The former Raiders coach’s toxic commentary emerged from a separate investigation that had nothing to do with him, and remained secret because the probe was designed to be opaque.
The former Las Vegas Raiders Coach Jon Gruden is out of a job in the aftermath of an investigation that originally had nothing to do with him. But now he is collateral damage in a tangled case that had focused on the conduct of Daniel Snyder, the contentious owner of the Washington Football Team, and his feud with investors in the team. Snyder has emerged with firmer control of Washington than before even after Roger Goodell, the league’s commissioner, concluded that the workplace environment at the team was “highly unprofessional” and a place of bullying, intimidation and fear. The team was fined $10 million. A scorched-earth dispute has played out over the last year, with damning information and accusations of wrongdoing weaponized by those involved. Gruden’s high-profile football career, which made him a wealthy man and an avatar of the sport itself, meant that his misdeeds became leverage in a fight that wasn’t even directly about him. Snyder and the Washington Football Team have long been mired in controversy, whether for the previous team name that was eventually dropped because it was a slur toward Native Americans or the organization’s mistreatment of its cheerleaders. But the situation escalated last summer when the Washington Post published a report in which two dozen current and former employees described an atmosphere of pervasive sexual harassment, bullying and abuse at work. At least two executives were fired, others were pushed out and the team commissioned an outside investigation by the law firm Wilkinson Walsh that was soon taken over by the N.F.L. itself. Parallel to and often intersecting with the workplace misconduct investigation was a bitter internecine quarrel between Snyder and three of the team’s minority owners, Frederick W. Smith, Dwight Schar and Robert Rothman, who collectively owned 40 percent of the franchise. Attempts by the three minority owners to sell their shares devolved into acrimony with Snyder, and the N.F.L. appointed an arbitrator to resolve the matter privately. Their dispute did not stay private for long.
