When radio play-by-play man Larry Michael left the Washington franchise yesterday, he said he was “retiring from my position.”
It’s obvious now there was more to it than a decision to scale back his work hours after 16 years with the team.
According to the new report from the Washington Post detailing the toxic workplace environment of Dan Snyder’s football team, the former voice of the team was involved in a number of incidents of inappropriate behavior.
And most tellingly, his “retirement” came within hours of the Post asking the team for comment on a number of specific allegations.
Specifically, there was a complaint in 2018, when Michael was caught on a hot microphone while taping a video for the team, making inappropriate remarks about a female intern.
“It was disgusting,” said one former female employee who heard the audio. “This is a grown man who could be my grandfather, and he’s talking about someone younger than me.”
A female employee complained about the video to the team’s legal department, and a team attorney took the hard drive from the employee. When it was returned, the file was deleted.
“The club’s legal department removed the file from the hard drive and maintained the file in the organization’s confidential HR/Legal records where it still resides,” the team said in a statement.
In addition to his broadcasting duties, Michael was the team’s senior vice president in charge of content, in charge of the team’s website and video department.
There were other allegations in the Post report, but another staffer expressed the disillusionment over the culture that appears to have made such incidents far from rare.
“They’re not going to get rid of ‘The Voice of the [former nickname]’ … over a $30,000-a-year marketing manager,” one former male staffer said.
Eventually, however, they did.