DeMaurice Smith grew up with NFL media personality James Brown in Prince George’s County, Maryland. So it particularly aggrieved the then-NFLPA executive director that the CBS veteran did not roundly denounce e-mails from Jon Gruden in 2021 that described Smith in racist terms.
In his book “Turf Wars: The Fight for the Soul of America’s Game,” an account of Smith’s 14 years running the union, he takes particular issue with Brown and two other Black broadcasters – Mike Tirico and Tony Dungy– for their response to Gruden’s emails.
“So imagine my disappointment when neither Tirico, Dungy, nor Brown came to my defense,” Smith wrote. “They instead backed Gruden, an avatar for the league, presumably because their bosses instructed them to. Millions of fans, therefore, were assured that there was nothing to see here, folks, so let’s get on with the games.”
DeMaurice Smith goes so far as to use racial overtones to suggest the trio are treated as subordinates serving the league’s white executives, “In the satirical film The American Society of Magical Negroes, one of the young characters is given supernatural powers in exchange for appeasing white people,” he writes. “That is how the NFL traditionally runs. Tirico, Dungy, and Brown may be happy to retain their jobs to keep their overseers comfortable.”
Smith writes of Tirico that he “insisted he’d never heard Gruden use racist language in their time together in the Monday Night Football booth.”
What is not included is that Mike Tirico also denounced the emails, though he surrounded that denunciation with kind words for Jon Gruden.
“I probably know Jon better than anyone in the league on a personal level,” Tirico said on October 10, 2021, on Football Night in America. “He said he was ashamed by the comments in the email. The comments in the email are wrong. But my experience kind of parallels Tim Brown, who played for Jon, a Hall of Fame wide receiver. He said he never experienced or saw anything that would say Jon was racist in any way. That is exactly the experience I had in those seven years, traveling three days together on the road every week.”
Dungy, a Hall of Fame coach, said on that program, according to Smith, “I’m not going to chalk everything up to racism. I think we accept his apology, move forward, and move on.” Dungy did describe the emails as immature, but called for everyone to just essentially forget about it.
Brown said on CBS, Smith wrote, “I’m not here to judge anybody.” Brown also added after that line, “Lord knows I have enough flaws.” And then later added, “To try to explain away comments that are deeply hurtful and racist is to me even more offensive. I think it’s better to confront what the issue is and work to improve because the bottom line is out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth does speak.”
CBS did not reply for comment. NBC said Tirico and Dungy would not be available for comment. League partners have always been sensitive to accusations that they or the NFL control what analysts and announcers say on the air.
Smith is obviously not as charitable toward Gruden as the trio of broadcasters.
“Gruden, therefore, saw me as I had never been allowed to see myself: the so-called Angry Black Man, hired because of his skin color, who bites the hand that feeds him by fighting every battle and suing the NFL for sport.”
Gruden called Smith to make amends, but the then-executive director wrote he let it go to voicemail.
“‘I’m really sorry about what’s being written out there,’ (Gruden) said in a file I haven’t deleted. ‘I’d love to talk.’”, he wrote.
DeMaurice Smith never returned the call.
A few years removed from his firing from the Raiders, Gruden has resurfaced with a role at Barstool Sports with growing speculation that a return to coaching could be in the cards.