How the NFL’s Power Structure Prevents Jon Gruden from the Who and Why of His Takedown

The NFL has reached a point of such blatant wickedness and overt politicking that we aren’t really that surprised by its machinations anymore.

Jon Gruden’s quixotic effort to find out who leaked the damaging emails that destroyed his coaching career will march on. Someday, at some point, we will figure out who exactly determined the contents of a boomer’s decade-old correspondence was appropriate grist for their own personal advancements.

Whether someone who isn’t Gruden cares about the results is a separate matter altogether and says a lot about the direction of the NFL moving forward.

From ESPN on Wednesday, we were provided a handy suspect list. Among the potential candidates: commissioner Roger Goodell, former Commanders owner Daniel Snyder, NFLPA head DeMaurice Smith and Colonel Mustard with the candlestick in the library. The thoroughly reported piece is well worth your time. However, it’s fair to assume that, because none of these alleged leakers raised even an ounce of surprise in any of us, the “smoking gun” proof would do little to satisfy Gruden’s (understandable) need to confront his executioner.

Think about it for a moment. Pretend you are explaining this situation to a friend and relaying the ultimate verdict to someone who is (blessedly) not glued to their cellphone screen.

Gruden’s effort to find out who leaked the damaging emails that destroyed his coaching career will march on :: Kirby Lee/USA Today network

• So, it turns out that the commissioner did it to exact some combination of personal revenge and political finesse.

• So, it turns out the disgraced owner of the Commanders did it to distract people from how dangerously toxic his workplace environment had become.

• So, it turns out that the director of the NFL Players Association, who was insulted with a racist trope in one of the emails and also happened to be facing a difficult reelection bid for his job the same day the emails were released, did it to exact some combination of personal revenge and political finesse.

How is their response anything other than: “Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Where do you want to get tacos?”

The NFL has reached a point of such blatant wickedness and overt politicking that we aren’t really that surprised by its machinations anymore. Look at dossiers and takedowns that have been delivered separately on almost every presidential administration since the turn of the millennium. Stuff that, if you parsed out the details and juxtaposed them against a vision of a truly reasonable and forgiving society, would split your head open. Truly horrifying behavior.

Please don’t think I’m downplaying or dismissing the journalism here, or in any of the aforementioned political matters. The fact that we are still chasing these stories means that we do care. That there are still people interested in showing us how far we’ve strayed. While Gruden may be the only one surprised by the results of his lawsuit, there is still value in having the process play out to a crowd of trained cynics.

We’ve made our case, time and time again, on the NFL becoming far too big for its own good. We’ve made the analogies, be it the Titanic or the escape shuttle from Don’t Look Up hurtling through space into unknown territory. In almost every office, behind almost every hand on a lever of control somewhere exists a brain heavily skewed by financial goals, personal vendettas or power grabs.

How funny is it that the NFL has embodied this so purely that we can’t quite yet ascertain which person decided to clip a football coach and forever banish him from the very activity that has gotten him up in the morning for the better part of four decades?

One could argue that this makes the NFL no different from our political system, or the power dynamics of your mid-sized accounting firm and that we all wake up the next morning no worse for the wear. The idealist in all of us would love for football to once again represent the true meritocracy in life that we all seem to crave, but this report is just another reminder of how removed we are from our hopes and dreams.

Talk to people close to Gruden, and it’s clear he feels like he was shot in the back, that his emails were used as a chess piece in a game that had very little to do with the contents of his messages. Any survivor would deserve to know the who and the why. Closure, while eye-opening, can also bring with it a measure of peace.

Conflicting that peace, of course, is the idea that it could have been anyone. That it could have been so many people. That we are dealing with a power structure capable of producing such consistent mania in the first place.