Jon Gruden might be getting support in the form of his players on his team, but DeMaurice Smith is not so forgiving towards him.
The Las Vegas Raiders coach used a racist comment in referring to NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith in an email 10 years ago, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. The email, sent to the president of the Washington Football Team in July 2011, said Smith had “lips the size of michellin tires,” the Journal reported.
On Monday, Smith took to Twitter and unveiled a thread on why the fight against racism is far from over on not just what the email said, but the immediate reaction to it from a ton of people.
“The email from Jon Gruden – and some of the reaction to it – confirms that the fight against racism, racist tropes and intolerance is not over. This is not about an email as much as it is about a pervasive belief by some that people who look like me can be treated as less.”
“The email has also revealed why the comments by some with powerful platforms to explain this away are insidious and hypocritical. It is as if there is a need to protect football above the values of equality, inclusion and respect.”
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“The powerful in our business have to embrace that football itself has to be better, as opposed to making excuses to maintain the status quo.”
“I appreciate that he reached out to me & I told him that we will connect soon, but make no mistake, the news is not about what is said in our private conversation, but what else is said by people who never thought they would be exposed and how they are going to be held to account”
Gruden, who was employed at the time as the lead analyst for Monday Night Football, said he did not recall writing the email but apologized for the fallout. He said he has routinely used the term “rubber lips” to “refer to a guy I catch as lying … he can’t spit it out.”
“I’m ashamed I insulted De Smith,” Gruden told ESPN, adding, “I never had a racial thought when I used it. … I’m embarrassed by what’s out there. I certainly never meant for it to sound that bad.”
Also on Monday was ESPN’s Adam Schefter reporting that the league is sending more Gruden emails to the Raiders for review:
Schefter said on ESPN’s Monday Night Countdown he believes these emails are “damaging.”
“These are additional emails, and my sense is, my sense is, these are damaging emails. And so, if we already have some of the emails that we’ve heard about in where there were racial remarks that were offensive to people that were made, and there were disparaging remarks about the commissioner, which is at a much lower level but still tasteless in many ways…now, there are more emails, with more disturbing things said.”
ESPN analyst Booger McFarland then urged Raiders’ owner Mark Davis to “do something.”
“Stop hate. Black lives matter. Words without substance mean nothing, Suzy. They mean nothing. So the substance has to be done by Mark Davis. And his dad set a great example. Al Davis was at the forefront. He hired Art Shell. You talk about some of the people that Al Davis employed, as a Black man. Mark Davis, maybe he didn’t learn anything. But everybody’s watching right now, and they’re watching what Mark Davis does, and he’s got to come to the carpet and do something. And it sounds like it’s going to get worse based on the emails.”
We’ll just have to wait and see what these emails have in them.
