The NFL has enough current scandals, and it’s not interested in another one.
That’s the only reasonable explanation for the league’s decision to not investigate a 2015 voyeurism scandal involving the Dallas Cowboys.
The league obviously has chosen to assume the lowest possible profile regarding some of the most heinous allegations of workplace misconduct we’ve seen in 20 years of covering the league every single day (Playmakers looks back at all of them, along with the lessons learned about how the league operates). A now-former Cowboys executive and close confidant of team owner Jerry Jones allegedly snuck into the cheerleaders locker room and filmed them while changing clothes. It’s shocking. It’s horrifying. It sparked a $2.4 million settlement coupled with the incongruous conclusion that no wrongdoing was found when the team investigated.
On Thursday, a day after that ESPN.com report emerged and PFT sent three separate emails to the league seeking comment on the matter, NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy finally responded by saying, “We will decline comment as this was a club matter.”
The following day, McCarthy took a subtle but significant step beyond saying “no comment,” confirming to ESPN.com that the NFL will not investigate the situation.
It would be a curious decision even if the man whose signature appears on every official NFL football hadn’t declared only nine days earlier that the fox doesn’t get to manage the henhouse.
“I do not see any way a team can do its own investigation of itself,” Roger Goodell said at his annual pre-Super Bowl press conference, after the Washington Commanders announced that the team had hired its own investigators to explore the claims made by former employee Tiffani Johnston against team owner Daniel Snyder. “That’s something we would do and we would do with an outside expert that would help us come to the conclusion of what the facts were, what truly happened, so we can make the right decision from there. We’ll treat that seriously.”
So why does the Washington situation get treated seriously and not the Dallas situation? Both are technically club matters. Both create questions under the Personal Conduct Policy. Why would the league refuse to let Washington conduct its own investigation, but then shrug at a team investigation of voyeurism claims that clumsily tried to balance “nothing to see here” with “here’s a check for $2.4 million”?
There’s something more going on here, and the NFL doesn’t want to be bothered with delving into it, not with the Washington scandal and the Brian Flores lawsuit. And the Jon Gruden lawsuit. And the claim that Dolphins owner Stephen Ross deliberately tried to lose games in 2019. And every other actual or potential controversy that the league’s preference for reaction over proaction invites.
In this specific case, the league’s reaction is to be proactive about inaction. If enough in the media keep quiet about it, the league will get away with it.
