Jon Gruden made his first public appearance since his resignation as the Las Vegas Raiders head coach last October, appearing Tuesday at the Little Rock Touchdown Club's kickoff event ahead of Arkansas's season-opener against Cincinnati.
The Super Bowl-winning coach participated in a Q&A session for more than 40 minutes, during which he addressed his ouster from the Raiders and the fallout since then.
"I'm ashamed about what has come about in these emails, and I'll make no excuses for it," he said. "It's shameful. But, I am a good person. I believe that. I go to church. I've been married for 31 years. I've got three great boys. I still love football. I've made some mistakes. But I don't think anybody in here hasn't. And I just ask for forgiveness and, hopefully, I get another shot."
Gruden was forced to resign after emails to former Washington Commanders executive Bruce Allen leaked to the New York Times, in which he used racist and homophobic language.
Gruden has since sued the NFL over the affair. The emails were a few of more than 650,000 scooped up in the NFL's investigation into the Washington franchise, and Gruden's are still the only ones to have leaked. Gruden was also not an ESPN employee at the time. Gruden has since won two pre-trial motions against the NFL.
"I get a choked up, you know, because there's a lot of misunderstanding out there right now," he said. "What you read, what you hear, what you watch on TV. Hell, I worked at ESPN for nine years. I worked hard at that job. I don't even want to watch the channel anymore because I don't believe everything is true. And I know a lot of it is just trying to get people to watch. But I think we've got to get back to reality."
While it touched on the tense subject of his resignation and the ongoing lawsuit, Gruden's appearance was mostly a joyous affair. The Q&A session wound through his 35-year career in football, which began as a graduate assistant at Tennessee under College Football Hall of Fame coach Johnny Majors, who himself was a former assistant of College Football Hall of Fame head coach Frank Broyles, the patriarch of the Arkansas program.
Gruden told the story of having to entertain Broyles for an hour before he spoke at a Majors clinic in Knoxville. The legend Broyles and the young GA Gruden were passing the time in a room together when Broyles taught Gruden a blunt but enduring lesson.
"He said to me, 'Coach, what's your favorite play here?' And I said 64 Stay. 'You got a cut up of that play?' 'Yes sir I do.'
"So I got the film, a 16 millimeter, and I laced it up. And he says, 'No, no. Before we watch the play, get up on that chalkboard there and take me through it. Draw it up.' So I told him the shallow cross was six yards deep, the deep over was 18 to 20, the quarterback's taking a 7-step drop. Coach Broyles kept peppering me with questions. 'What's the split of the X receiver? Is he on the numbers or is he on the outside edge of the numbers? Is it into the short side of the field or the wide side of the field? Now let's take a look at that cut up.'
"So the first play comes up there and he says, 'Hey, didn't you say that shallow cross was six yards?' I said, 'Yes sir.' He said, 'How deep is he?' I said, 'He's four.' He said, 'How deep is that deep over?' I said, '18 to 20.' He said, 'How deep is he?' I said, '16.' 'Didn't you say the quarterback is taking a 7-step drop? What's he taking?' I said, 'Five.' He said, 'Turn that tape off. Son, what you see on film is what you coach, and you're not coaching 64 Stay worth a damn.'
"And that philosophy stayed with me forever. Everywhere I went as a coach, I told our coaching staff, 'What people see on film is what we coach.'"