Within any situation in which multiple lawyers and outside public relations firms are involved—the NFL’s equivalent to a Warren Zevon song—there is typically a salacious version of events presented by the accusatory attorneys and an indignant response from the accused, as if what’s been presented is so entirely untrue it’s barely worth the hundreds of thousands of dollars the team likely spent crafting the perfect defense to it.
In the middle? Often what really happened.
In case you don’t know the latest controversy I’m referring to, on Tuesday, ESPN reported former Cardinals executive Terry McDonough is suing the franchise for stalling his career progress. He says owner Michael Bidwill was abrasive toward pregnant employees, “created an environment of fear for minority employees” and directed a cheating scandal in which everyone was supplied with burner phones to communicate with suspended general manager Steve Keim (Keim missed a little more than a month for an extreme DUI). The accusing party also says Bidwill intercepted the results of a damning survey to make the Cardinals’ workplace seem a bit less like working in an NFL coal mine.
Bidwill, unsurprisingly, denies all of this. There’s a handy web page containing a detailed rebuttal that will run longer in word count than this column.
Alex Gould/The Republic/USA TODAY Network
Rather than get too deep into the weeds on the details, which there will be time to do later, let’s simply acknowledge the fact that these wildfires keep popping up everywhere—and that NFL owners just gladly agreed to extend the commissioner, who, at best, is walking over to these blazes with 12-ounce bottles of water.
For a while, I think many of us were comfortable with the relative cuteness of the setup. Roger Goodell was old Mr. Belding from Saved by the Bell, trying fruitlessly to uphold order while all the cool kids cruised around under his nose, behaving as they saw fit. I think many of us accepted that this is an owner-driven league and that Goodell is successful because he doesn’t misunderstand the battlefield. He is the shield for the NFL’s shield, and not the commander keeping them all in line.
But at what point do we need a legitimate disciplinarian in office to start clamping down on this? While I’m not siding with McDonough until all of this plays out, the Cardinals were voted one of the worst franchises in the NFL by a survey of NFL players. Steve Wilks, who was fired after one season as Arizona’s coach after going 3–13 in 2018, mentioned the situation in Arizona when he joined the Brian Flores lawsuit. It’s not as if this was some model franchise getting hit unexpectedly on a bit of drive-by legalese. There were some notes in the complaint box.
And then there is everything still simmering around the league outside of Arizona. What about the voyeurism lawsuit that was settled in Dallas? What about the state of the Commanders? What about that Flores case going to court over racial discrimination in coach hiring practices? What about every year when about a quarter of all franchises are engulfed in some public display of incompetence?
I understand the difficulty of overseeing 32 franchises. It’s not like Ray Kroc kept every McDonald’s employee in line for decades. These are dozens of buildings filled with desperate people under the largest employment microscope on planet Earth. There is a devastating level of backward politics and mistreatment in this league that General Patton himself couldn’t have straightened up with a decade at the head of command.
But do we just stop trying? Or, are we to take the cynical route that every franchise is probably cheating, and that the ones not cheating are somehow doing their fan base a disservice? Do we just assume that hypercompetitive environments have to contain a little bit of sexism, racism and career sabotage? Do we just allow the people involved to shove it all through an arbitrated process and pay a little bit of money to make it go away, not the least bit curious about what kind of example it sets for everyone else, the kind of people who revere these owners as some kind of business savants worth mimicking?
It was somewhat encouraging to see the NFL slap Dolphins owner Stephen Ross on the wrist last year for skirting the tampering rules, even if that punishment was really to distract from other, more severe sins (such as tanking). His team lost significant draft capital and a little more than a million dollars. There was also a strongly worded statement that aired out some of his dirty laundry, making it actually feel like dirty laundry and not just the cost of running a business in the NFL. It might be nice to see Goodell try something similar if these allegations against the Cardinals are found to be true. The more we can make human mistreatment and cheating feel like human mistreatment and cheating, the less it feels like the whole league is burning down and that there’s no one very interested in putting the fire out.
