Former Arizona Cardinals vice president of player personnel Terry McDonough has filed a request for arbitration with the league, alleging cheating and other misconduct by owner Michael Bidwill.
Based on information that Pro Football Talk acquired in a communication between former COO Ron Minegar and Bidwill from December 2019, just before he stepped down, at least some of what McDonough alleges is true.
Minegar worked for the Cardinals from 2000-2020 and stepped down a few months after he was arrested for a DUI.
Nothing about the alleged cheating McDonough accuses Bidwill and the Cardinals of doing is confirmed with Minegar. However, it does confirm Bidwill’s workplace demeanor.
According to PFT, Bidwill changed over the years, going from smiling and happy to angry.
“I acknowledge that you have had to deal with a ton of issues this past year, but you come to work angry every day,” Minegar wrote, per PFT. “You talk down to almost everyone. You’ve become arrogant and condescending. You need to get credit for everything when things are going well and are quick to point the finger at everyone else when we are struggling.”
This was just a couple of months after Michael’s father, Bill Bidwill, died.
McDonough claims that employees work in fear because of Bidwills’s demeanor and behavior.
While nothing Minegar says shows any real misconduct, it does confirm that Bidwill is apparently hard to be around and work with.
McDonough alleges that Bidwill shut down an employee survey. Minegar confirms this, while the team claims it used the survey to make organizational changes.
It appears both are true.
Bidwill apparently shut things down when he saw the negative responses about him and then the team added people resources and added some wellness initiatives.
‘I am sad for you and worried about you,” Minegar rights, again according to PFT. “You deserve to be happy, but you are miserable. You know it. The people around you feel it daily and it impacts them more than you understand.”
While this does not do much to shed light on any true misconduct, it does give more evidence of some of the problems in the organization in terms of the workplace.
As PFT notes, it will be interesting to see if anyone else comes forward with anything like this from other current or former employees.
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