In One of the Great Hardo Moves of Our Times, Jon Gruden Won't Take the Raiders' Money if He Fails
Source – Jon Gruden wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the familiar Oakland Raiders logo showing the pirate with a patch over his eye.
He might as well have fashioned a bullseye on his chest.
That’s what the high expectations amount to for Gruden, charged to revive a signature NFL franchise after being lured out of ESPN’s Monday Night Football booth with a 10-year, $100 million contract that is the richest for any coach in league history.
“If I can’t get it done, I’m not going to take their money,” Gruden, 54, maintained during an interview with USA TODAY Sports.
Goddamn, Jon Gruden. That’s how you plant your flag back in Oakland. That’s how you show you didn’t walk away from the most cherry job in all of sports just for the money or because you and Sean McDonough had all the chemistry of ammonia and chlorine. This is how you prove to the world you’re all about the coaching and the competition and winning is more important than Mark Davis’s measly $100 million.
Granted, Gruden didn’t exactly say that. And he didn’t exactly mean it, either. I mean, how legally binding is a July interview you give to USA Today anyway? I’m no Jimmy McGill, but my considered legal opinion is, not at all. And what exactly does he mean by not getting “it” done? A championship? The playoffs? Showing up to work every day? Not carrying on the Raiders tradition of getting rehired and then cracking the jaw of one of your assistants? And if “it” doesn’t “get done,” is he saying he’ll just quit? Work for free? Hand that pumpkin pie haircutted freak who hired him back his $10 mil per year while Vegas is building him a $2 billion monument to wretched excess?
It would be unfair to say Gruden is being less than truthful here. So let’s just all just check back later to see if the game has passed him by like it did Joe Gibbs and how fast he is to leave nine figures of Mark Davis’s crayon money on the table. I’m going to go way out on a limb and say he collects every penny.