegas Raiders head coach Jon Gruden’s transgressions and that started the clock on the final days of the Gruden era. Initially there was only a derogatory statement with racial undertones. What followed was an ugliness all too common in American society. The racist, homophobic and misogynistic Gruden emails leaked by the New York Times were the final nail in his coffin.

Plunging Raiders owner Mark Davis and the entire organization into their own personal hell. Davis and the Raiders have appeared tone deaf at best with racial awareness issues, dating back to being one of the last teams to publicly back ‘Black Lives Matter.’ The fiasco with ‘I can breathe.’ Despite George Floyd’s family giving Davis their blessing, it still created a horrible optic.

For an organization who’s pioneering Maverick stood for equality, inclusion and diversity, the nightmare uncovered spit on their core values. ‘Just Win, Baby‘ didn’t include insulting people from different walks of life, nor being regressive in their way of thinking.