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The Cardinals–Terry McDonough situation is another workplace black eye for the NFL, in an increasingly long string of such cases. And you do have to start here—the jumping-off point for the case is, of course, a dispute between a single employee and his employer, and the damage the employer did to the employee’s career. To that end, when an arbitrator decides on the complaint, they will decide to what extent Arizona damaged McDonough.
That said, deep in the details of the complaint, McDonough opened two Pandora’s boxes in a three-paragraph nuke fired directly at Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill.
By way of example, McDonough is aware of an instance in which Bidwill cursed at and berated a young African-American employee in a racially-charged manner—at the same time Bidwill was serving as chairman of the League’s Racial Equity Committee. Such hostile conduct on the part of Bidwill created an environment of fear for minority employees.
McDonough also is aware of two separate instances in which Bidwill reduced to tears two pregnant employees as a result of his abusive and bullying mistreatment. One of the employees was 5 months pregnant at the time of the abuse; the other was 7 months pregnant.
Bidwill’s workplace misconduct is so pervasive and toxic, that he halted a 2019 corporate cultural assessment of the Cardinals organization that was being conducted by an outside consulting firm after an expansive initial round of employee responses criticized the Cardinals’ woeful culture and placed most of the blame on Bidwill.
Alex Gould/The Republic/USA TODAY Network
Through McDonough’s complaint, Bidwill could lose some money or some draft picks.
But those additional details? Those are the sorts of things that can cost an owner his team. Across sports over the past few years we’ve seen how discriminatory behavior against women and/or minorities in the workplace can lead to that conclusion, with examples in both Bidwill’s league (Panthers owner Jerry Richardson as well as, presumably soon, Commanders owner Daniel Snyder) and his home market (Suns owner Robert Sarver).
That puts the ball in NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s court, and with an owner who’s actually had a reputation for being pretty progressive on the whole (Bidwill’s served on committees, hired Black GMs and coaches, and Arizona was among the first teams to have women assistant coaches). The fact is, Goodell’s promised repeatedly through the situation in Washington that he wouldn’t tolerate the sort of working environment that Snyder allegedly fostered over two decades.
If you’re going to make that promise, then you have to turn over every rock in a case like this.
So while the arbitrator will probably be focused on the transgressions against McDonough himself, the burner phones and all that, the league, as I see it, had something more serious dropped on its plate. And it’s on Goodell to dig into what’s sitting there for him.
