Last Sunday Jon Gruden was coaching the 3-1 Raiders for a share of the AFC West lead with a $100 million dollar contract, endorsement deals, and was a leading personality in the NFL. By Tuesday he was out of a job, out of the NFL, his name removed from Tampa Stadium’s “Ring of Honor”, and was being furiously scrubbed out of Madden 2021 by the video game manufacturer. In two days! His head must be spinning like it has been some terrible dream. There have been some very public falls from grace, but the swiftness of this got my attention. Hell, OJ Simpson still has his name on Buffalo’s stadium, and he killed a couple people (allegedly). The machinations from being removed from society today are very swift indeed.
It should be noted that I am not a Jon Gruden fan. In fact, I have been shouting about how shitty of a coach he is for a couple years. His “intense” personality always made him seem like a demented gym teacher that takes joy in bullying kids. He’s kind of the guy from the asshole jock lunch table that picked on weaker kids to get laughs from his douchebag buddies. The emails that sunk him to me read like the loudmouth shit talk of a 15-year-old boy in a letterman jacket, not an educated adult male. I do not like what I have seen of Jon Gruden the man, and I’m sure if I ever spent time with him, I would dislike him even more. You just know he has terrible taste in music, my guess is a heavy lean towards the bad 80s hair metal he rocked out to with his Boyz (with a “z”) in his acid washed jeans years. However, does this punishment fit the crime?
Jon Gruden wrote in a 2011 email that DeMaurice Smith had “lips like Michelin tires”, in another called Roger Goodell a “faggot” and “an anti-football pussy”. I think we can all agree that these are bad. Really bad. The emails were uncovered during an investigation into the mess that is the Washington Football Team and a workplace misconduct incident involving Washington’s Bruce Allen, who is one of Gruden’s Boyz. I have no doubt that Gruden and his Boyz talk to each other like this all the time, especially in 2011 when these emails were exchanged. I think it is reasonable to assume that the machismo world of professional football will have some attitudes and language that might be lagging behind the rest of proper society, especially magnified if we look ten years back. Not only did I instantly think that Gruden had sent them, but I could also hear his voice reading them.
I don’t understand how a guy that wasn’t employed by the NFL at the time, that sent an email to his friends ten years ago, and now loses his life’s work. His very existence is being scrubbed out of anywhere he’s been. He didn’t say these things publicly. He didn’t take action that resulted in any of the individuals suffering injustice. He didn’t say it while employed by the NFL. He loses everything because of a conversation he assumed was private amongst friends a decade ago. Meanwhile some people are howling that the NFL needs to be “more transparent” and let everyone comb through everyone’s emails to see if anything upsets them. Setting aside the fact these are private businesses and not public institutions, what gives anyone the right to scour communications across a decade to see how the ideas and language used at that time holds up to a public magnifying glass in 2021? How about we take a look at Bank of America? What about Doctors Without Borders? The Peace Corps? Could anyone survive that kind of scrutiny?
Free speech is messy. I am very socially liberal, and I routinely disagree with most points made by the Far Right. Still, they have the right to have ideas I don’t like and express them. People can believe what they choose to believe. That’s the basis of free speech. It runs both ways. You have to listen to ideas and words that might upset you. It’s the cost of doing business in a free society. I don’t agree with what Gruden said in his emails, but I also understand the context of his high school cafeteria bluster language. I’m sure he’s said all kinds of things that are way worse, but he’s a loudmouth jock douchebag, and that’s what they do. I think it’s a dangerous turn of events when anyone can be crushed in 48 hours just because they expressed something that upsets our current barometer of what is acceptable. Gruden is an asshole, but damn. There wasn’t even a trial. The court of public opinion is an avalanche now.
I am given to wonder now if I have transitioned into becoming like my grandfather. I remember in the late 1970s my grandfather was telling me a story from the late 1940s after WWII. In the story he mentioned how he got off the train and a porter assisted him with his luggage. He used the word “darkie” in describing the porter, something it never occurred to him might be offensive. I was so shocked hearing the word, I can’t recall the hook of the story he was telling. My grandfather had no idea that he had committed this language faux pas, as I’m sure he and his well-heeled Chicago friends used all kinds of language like that (and much worse). Society and culture had evolved, and no one told him. Those guys were still in 1948.
I remember when I discovered the word “retard” was no longer permitted in polite society. This is a word I probably heard 117 times a day growing up. I remember a teacher telling a kid at a blackboard “you see that retard mistake you made?” and we all laughed as the word’s usage was equivalent to “absentmindedly stupid”. It wasn’t malicious and even the kid in the crosshairs didn’t take it that way. The word had evolved new meaning over years of constant usage in our little world. There are entire generations out there that have been called and called people “retard” daily. Then one day, years later, I was telling a story about someone at a retail store that couldn’t understand what I was asking them, and I used the word “retard” in describing them. The room got cold. I had this split-second realization that I just been my grandfather using “darkie”. I was that old man at the dining room table saying “Orientals” and his niece coughs up her soup to admonish him “Grandpa! The term is Asian American!” as he looks on perplexed at what he did wrong. I was suddenly 87 years old. Language had moved on me, and the word I used for “stupid” had become loaded and I didn’t know it. I have made the move onto the word “nimrod” which has been going OK so far.
Society moves quickly now. I wonder if I am my grandfather on this Gruden thing. Maybe I am looking at it wrong. Maybe I fell behind on the seriousness of this particular language and I don’t know the latest set of rules. Maybe there are some things you now cannot say regardless of context or intention, even in private. That doesn’t seem like a country dedicated to free speech to me, even if that speech is considered inflammatory by many. I think people should let rip with whatever is on their mind. I can take it. Not everyone can, as the Dave Chapelle current wildfire attests. Oh well, the real question is how it impacts this week’s Raiders line…
Suffice to say, I’m not touching that Raiders game. I have been ice cold. I am not seeing things clearly right now. I have been bad so far this year. The last thing I am going to do is wander into trying to interpret how the Raider players feel about the organization, how the new coach commands the sidelines, or how distracted the Raiders are in general. Denver has lost two straight, and this looks like a spot to “get right” with a Raider team in a shit storm, but I’m not touching it. Too many unknowns.
Against all better judgement, I am going to take Jacksonville over Miami in London. No one was happier about this Gruden thing than Urban Myer. At last, someone to get the heat off Urban and he gets to hide out from the press in London all week too. However, this isn’t so much a bet on Jacksonville as it is one against Miami. Miami has somehow avoided being lumped into the pile of shit teams of Jacksonville, Jets, Giants, Falcons. They might be worse than all of them even if they were healthy. Instead, they are going to rush Tua (who sucks) back in at QB with his fractured ribs because Brissett has been such a disaster. They are dead last in offense, and Tua isn’t going to help. Jacksonville heads over to London every year. It’s a road trip that differs from other team road games, and they should have it down as an institution. Jacksonville won’t win many games this year, but this better be one of them. Jacksonville +3.
You know what they say. “No better way to turn around a losing streak than to bet on the Texans”. Yes, the Texans are terrible. They’re 1-4 and Davis Mills isn’t exactly DeShaun Watson. However, let us consider the 1-4 Colts. I do not think the Colts are much better than the Texans, much less not 10.5 points better. The Colts have one win this year, against Miami. They have been in most of their games, they just haven’t won. I don’t see how that translates into them covering a double digit spread on anyone. I have no intention of watching a second of this game. Houston +10.5
I think the Bills are the best team in the NFL. I think the Packers might be #2. I am going to assume the Bills handle an injury ravaged Titans, and the Packers outscore the offensive challenged Bears. Sometimes it is important not to overthink it. The two good teams will beat the two average teams. Buffalo money line. Green Bay money line. Buffalo/Green Bay parlay.
Current Record: 6-10 (ouch)
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