Jon Gruden: Brian Flores’s lawsuit makes NFL look…

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The lawsuit filed by former Raiders coach Jon Gruden continues be bogged down in the opening squabble over whether the case will be dismissed or, failing that, sent to arbitration.

Via Katelyn Newberg of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Gruden has filed paperwork opposing the NFL’s companion motions on Friday. Per the article, Gruden argues that the NFL appears “quite foolish” for arguing that it had an interest in “rooting racism, sexism and homophobia” from the league, given the allegations made by former Dolphins coach Brian Flores in a lawsuit filed on February 1.

“These statements were nothing more than hollow corporate speak when made on January 19, 2022, but they appear quite foolish now after the torrent of revelations against the NFL and [Roger Goodell] that have recently come to light,” Gruden’s lawyers write.

Gruden’s lawyers also claim that the question of “whether Gruden’s statements constituted conduct detrimental to the NFL” is irrelevant to his lawsuit. “Instead, this case is solely about Defendant’s conduct and their selective leaking of Gruden’s emails, their intent to harm Gruden, and their threats to release further documents unless the Raiders fired Gruden,” Gruden’s lawyers contend.

This case is a prime example of the dueling realities that emerge in most civil lawsuits. The league will focus on Gruden’s emails, arguing that the things he said disqualify him from employment. Gruden will focus on the fact that the information was supposedly included within a secret trove of documents, and that one of the few people with access to the information leaked it, in order to make the emails public and to force Gruden out.

It’s still not clear who leaked the emails. It is clear that not many people had access to them. Through his litigation (if it survives), Gruden should be able to get to the bottom of it.

Hopefully, he’ll get that chance. Someone weaponized those emails, to the detriment of Gruden. Yes, he got what he deserved. But that doesn’t make the way it happened right, that someone else didn’t do something wrong.

The league nevertheless wants that fight to happen in an arbitration over which the Commissioner presides, a procedure that necessarily stacks the deck in the league’s favor. In opposing the motion to compel arbitration, Gruden contends that, because he’s no longer an employee of an NFL team, his claims against the NFL “should be outside the ambit of the NFL Constitution.” This argument implies that the NFL hopes to force arbitration not through the language of Gruden’s employment contract, but under the terms of broader league policies.

Obviously, the league wants the dispute to be resolved by a rigged process — and to keep the controversy as far out of the public eye as possible.