SWFLHurricane
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Are we back to Gruden now..lol
- Thread starter Otowncane
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UMFarArcher
All-ACC
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No idea - but we're working out final contractual details with Saban.
nobeastofburden
All ACC
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I'd take him, woke Miami, nope..
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Gruden going to miss out on the coveted demographic of *** football recruits? I think most black parents have heard far worse than someone saying a guy had rubber lips (Tim Brown backed up that Gruden had always called liars "rubber lips" and that it wasn't meant in a racist way). So yes, he may have offended homosexuals (which I don't condone) but if he continues to have black former players backing up that he is in no way racist, I think that part will be forgotten about.
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Doesn't really matter does it? Gruden stepped on too many third rails. His time is done. Same thing happened to Jimmy the Greek and Al Campanis and the guy on ER who used *** slurs, and Kevin Spacey, and ...........
Sometimes society passes a person by. Some adjust and evolve and flourish. Some adjust and evolve and accept with unease. And some don't adjust and evolve and are left on the dust heap of history.
TheEye
Firing won't change the mediocrity.
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He said a specific black man had lips like Michelin Tires. I'm not sure that's the look you want when recruiting an African American player…
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I think lumping all those things together is inappropriate. There is a distinction between someone being oblivious and saying something insensitive and someone saying something truly reprehensible. I don't think society is unable to draw these distinctions, I think it simply doesn't care because then it can't drive a news cycle. The Jimmy the Greek and Al Campanis situations illustrate this well. They are polar opposites.
Jimmy the Greek was actually trying to be complimentary. He was asked on MLKs birthday about the progress that black athletes had made. He started with his infamous opinion that he felt American black athletes were physically superior partly due to the deliberate selection of genetic traits and forced coupling by slave owners to create a stronger slave. Now that opinion is obviously flawed because it eliminates the possibility that black athletes don't have a genetic advantage and were better athletes simply through effort. Now putting aside the moral outrage for a second and looking at it objectively- I highly doubt if what he said is historically accurate. Are there written records that slave owners did this? If so, does the lineage of the majority of the successful black athletes trace back to the slave owners? And second, since he was an bookmaker and his theory was partly informed from his observations of horse racing (as you know, people pay millions to selectively breed horses with certain traits), does that same process play out in humanity (selective breeding to create certain traits)? I think it could to some minor extent but is it appropriate to attribute all the success of black athletes to that factor alone? Of course not.
And when this 70 yr old man was challenged on his statement, he was extremely contrite. He was an old, uneducated man who said something that offended people, and when told it was offensive, he immediately and unequivocally apologized. I think given the circumstances, that should have been sufficient.
Now the other thing he said was blown way out of proportion and this is what clearly contrasts with Campanis. Jimmy the Greek jokingly made the comment that if black players also took all the coaching roles then there wouldn't be any roles left for white people in sports. He was making fun of white people for being bad at sports. He did not in any way, shape, or form suggest that whites were better coaches or that black people would be inferior coaches. The media twisted what he said and tried to make it sound like he was saying that white people were better coaches than black people.
Campanis, on the other hand, outright stated that there was a racial hierarchy and that black athletes didn't have the intelligence to be coaches. He was NOT trying to be complimentary. He essentially was insulting the intelligence of a race and coming up with a race-based justification as to why black athletes should be denied coaching opportunities.
I hope you are able to see the difference between what Jimmy the Greek said and what Campanis said. I think Jimmy the Greek should have been corrected and forgiven for his hamfisted attempt at a compliment (again, this was on MLKs bday, and although what he said was patronizing and wrong, it is clear to me he didn't intend to be insulting). On the flip side, Campanis becoming persona non grata was entirely justified. What he said was deliberately abhorrent.
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gatorsSUCK!
Sophomore
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Too late, Gruden just signed w the SEC ethics committee
I love the reply and factually I agree with just about everything you wrote. And I hope more people read it because you provided an excellent historical account of the the controversies that Jimmy and Campanis created which sank them.
The only exception I will draw with you, which relates back to my point, is what I found in common with those 2 and Gruden which is simply that they made comments that came off as out of touch with the times. The reality is that it happens to all of us. As a teenager of the 80”s we felt racial slurs were abhorrent, but we still made *** slurs. But when i started law school it was quickly obvious that i had to expand out of those words.
And that type of evolution should occur in all of us.
What I also find common about Jimmy, Campanis and Gruden is that they all unsurprisingly worked in sports. Sports creates a male, heterosexual bubble. Words and thoughts expressed in a locker room would not work in any other office. Gruden in particular was not expressing his feelings publicly. Indeed he certainly felt he was communicating with another member of the bubble. And now he is suffering because the general public read his locker room talk.
As such I feel bad for Gruden, but I also recognize that his comments are out of step and he has not evolved. He’s like an animal that didn’t recognize the environment has changed and wants to still live and hunt as it has for all its life.
Turnoverchaincane
Lake Lucerne Cane
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He also explained that by Michelin tires he meant "rubber lips", which is a term he applied to liars. Now I thought that obviously this had to be some fake bullsh!t term he just invented to cover his ***. In my 40 plus years on this planet, I have never heard anyone use the term rubber lips for a liar. But then his own black former players confirmed that he has in fact, used the term "rubber lips" to describe liars for decades.
Tim Brown says Jon Gruden uses 'rubber lips' saying
Jon Gruden says he did not intend to be racist when he insulted DeMaurice Smith in an email 10 years ago, and Hall of Fame wide receiver Tim Brown
larrybrownsports.com
So seems to me that black people who actually know him don't feel he meant a racial slur. I have yet to see any former black player or staffer state that Gruden ever made racist comments. If you have this one solitary instance of something that could possibly be interpreted as racist but no other evidence of racism (and black players who state they never saw even the slightest indication of racism), then I think you are reading into it what you want to read into it. My default position whenever there is an accusation of prejudice is to hear someone's explanation and see if any evidence supports their explanation or not. That's a serious accusation to make and I don't take it lightly. I want to be sure that whatever was said isn't being twisted out of context. Right now the evidence is that he isn't racist (this may change if he made other comments with possible racial undertones or if players say he was racist).
As for him being homophobic, I think there is a stronger case for that. The derogatory word he is used is definitely an insult and it was meant as such. However, I think it's the fact that he used this particular word as an insult that has people so up in arms rather the the insult to the group itself. If he had referred to Goodell as a "c0ckgobbler" or a "c0cksucker" instead of the f-word, would there be as much outrage over it? The intent would be the same, to compare Goddell to homosexuals. However, I think a lot of people who say he crossed the line wouldn't feel as strongly about it. Why? Because many of us routinely refer to someone we don't like as a "c0cksucker", but most of us (I hope) have never used the word or referred to anyone as a f*gg*t.
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CarolCityHigh
Freshman
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https://mail.yahoo.com/d/search/name=Yahoo%20Sports%20Read%20%26%20React&emailAddresses=yahoo%40newsletters.yahoo.net&listFilter=FROM/messages/AMBi94kPSE4tYWa-uAQLKJwfGCQ
"The league reportedly won’t release a formal written report into its investigation, which begs that question of how the Gruden emails got out?"
"The first leaked emails emerged Friday in which Gruden made a crude reference to the size of NFLPA boss DeMaurice Smith's lips. Coincidentally (or not), later that same day the NFLPA held a vote on whether or not to retain Smith as head of the union. The union did, but barely, with Smith reportedly receiving the minimum 22 votes to earn another term."
"Or if you were wondering why, out of 650,000 emails the NFL had privy to, Gruden's and Gruden's alone have been made public, well ..."
"It's worth taking a closer look, not at who didn't benefit, but who did."
From NBC Sports --
"
"On March 15, 2009, Smith was elected unanimously by a board of active player representatives to become the executive director of the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA). Although Smith lacked football experience, his ties to presidential power and business experts helped give him an advantage over other potential candidates like Troy Vincent, Trace Armstrong, and sports attorney David Cornwell."
"The league reportedly won’t release a formal written report into its investigation, which begs that question of how the Gruden emails got out?"
"The first leaked emails emerged Friday in which Gruden made a crude reference to the size of NFLPA boss DeMaurice Smith's lips. Coincidentally (or not), later that same day the NFLPA held a vote on whether or not to retain Smith as head of the union. The union did, but barely, with Smith reportedly receiving the minimum 22 votes to earn another term."
"Or if you were wondering why, out of 650,000 emails the NFL had privy to, Gruden's and Gruden's alone have been made public, well ..."
"It's worth taking a closer look, not at who didn't benefit, but who did."
From NBC Sports --
"
"On March 15, 2009, Smith was elected unanimously by a board of active player representatives to become the executive director of the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA). Although Smith lacked football experience, his ties to presidential power and business experts helped give him an advantage over other potential candidates like Troy Vincent, Trace Armstrong, and sports attorney David Cornwell."
Plus he’d be a pretty unoriginal, unimaginative hire. (For lack of a better way of putting it.)
Insider sauces. He was all but signed, players notified.
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305to954
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Gruden before the team flew back probably
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New movie coming out... Chucky 6
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