Their banter flies in the face of the league’s public denouncements of racism and sexism and its promises to be more inclusive amid criticism for not listening to the concerns of Black players, who make up about 70 percent of rosters. circle of peers, where white male decision makers felt comfortable sharing pornographic images, deriding the league policies, and jocularly sharing homophobic language. Taken together, the emails provide an unvarnished look into the clubby culture of one N.F.L. The correspondence was first reported by The Wall Street Journal and confirmed by The New York Times. In that email, Gruden, who is white and was working for ESPN at the time, criticized Smith’s intelligence and used a racist trope to describe his face. Gruden exchanged emails with Allen and other men that included photos of women wearing only bikini bottoms, including one photo of two Washington team cheerleaders. Gruden said in that interview that he had used an expletive to refer to Goodell and that he did so because he disapproved of Goodell’s emphasis on safety, which he believed was scaring parents into steering their sons away from football.īut Gruden’s behavior was not limited to 2011. Gruden told ESPN on Sunday that the league was reviewing emails in which he criticized Goodell, and explained that he had been upset about team owners’ lockout of the players in 2011, when some of the emails were written.
The league said last week that it shared emails with the Raiders in which Gruden made derogatory comments. player to publicly declare that he is gay.
And in 2018, he was hired for his second stint as the head coach of the Raiders franchise, which includes defensive lineman Carl Nassib, the first active N.F.L. He had won a Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers following the 2002 season. Gruden, Allen, the N.F.L., and the Raiders did not respond to requests for comment.Īlthough not with a team at the time, Gruden was still influential in the league and highly coveted as a coach.