Can you believe that a man who signed a contract for $100 million to coach a football team for 10 years would do anything stupid to jeopardize that contract?

No, I couldn’t either. Then, enter Jon Gruden. Until Tuesday, Gruden was the none-too-successful coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, perennial bad boys of the National Football League. Now he’s just another unemployed former coach who talks macho.

Now don’t worry, this isn’t a sports column. It’s a column inspired by events in sports.

It’s a column about freedom of expression, the wisdom of expression, how we use expression these days. And responsibility.

The column springs from the idea that sports reveals character. It revealed two, shall we say, interesting characters this week. Gruden and Kyrie Irving.

Gruden first. Nothing in this country is more macho than professional football, an inherently violent game played by big and fast men who ask or give quarter only when the rules insist. Which isn’t always.

That “isn’t always” may be the loophole through which Gruden thought he could wriggle when he sent emails that betrayed deep personality flaws. I worry that his personality flaws may be widespread not only in the NFL but in society as a whole.

The Wall Street Journal broke the story, The New York Times fleshed it out. Many of Gruden’s thousands of emails were sent to Bruce Allen, twice a team executive, including at Tampa Bay while Gruden was head coach. Both were fired in 2008.

Gruden’s emails to Allen hit a grand slam — that mixed sports metaphor was intentional — of ugliness: comparing the lips of the players’ union leader, who is Black, to tires; calling the NFL commissioner, who is married to ex-Channel 6 reporter Jane Skinner, a crude term for female genitals; criticizing the hiring of women — only he didn’t say “women” — as NFL officials; and dumping on gays in football.

At the moment, one NFL player has come out as gay. He is Carl Nassib of the Las Vegas Raiders. Think irony.

Those who have defended Gruden note that his most offensive emails were sent a decade or more ago. Others have insisted he should be free to state his opinions. Still others accuse the press of making a public matter of private emails.

Note that a decade ago emailer Gruden was 48 years old, a seasoned coach and an analyst at ESPN. We establish records as we go through life, and our records go always with us. We can’t extend to adults the leeway we extend to teenagers testing the waters.

Second, Gruden’s rants look even worse in today’s NFL. After dithering for years over racial equality, the NFL finally grew a vertebra, though not an entire spine, after George Floyd was murdered. It has put some money and lots of public relations into equality.

Still, in a league in which 69% of the players are Black, only three of 32 head coaches and five general managers are Black. And no Black majority-share owners. By accepting $100 million, Gruden accepted the NFL’s social policy positions. Who pays the piper calls the tune. If you can’t play that tune, don’t pick up the pipe.

Third, the internet is forever and it is for everyone. Inanities deposited in the cloud rest there for anyone to download and highlight. A guy smart enough to get a $100 million contract ought to be smart enough to know that.

The missing element in Gruden’s behavior, as in the behavior of millions who post lies and rubbish on the internet, is responsibility. To quote Peter Parker, a.k.a. Spider-Man, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Gruden had great power as a head coach and TV analyst. He needed to show some responsibility. He didn’t.

Charles Barkley, a basketball great, famously said (in a Nike commercial), “I am not a role model.” Of course, he was and is a great role model, one who shows us all how to color outside the lines without destroying the picture.

Kyrie Irving is no one’s idea of a role model. He was at best second-best to LeBron James as a Cleveland Cavalier, a mostly unreliable prima donna with the Boston Celtics and expected to star this year for the Brooklyn Nets. But he may not play for the Nets.

The team has told him to get vaccinated for COVID-19 or sit. If he refuses, he may be walking away from $33 million this year. Many who have refused the vaccines say they are doing their own “research” on vaccines. Will “research” lead Irving to conclusions similar to the one he drew when he said no one knows whether the earth is round or flat?

Maybe his research will show that thousands of health care workers who had refused the vaccine have changed their minds — yes, some have accepted being fired, but we don’t yet know how many — and got the jabs when their jobs as well as their patients were at risk. And no health care people face losing the $33 million that Irving risks.

In an odd way, it is easier to respect Irving for risking his $33 million paycheck than to respect Gruden, who took the money and thought he could run.

Bob Neal refused for two seasons to watch the NFL, one because it did little to promote social justice, one because it did little to reduce concussions. Is a third boycott in order? Neal can be reached at turkeyfarm@myfairpoint.net.