Should The NFL Show Gumbel The Door?

Bryant Gumbel, the master of racially-charged rhetoric in professional sports, is at it again, this time taking aim at the relationship between outgoing NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and NFL Players Association head Gene Upshaw. Here's what Gumbel said on the latest edition of Real Sports, in the form of an open letter to incoming NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell:

"Before he cleans out his office, have Paul Tagliabue show you where he keeps Gene Upshaw's leash. By making the docile head of the players union his personal pet, your predecessor has kept the peace without giving players the kind of guarantees other pros take for granted. Try to make sure no one competent ever replaces Upshaw on your watch."

That's pretty much par for the course when it comes to Gumbel. Unfortunately, Mr. Commissioner isn't taking this one sitting down, and he's making sure to put Gumbel's job as play-by-play voice of the NFL Network in play:

"I think the thing Bryant Gumbel said about Gene Upshaw and the owners is as uninformed as anything I've ever heard in a long, long time and quite inexecusable, because they are subjects about which he should be better informed," Tagliabue told a handful of writers this morning at the NFL headquarters in New York.

Tagliabue then suggested Gumbel might be having second thoughts about being named recently to announce games on the NFL Network, which begins televising games in November. The commissioner said discussions would take place with incoming commissioner Roger Goodell and NFL Network chief Steve Bornstein in the coming days.

"Having looked at how other people have had buyer's remorse when they took positions, I guess [it] suggests to me maybe he's having remorse," Tagliabue said. "You call into his question his desire to do the job and to do it in the way the NFL would expect it to be done."

Here's my AOL Sports Blog colleague Michael David Smith:

I personally don't agree with Gumbel's assessment of Upshaw, but I admire Gumbel for having the guts to say something negative about the players union just before he starts working for NFL Network. The absolute worst thing the NFL Network could do is fire Gumbel as a result of his comments. The viewers at home want to believe they're going to hear the unvarnished truth when they watch NFL Network. If Gumbel gets canned, we won't be able to believe that.

I'm sorry, but I just can't agree. In fact, I don't see any difference at all between what Gumbel said on August 15, and what Rush Limbaugh said on ESPN's NFL Gameday pre-game show back in 2003 about the press giving Donovan McNabb an easy time because they were eager to see a black quarterback succeed in the NFL. And when Gumbel used the metaphor of Upshaw wearing a leash, what he was trying to communicate was pretty clear -- that Tagliabue was a slave master and Upshaw nothing more than an Uncle Tom.

Mind you, I don't believe what either Limbaugh or Gumbel said tars them as racists. What it is, however, is racially charged rhetoric that the NFL seemed to decide didn't have a place in and around its programming.

Back in 2003, I said I disagreed with Limbaugh, but didn't think he was a racist and that the comment shouldn't have cost him his job. After all, ESPN had hired Limbaugh in the hopes his presence would cause some sparks on the set. And that's just the way I felt until a friend of mine told me something that's stuck with me to this day. He said that he remembered that ESPN once used a slogan for their NFL coverage called, "Football Among Friends," and he didn't believe that the kind of discussion that Limbaugh wanted to have had a place on an NFL pre-game show.

By that standard, I'd expect the NFL to show Gumbel his walking papers. Then again, double standards do exist. Stay tuned.