Boom! Gone. Equal opportunity. Question mark. Question mark.
Jon Gruden (photo courtesy Business Insider)
Two months after the self-proclaimed NFL elite and punditry had clumsily and hastily — and yet successfully — witch-hunted and troika’d the misguided and foul-mouthed — and yet once Super Bowl-winning — Jon Gruden, where a litany of hate speech allegations included an ostensible racial slur made in a private statement suddenly gone public–the firing of Brian Flores,-one of roughly three African-American top-flight shot-callers in the league–came as a disarmingly daunting surprise and an exemplary non-sequitur.
In mid-October, the league’s honchos seemed to unanimously lambaste and decry Gruden’s leaked email rhetoric as offensive to African Americans and running contrary to the values and spirit of this very league–amid a host of other virtue-signaling epithets, of course.
Now, I spent many a night discussing the issue even with my non-football pals, so I’m under a delusional impression my stance has been broadcast already to the whole world, and the argument does not warrant a rehashing. Anyway, very long story short, Gruden is not exactly your political correctness-tamed New York Times hack to string Pulitzer-worthy sentences, let alone in private conversations. Coming from an almost paramilitary locker room setting of dozens of alpha males psyching up for the win, you do not quite expect the man to mince words, censor himself, or pretend to be more enlightened, empathic, and sophisticated than that very setting had sculpted him to be.
But back to the league officials…. Protecting and ensuring equal opportunities and meritocracy, you’d say?
Brian Flores (photo courtesy, NY Post)
Nah, scroll forward to January ’22 — for all his faults and missteps, granted, Brian Flores was beginning to drag the many-year bunch of bunglers, whose uniforms got ever bluer from season to season–as was the mood of their crestfallen fans–back to the map of playoff contention, for the first time perhaps post-Dan Marino. And now he’s done with. Boom, equal opportunities, they said. Equal treatment, they insisted. Add to this the (somewhat predictable and justifiable, in this case) canning of Anthony Lynn, and you are getting the picture.
The NFL, to my mind, has literally shot itself in its muscular leg, the same one that helped them hobble their way through sponsorship obligations and image promotion stunts. That one-legged beast is deceptively stealing part of the limelight from the potential thriller of 49ers vs. Cowboys late this week or a fourth, yawn-inducingly predictable MVP for the semantic chicanery master of a QB, Aaron Rodgers … who will most likely miss out on the ring again?
Should I venture a bet?
