Over a month ago (geez, June flew by fast), Eugene Chung, a former NFL player and assistant coach,claimed that he was told by an unnamed team that he was “not the right minority.” This sparked outrage among NFL fans, players, and media alike. The NFL jumped to action, launching an internal investigation trying to uncover the truth behind Chung’s statements.
Now, as the calendar flips to July, the NFL has concluded their review and determined that...nothing can be confirmed or denied.
This “verdict”, if you can even call it that, from the NFL is just another example of why internal investigations are a backwards concept in the first place. “Hey, we’re going to look into this issue involving ourselves. Don’t worry. Of course there won’t be a conflict of interest. Of course we will try our hardest to get to the truth and not determine what the outcome should be based on our public image. Why would you even think that?” Um, well, because that’s the first conclusion any rational person would come to. Why not just have an outside source determine what really happened? The NFL is one of the largest corporations on the planet. I’m sure they could afford hiring a company to look into Chung’s claims and determine what actually happened.
I’m not even that upset that the NFL didn’t find anything. The fact that Chung refused to name the owner and/or team involved coupled with the fact that every team would obviously deny those allegations would almost certainly lead to an inconclusive result. It’s the audacity of the NFL to come out and tell everyone to trust what they’ve done despite the fact that the league has routinely lied to its fans in the past.
The league and its teams have lied about pre-draft prospect visits, its own popularity, the severity and adverse effects of concussions, the list goes on and on, so when the NFL tells us to trust them...why would we? They’ve done nothing to earn our trust.
The only investigation the NFL has run recently that actually yielded any sort of result (even if it was pretty much meaningless and merely symbolic) was the Washington Football Team investigation that ended just today and resulted in a $10 million fine to be donated to charity.
However, everyone already knew how awful the Washington Football Team’s culture was. One quick Google search and anyone can quickly realize how much Dan Snyder sucks. So, why did it take them over a year to finally … do this? Probably because they wanted to minimize backlash. That’s it.
The NFL only cares about two things: its public image and money. If the NFL really wanted to figure out the truth of the Eugene Chung accusations, they probably could’ve, but why would they when either outcome would result in the league looking bad? But funny enough, by choosing to take the safe route and attempting to avoid conflict altogether, they made themselves look bad. How ironic.