@Jack Brickman
Yeah, and players get 2nd, 3rd, and 4th chances to repair their image. Didn't Incognito do some racial bullying shit? I forget, maybe it wasn't a race issue at all, maybe I'm thinking of another player.
People make mistakes 10 years ago, 11 years ago, 3 years ago, take accountability but be given a chance to earn forgiveness.
I'm kinda in this boat. Society isn't perfect and we are constantly evolving. I grew up in NE Ohio, and from a young age, I was encompassed in a world where racism and hemophobia was a real thing. I still remember in middle/high school there was this dude that was very obviously gay, and he was openly mocked all the time. This was back in the early to mid 1990s, and at least in the area I lived in, not many would bat an eye. I could (and I do!) look back at my younger self in disappointment for being complicit in such behavior. I didn't go so far as to join in, but I'm sure I chuckled with my buddies as it happened. Dude had thick skin and rolled with the punches as far as I knew, but who the fuck knows what kind of emotional toll the poor kid suffered because of it.
Were people like me the bad guys? Yes and no. I was in the wrong, absolutely. Should I have known better? I don't know...maybe? But what I think is most important for society is that we learn and we change accordingly. I would scold the shit out of my own children if they were to act the same way I did. Is that hypocritical? I'm not convinced it is, because as a society, we should be so much more knowledgeable than we were in the past.
I would like to think that I'm continually open-minded and not immune to an educated stance changing my mind. Yes, in 2021, it is pretty clear that racism and homophobia have no place in our society. But even just 10 years ago, I feel like throwing around words like "faggot," especially in a frat boy setting, ended up flying under the radar.
Holy fuck I'm rambling, but look, if we REALLY want society to accept equality for all, we HAVE to be willing to forgive growing pains, so long as the trend is heading in the appropriate direction. We HAVE to allow people to mature and change their minds. So long as people are always going to be judged on what they thought in the past, there isn't much incentive for them to evolve their thinking.
One last thought, I want to emphasize that I don't know Gruden, I don't know what he thought then and I don't know what he thinks now. For all I know, he could totally be a homophobic racist sack of shit to this day. But he could just as easily have evolved along with many of us. I know that many "SJW"s want to bury anyone for any indiscretion at any point in time, but if the idea is to get people to change their minds, and someone does change their mind, why continue to fucking bury that person for the past when he or she has already moved on?