On Wednesday, a new report from Don Van Natta, Jr. of ESPN.com placed a new pot on the NFL’s stove of controversies. The Cowboys paid $2.4 million to resolve claims made regarding alleged voyeurism involving the team’s cheerleading staff.
Given the ongoing back-and-forth between the NFL and Congress regarding the investigation of workplace misconduct within the Washington Commanders organization, this would seem to be something about which the league should be concerned. Officially, it’s not.
“We will decline comment as this was a club matter,” NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy told PFT via email.
That’s a confusing response. Plenty of club matters draw attention, and comment, from the league. The entire Washington Commanders situation was a “club matter,” too. Some club matters necessarily land on the radar screen of the league office, especially in light of the Personal Conduct Policy.
For the Cowboys, the team on one hand paid $2.4 million and on the other hand concluded that there was no wrongdoing. Something doesn’t add up. Companies don’t pay out that much money for no reason. At a minimum, the league should be as curious as to what caused the team to pay so much money -- if the league even knew about the payment at the time it was made. It’s possible that the league did not.
That’s a separate issue, one that drew significant attention after Panthers founder Jerry Richardson sold the team. Richardson settled multiple employee claims with non-disclosure agreements that weren’t disclosed to the league, creating a question as to whether the Panthers violated the reporting requirements of the Personal Conduct Policy. The Cowboys may face that same issue, if the Cowboys didn’t disclose the allegations and/or the resolution to the league.
In 2018, Mark Leibovich (author of Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times), explained that the league feared the Richardson case was the tip of the iceberg. The Cowboys’ scandal happened more than two years before the Richardson allegations came to light, and it remained under wraps for more than four years after the Richardson situation came to light.
Also in 2018, lawyer Mary Jo White recommended that the league limit the use of NDAs. It remains unclear whether the league ever acted on that recommendation.
Regardless, this “club matter” should have been (and still should be) league business. An investigation should have been conducted at the time, if the Cowboys properly reported the incident. If the Cowboys didn’t report it, that’s a separate problem.
For now, the league apparently will try to deflect attention from the situation in Dallas by saying nothing about it at all. Whether that successfully persuades fans, media, and/or members of Congress to pay no attention to the situation remains to be seen.
