Las Vegas Raiders coach Jon Gruden has another email problem.
On the heels of a Wall Street Journal report earlier this week that Gruden wrote a racist trope about NFLPA President DeMaurice Smith in 2011, it was revealed Sunday the coach admitted to disparaging NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell in other messages.
The ESPN report said the league would not specifically say what Gruden wrote about Goodell. However, Gruden fessed up to Chris Mortensen.
“I was in a bad frame of mind at the time [in 2011], and I called Roger Goodell a [expletive] in one of these emails too,” the Raiders coach told ESPN on Friday night. “They were keeping players and coaches from doing what they love with a lockout. There also were a lot of things being reported publicly about the safety of the sport that I love. I was on a mission with high school football [in the Tampa, Florida, area] during that time, and there were a lot of parents who were scared about letting their kids play football. It just didn’t sit well with me.”
One powerful voice is calling for the NFL to handle the situation with a strong response.
“The insensitive remarks made by Jon Gruden about DeMaurice Smith are indicative of the racism that exists on many levels of professional sports,” Rod Graves, the executive director of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, said in a statement Sunday morning. “Furthermore, it reveals that the journey for African Americans and other minorities in sports, is riddled with irrepressible mindsets at the highest level. It is our hope that the League and team ownership will address this matter with a remedy commensurate with these painful words. This is yet another inflection point in a society fraught with cynical social blinders, absent of respect for the intellectual capacity and leadership of minorities. When will it end?”
Gruden’s emails also included harsh words for a handful of team owners who were involved in the 2011 labor disagreement that led to a lockout.