One of the odd things that happened as Washington fired G.M. Scot McCloughan this offseason was that Chris Cooley, a former Washington tight end who now works for the team and for a Dan Snyder-owned radio station, speculated on the air that McCloughan was drinking, and it was affecting his job. Even odder was that the team never responded to that allegation, and never acknowledged that it was inappropriate for Cooley to speculate like that.
But team president Bruce Allen tells the Washington Post that he told Cooley privately, with McCloughan present, that the comments were inappropriate.
So why didn’t Allen say so publicly? He says he just doesn’t have the time to shoot down everything said on the radio that isn’t correct.
“There was someone who said on the radio that there was jealousy. Then, there was somebody who said we were trading Kirk Cousins for Tony Romo and giving the Cowboys draft picks. Then Chris said what he said. Then somebody said ‘X, Y and Z.’ I can’t keep up with sports-talk radio; I don’t ever want to keep up with sports-talk radio. If I had Twitter, maybe I would say, ‘This is false! This is false! This is false!’ . . . Every time somebody throws something against the wall to speculate, we’re not going to respond to all that. That’s what the media does. It’s impossible to answer all of the foolishness that’s out there,” Allen said.
Of course Allen can’t be expected to respond to every single thing that’s said on sports talk radio. But this wasn’t just any old thing. This was a guy who works for the team speculating that alcoholism was affecting the team’s G.M. That would have been a time for the team president to speak up. Allen didn’t.