OUT OF TOUCH
Gruden resigns as Raiders coach after homophobic, misogynistic emails revealed
Jon Gruden resigned as Raiders head coach after an explosive report Monday night in the New York Times revealed he used homophobic and misogynistic language in emails over a sevenyear period ending in 2018.
Only a few days after a first email leak caught Gruden using racist language, more emails surfaced showing that Gruden mocked the drafting of the first openly gay player in NFL history, did not support the emergence of women in the NFL as officials, vulgarly used the female anatomy as an insult, and called for the release of players protesting during the national anthem, according to the Times.
Raiders owner Mark Davis met with Gruden to accept the Super Bowl-winning coach’s resignation. Assistant coach Rich Bisaccia will take over as interim head coach.
“I love the Raiders and do not want to be a distraction,” Gruden said in a statement released by the team. “Thank you to all the players, coaches, staff, and fans of Raider Nation. I’m sorry, I never meant to hurt anyone.”
Gruden’s emails, from as far back as 2011, were sent to then Washington Football Team president Bruce Allen and others while he worked for ESPN as a “Monday Night Football” analyst and NFL draft quarterback guru. Throughout a seven-year period as an omnipresent media figure, Gruden was one of the most coveted available coaches in the league before securing a whopping 10-year, $100 million contract with the Raiders in 2018.
Gruden’s homophobic language included calling NFL commissioner Roger Goodell a “fa---t” who should not have pressured then-Rams coach Jeff Fisher into drafting “queers,” according to the report. The Rams made openly gay Michael Sam a seventh-round draft pick in 2014.
While Sam’s career with the Rams was short-lived, the Raiders’ Carl Nassib became the first openly gay active player to appear in the regular season just this year. In what now rings like a phony sound bite of support, Gruden told the Las Vegas Journal Review after Nassib revealed his sexual orientation in June, that he “learned a long time ago what makes a man different is what makes him great.”
Gruden’s authority and credibility in a locker room already was in danger after last week, when it was uncovered that he sent an email to Allen about NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith containing this racist insult: “Dumboriss Smith has lips the size of michellin [sic] tires.” Josh Jacobs, a black star running back, told reporters this week that they did not sense racism from Gruden. Gruden’s subsequent apology included denying he is a racist, but the latest emails reviewed by the Times reveal a pattern of disturbing thinking. Targets of his misogynistic insults included President Joe Biden (during his term as vice president) and Caitlyn Jenner after she transitioned in 2015. Closer to home for the league, Gruden received an email with a sexist meme of a female referee and replied, “Nice job roger.” On one of the most landscape-changing issues the NFL has ever faced — social justice — Gruden embodied the racism that protesting players warned about by saying Eric Reid should be fired for kneeling during the anthem and writing that Goodell “needs to hide in his concussion protocol tent” for supporting racial equality and criminal-justice reform, per the report.
The emails were sent by the league to the Raiders last week, according to NFL Network, but Gruden still was allowed to stalk the sidelines Sunday in his 229th — and likely final — regular-season game as an NFL head coach. He led the Buccaneers to a Super Bowl win in 2002. Gruden sounded freshly aware of the old content Sunday when he explained to ESPN, his employer at the time, that he used inappropriate language to describe Goodell because he was angry about the team owners’ lockout of the players in 2011, when some of the emails were written. Of course, the vitriol continued long after the lockout ended, per the report, and Gruden claimed he saw Goodell’s emphasis on safety as the cause for scaring parents into holding their sons out of youth football.
Gruden and Allen worked together during the coach’s first stint as Raiders head coach. When Allen moved to head of Washington’s front office, he hired Jon’s brother — Jay Gruden — as head coach.
Jon Gruden, Allen and other prominent businessmen — some with ties to college football — also shared topless photos of women, including one of two Washington cheerleaders. Gruden and Allen seemed to share a laugh over a crude sexual and homophobic joke at the expense of Bryan Glazer, whose family owns the Buccaneers and fired Gruden in 2008.
Allen and many other executives were fired in 2020 as part of a separate workplace discrimination and misconduct investigation in Washington.
None of the findings that led to Washington team owner Daniel Snyder’s $10 million fine and relinquishment of dayto-day control have been shared by the NFL, but these emails were part of the findings and have had a ripple effect across the league and changed the face of the Raiders.