The chickens are coming home to roost. But the loudest clucks haven’t been heard yet.
The fallout from the excellent reporting from the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times has been proven that Jon Gruden is a homophobic misogynist racist — the bigotry trifecta.
But as the NFL is in the midst of yet another scandal where race and gender are at the center of the conversation, it’s important to keep your eye on the ball — Colin Kaepernick.
As much as the NFL and Roger Goodell would love for the attention around Kaepernick and his continued blackballing from the league to stop being a reference point for their unfairness and mistreatment for one of the former faces of the league, his continued absence is a glaring reminder of just how unjust the league continues to be — despite the apologies that have been made and the laughable propaganda knows as the “End Racism” and “It Takes All of Us” messages on display in end zones. That’s why it’s so convenient that Kaepernick’s Netflix series coincides with this moment as it will debut later this month.
When Kaepernick and Eric Reid settled their collusion case with the NFL in 2019, it was a win for the league — as it potentially stopped some of its deepest and darkest secrets from being aired out in public.
Check this out from the New York Times report:
“In numerous emails during a seven-year period ending in early 2018, Gruden criticized Goodell and the league for trying to reduce concussions and said that Eric Reid, a player who had demonstrated during the playing of the national anthem, should be fired.”
In the wake of what was discovered in Gruden’s emails, one can only think what may have been said between coaches, general managers, team owners, television commentators, and the commissioner in private about one of the most polarizing figures in the game’s history in emails — as we now have evidence that this is a crowd that is dumb enough to say these things in electronically distributed messages. And if you’re willfully ignorant enough to think that Gruden is a lone wolf, then you also probably think that the events of January 6 were a field trip.
Unearthing the smoking gun of emails in which Kaepernick was candidly discussed by those in power in the NFL feels so much like a fantasy that it’s reminiscent of a script from M. Night Shyamalan.
But, if anyone were able to get their hands on them, it could actually “Inspire Change.”
The last few days have been disheartening, but there is a comedic silver lining. Somewhere, Urban Meyer and Dan Snyder are toasting their glasses to Gruden, as the man that looks like Chucky created a scandal so impactful that it’s taken the spotlight off the drama that they created for themselves and their teams — pushing them off the front page. For now.