[SunnySide]

Powerful as he might have seemed, Gruden is just another cow. And Washington owner Daniel Snyder is a rancher. And NFL owners, in private settings, aren’t shy about reminding people of these realities.

This, then, was a public show of them.

Gruden’s emails became public as a result of an independent investigation the NFL commissioned into the workplace culture of the Washington Football Team—a probe that was prompted by reporting in The Washington Post that pointed the finger right at Snyder, among others. The investigation took 11 months, and its completion was greeted by the NFL with a broom swiftly sweeping it under the rug.

The league released the news just before the four-day Fourth of July weekend, refused to make specifics of Beth Wilkinson’s findings public and, presumably, crossed its fingers that questions directed at Snyder’s involvement would simply go away. Remember, this is a league that published a 243-page report on Tom Brady’s deflating footballs, a 144-page report on Richie Incognito’s harassing teammate Jonathan Martin, and a 96-page report on Ray Rice’s domestic violence case. All of those reports can still be found, in full, online.

Those reports are on the cattle. Conveniently enough, you won’t find ranchers implicated in them.

-- decent writing found in a sports article? Surprising. Most sports articles read like a bot writing from a box score.