MORAN DENIES THAT HE WAS TRYING TO EXPOSE VINCENT

Apparently in response to our call-it-like-we-see-it suggestion that U.S. Representative Jim Moran (D-Va.) outed former NFLPA president Troy Vincent as the person who instigated a Congressional inquiry of the NFLPA as a way to help preserve the employment of Moran’s daughter, Moran has attempted to clarify his intentions.
Writes Daniel Kaplan and Liz Mullen of SportsBusiness Journal: “ProFootballTalk.com, the first outlet to report that there was suspicion that Vincent may have spurred the congressional inquiry, earlier today suggested Moran went public in order to save his daughter’s job. Moran denied that that was the purpose of his investigation.”
Moran’s daughter, Mary, is the NFLPA’s Director of Human Resources. According to the form LM-2 filed by the union in May 2008, which we found online tonight, Ms. Moran’s total annual compensation was $199,088.
Moran tells SBJ that he wasn’t trying to block Vincent from becoming the next NFLPA Executive Director, but that Moran hoped to preserve the legacy of the late Gene Upshaw, former Executive Director who died in August 2008.
Moran didn’t explain -- and we frankly can’t figure out on our own -- the connection between blowing the whistle on Vincent and protecting Upshaw’s legacy.
We suggested that something fishy was going on based on the SBJ report from earlier in the day that Moran investigated the matter at the behest of his daughter.
“It was entirely appropriate for my daughter to ask me why the letter was sent,” Moran said.
Fine. But it was entirely inappropriate, in our view, for Moran to take steps to publicize the person who might have prompted the letter to be written, especially when at least one member of the NFLPA Executive Committee has said privately that the person responsible for getting Congress involved in the union’s search process will be disqualified from further consideration.
As SBJ has pointed out on numerous occasions, “many of Upshaw’s most loyal supporters at the union will quit or be fired if Vincent gets the job.” Since Mary Moran occupies an executive-level role, she likely would not be part of the Troy Vincent regime.
And as a result she would have to find a different $199,088-per-year job in a down economy.
Thus, the whole thing stinks to us. As we predicted just a day ago, the effort to smear Vincent has commenced. Moran’s comments suggest to us that those who want to keep Vincent out of the job has opened with a haymaker -- and already might have delivered the knockout punch.