Many questions remain regarding the 650,000 emails from which a handful were leaked in recent days, ending the coaching career of Jon Gruden and creating at a minimum discomfort for NFL general counsel Jeff Pash. One of the questions now has an answer.
Where did the 650,000 emails come from? Per the NFL, they were sent to and from former Washington president Bruce Allen on his team account, and they also were “outside the scope of the workplace culture investigation.”
Allen worked for the team from December 17, 2009 through December 31, 2019. So that’s an average of 65,000 emails sent or received per year. Which works out to 178 sent or received per day.
The answer as to the nature and origin of the 650,000 emails raises another important question. How many other emails were sent to and from current and former WFT employees during the period covered by the investigation? The NFL, through the investigation conducted by attorney Beth Wilkinson, did not review any of those.
Finally (for now), the fact that the Bruce Allen emails fall “outside the scope of the workplace culture investigation” undercuts the NFL’s stated reason for keeping the 650,000 Bruce Allen emails secret. The league continues to hide behind the notion that everything must be kept confidential in deference to the current and former WFT employees who came forward and provided information as part of the workplace culture investigation. If the 650,000 Bruce Allen emails fell outside the scope of the workplace culture investigation, there’s no reason to hide them.
Putting it more accurately, there’s no legitimate reason. For now, the NFL is relying on an illegitimate reason for refusing to release all of the emails for inspection, scrutiny, and any/all consequences that would flow therefrom.