*He’s doing too much. He’s got to go. And gone he is. We’re talking about Jon Gruden, the Las Vegas Raiders coach.
Over the weekend he was making news for his racist emails about executive director of the NFL Players Association, DeMaurice Smith’s lips and his intelligence.
On Monday (10-11-21) it was also discovered that he used racist and homophobic slurs in emails with those in the league during his days as a broadcaster for ESPN’s “Monday Night Football,” a New York Times report found.
That brings us to to where we are at this moment. Gruden, knowing that he had really effed up, finally did the best thing and stepped down as coach of the Raiders, NFL reporter Tom Pelissero and SportsCenter reported on Monday.
As we alluded to, the Times’ story and Gruden’s exit comes a few days after an email that he sent in 2011 was made public by the Wall Street Journal. In that email, as we said, he used racist terms to denounce DeMaurice Smith. When asked about it over the weekend, Gruden admitted he went too far, but that he didn’t have “a blade of racism” in his body.
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Meanwhile, on Monday, the Times also found and published multiple instances of Gruden using derogatory terms in emails with others around the league, including former Washington Football Team executive Bruce Allen. Gruden criticized players who knelt during the National Anthem, denounced the hiring of female referees, and in at least one instance, said that teams shouldn’t be pressured to draft “queers” (a reference to Michael Sam, who came out shortly before he drafted in the 7th round by the St. Louis Rams).
The emails were sent between 2011 and 2018, the time span when Gruden was a broadcaster for ESPN. “The comments are clearly repugnant under any circumstance,” an ESPN spokesperson said in an emailed statement on Monday.
All the forgoing is bad enough, but what we really set the stage for Gruden to have to get out of Dodge were other emails where Gruden referred to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell as a “faggot” and “anti-football pussy.” And for good measure he said that former player Eric Reid, who along with Colin Kaepernick was one of the most notable players who protested during the National Anthem, should be fired.
Gruden was hired by the then Oakland Raiders, where he was the head coach from 1998 to 2001, before the 2018 season. The team moved to Las Vegas in 2020.
