Jon Gruden publicly defended himself for the first time on Tuesday, telling a pack of college football supporters in Arkansas during a question-and-answer session that the content of the leaked emails that got him fired—the ones that were racist, anti-LGBTQ and mysoginistic in nature—was “shameful.”
He added that he was “ashamed about what has come about in those emails,” before pivoting to an abridged version of what will likely become his campaign speech for a third life in professional football. He mentioned that he has a marriage still intact after three decades and that he’s a churchgoer. He said he raised three good boys, and pointed out that no one else in the room can claim they’ve never made mistakes in their life.
This is, ultimately, why Gruden believes he deserves another shot at being a head coach. He said he hopes he is forgiven.
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Some of what Gruden said was not unreasonable. We have all made mistakes. We are all entitled to the unsexy, uphill road to forgiveness, which includes recognizing the root cause of our troubling beliefs or actions and changing them. No one is without mistakes or regret. We’ll opt not to dunk on Gruden utilizing his tenure in the church, or the length of his marriage, as proof that he’s not the person who comes across in those correspondences. It would be far too easy, and just about everyone with a football blog already got to it in the immediate hours after his comments were revealed.
The lingering confusion here deals with Gruden failing to understand why he won’t be given another chance to coach an NFL team. At the end of his apology, Gruden took aim at his former employer, ESPN, and mentioned that he doesn’t want to watch the channel anymore “because I don’t believe everything is true. And I know a lot of it is just trying to get people to watch. But I think we’ve got to get back to reality."
The comment felt like a familiar appeal to the “cancel culture” crowd. A sort of dog whistle for those who believe the media exists solely to shame and bury someone, and that this apparatus is ultimately the paperweight keeping Gruden’s career from flourishing again.
It also ignores the fact that a “cancel culture” doesn’t really exist in professional sports if you are good enough and play an important enough role in a team’s success. Gruden himself should understand the most basic number in a coaching playbook: You make an example out of someone who can be made an example of. Cut the fourth-string running back for missing curfew. If the starter does the same thing, you tie yourself in knots trying to pretend it’s a different situation.
Forgive us for making a broad comparison here, as we’re mixing incredibly different offenses with varying degrees of severity. Deshaun Watson became the opposite of canceled after his alleged history of predatory behavior was made public. Matt Patricia wasn’t canceled after a previous report of aggravated sexual assault surfaced, merely because the Lions hoped he would be really good at his job. Sean Payton wasn’t canceled over Bountygate, which was a massive scandal at the time. Bill Belichick wasn’t canceled for Spygate or Deflategate. Pete Carroll wasn’t canceled for being tied to 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Urban Meyer wasn’t canceled for any of the myriad offenses that should have done him in. Jack Del Rio is still the defensive coordinator of the Commanders, despite calling the attack on the United States Capitol a “dust-up.”
The people who paid the price, ultimately, were the ones who failed to outweigh their misdeeds with production. Carroll is still in Seattle. Payton, who also left the Saints while being courted by Tom Brady and the Dolphins, resulting in the Dolphins being fined and losing draft picks, will become the highest-paid coach in NFL history at some point in 2023 when he’s ready to return to the sideline.
It feels callous to point this out, but is there any doubt that if Gruden had won the AFC West at 13–3 in 2020 and was 5–0 before the news of his leaked emails became public last year, that there’d be some team trying to tap dance its way into bringing him on board in ’22 once said club felt like people didn’t care as much anymore? If Gruden’s tenure wasn’t pock-marked with puzzling drafts and mammoth whifs in veteran free agency, wouldn’t there be some owner out there forcing his public relations manager to pen a hollow statement about contrition and the opportunity to create meaningful change through this acquisition?
Gruden gets to be forgiven because, again, it’s a chance afforded to all of us, presuming we put in the work. He doesn’t get to make it seem like everything was going swimmingly before the big, bad media came along and conspired to rip him out of the sport. If that were true, he’d have plenty of company at these Q and As.
