Tag: Jon Gruden

Trump is Pardoning Pete Rose: Rewarding risk takers in our society is part of Making America Great Again

Making America Great Again is about more than President Trump waving a magic wand and suddenly making everything better.  It’s about an attitude and how Americans should feel about themselves that matters most, and breaking this terrible spell given to the world through the administrative state through woke policy making.  To that point, there has been a very silent killer lurking in the background of all our lives that has been looming over the fine line between success and failure, and that is the management of risk and rewards in a society and understanding how important those things are to a healthy culture.  So, for me, especially living in Cincinnati, I was not surprised by President Trump’s statements about Pete Rose and how he planned to pardon him ahead of the 2025 baseball season.  Pete Rose died in the fall of 2024, just ahead of the Trump election, ending a long battle with Major League Baseball, who had banned him for life for breaking a few laws the commissioners thought were important.  Rose had been caught betting on baseball games and had some tax problems with the IRS. The combination of those things effectively pushed out of the game the most popular player, and certainly one of the best, the hit king, out of the MLB and out of the Hall of Fame.  But the problem is, if Rose wasn’t in the Hall of Fame, then who should be?  Over the last forty years, it has been argued that banning Rose from the Hall of Fame of baseball cheapened it for everyone because if the best players weren’t there, why even have it?  Of course, there is more to the story, which is why Trump is getting involved.

Pete Rose isn’t the only sports figure to have something like this happen to them.  One of my favorite all time coaches for the NFL was Jon Gruden, who was kicked out of the NFL because some leaked emails about him talking disparagingly about the commissioner and other people got out to the public and with the new woke rules that administrative minded people everywhere thought would protect them from critical analysis, the NFL and my favorite football team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers took Gruden down off the Ring of Honor at Raymond James Stadium and the world was looking pretty grim.  Only this past week, at the start of March 2025, did the Buccaneers start to rethink things and put Gruden’s name back up.  I personally like the Glazers; they run a good football organization.  You can find head coaches and position coaches all over the NFL who got their start in Tampa Bay because they have a winning culture.  But they have been anti-Trump and pro-Joe Biden much like the Murdoch family at Fox News has been, and they thought they understood where the world was going when they jumped all over the commissioner’s desires to remove Gruden from the NFL as punishment for violating unsaid woke rules limiting free speech dramatically.  The same traits that made Jon Gruden a great coach, full of risk-taking and passion, were also the same kind of thing that was harming him off the football field among polite society where the incompetent were protected from critical judgments by unsaid rules of conduct that protected Roger Goodell from opposing opinions.  Gruden had called the commissioner a homosexual reference, and Goodell didn’t like it, so he used woke rules to punish the Superbowl-winning coach, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers followed like cowardly sheep, licking the boots of a corrupt shepherd. 

This is nearly identical to what happened to Pete Rose, the hit king of MLB Baseball.  It takes a unique mindset to be a great player like Rose, to take the kind of risks he did to stand in front of a crowd and hit a ball the pitcher is trying to keep you from making contact with.  Or stealing a base under pressure to score a run and diving into third base headfirst, as Pete Rose did, often obtaining the nickname, Charlie Hustle.  Pete Rose was rewarded for his risk-taking antics in sports, which is how people with such personalities are usually rewarded.  Fans love people like that in sports. It’s one of the best parts of cheering on a sports franchise because most audience members don’t have the guts to take big risks like we see in sports themselves.  So they enjoy watching sports heroes do it.  In the MLB, Pete Rose was getting old and was a manager of several teams, and he was fading, and it was hard for him not to be a player all the time.  So he transferred that energy into gambling, and he bet on himself when he did place bets.  It was a way for him to keep his player instincts alive and be an aggressive manager of his teams.  But that set up a revenge tour for the jealous administrators who had been watching Rose for years and looking for an opportunity to knock him down to size once his name was no longer filling the stands with fans.  So they used an early version of the woke rules to destroy Rose and throw away the key as a message to other players about who the King of Baseball was.

It was a mystery to many why commissioners like Bart Giamatti, Fay Vincent, Bud Selig, and Rob Manfred were so against Pete Rose when other players did far worse over their careers.  It all comes down to capitalism essentially and the goals of an administrative state to use Marxism to limit competitive enterprise.  Pete Rose had all the hot women, fame, and fortune and was celebrated wherever he went.  And administrators like the old and crusty Bart Giamatti could write and enforce rules to show that he has power over such characters which to his mind might bleed off some of that power and influence and get people to lick his boots the way many in a position like his hope for.  They hate people like Pete Rose and Jon Gruden, and I would even put Warren Sapp in there for good measure because of their risk-taking attitudes, which administrators like those mentioned commissioners don’t have.  How do you get the hot chicks to like you if you are afraid of risk?  Show them you have power over the people they like more, so that they’ll like you.  Administrative types adhere to rules to hide their timid natures and their lack of personal courage from the world.  So, they used the rules to destroy Pete Rose because they were jealous of him.  That is one prominent example of why regulations made by an administrative state have been, and are, so dangerous to society, even if we are talking about sports.  That same attitude could be said to be holding back significant industries in America right now, and Trump sees it from the front of the train.  And one way to break that spell is to reward Rose, even if he isn’t around anymore to see it.  Because the world sees it, we want to reward our risk takers in American society.  Even if it is just a baseball game, or stealing a base for just one game of the season that took a lot of guts and pain to attempt, risk takers are the key to Making America Great Again and taking away the power of the administrative state that might regulate them out of existence is a key part to our future success.  And now that times are changing, because we have another big risk taker in the White House that understands these things, worthless administrators who are timid of personal risk are losing power, and people who are good at risk, even addicted to it, are regaining respect.  This is the key to the future of our nation and a great sign of many good things to come.

Rich Hoffman

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I Still Support Jon Gruden: Don’t play the “woke” game by the rainbow Marxists

I Still Support Jon Gruden

I have a lot of great memories of Jon Gruden from when he was the coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and those memories will not be erased just because a bunch of globalist wokesters decided that some emails they dug upon him from 11 years ago broke some invisible modern rules.  If you haven’t figured it out yet, wokeness is an attack strategy, not the utilization of fairness, and there was nothing I heard of from Jon Gruden in his emails or any other source over the years that gave me pause to support him.  The rules of fairness and equality that have been pressed upon us run counter to the way humans think and are meant to control us as a species, and they should be rejected.  Climbing into private lives and thoughts is likely to bring up things many don’t want to hear.  Turning personal thoughts and actions even in an email into a public debate would reveal uncomfortable opinions.  But from those who want to attack our culture, such as progressives, that’s how they want it.  They are playing for blood and targeting what we enjoy as a culture and should treat them that way.  For me, I’ll disregard their stupid modern rules of behavior.  They have no impact on me or my life, and if they do carry over in such a way, then I’ll deal with them as the enemies that they are.  But they are playing along on the bandwagon of woke religion, as many have.   Jon Gruden is too good of a person; he doesn’t deserve that.

Within hours of this story going public early this past week, the Tampa Bay Buccanneers, where Gruden coached and won a Super Bowl, removed the old coach from their Ring of Honor, which I thought was despicable.  I love the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and have going way back to the Vinny Testaverde days for many years. I’ve seen a lot of bad seasons and some good ones.  It’s fun to finally have a Tom Brady team to root for because they win a lot more.  I love the family of the Glazers, especially the deceased father of the group.  The kids are a lot more progressive, apparently even Biden supporters.  I used to think they were all really smart, but if they supported Biden, maybe not.  So I found it disturbing that they so quickly distanced themselves from Jon Gruden over this woke controversy.  After a press conference with Bruce Arians, the new coach, I thought what a wimp he was for wearing a rainbow-colored Buc hat, which was an obvious tip to the gay community.  Bruce thought it was appropriate to promote anal sex to young people with that stupid hat?  But Gruden couldn’t send an email with topless cheerleaders to his old partner at the Washington Redskins for some guy fun?  No, I’m not playing that game.

Gay rights are sodomy, and it’s dirty. I’ll take the girls any day and not feel guilty about it one bit.  When Bruce wears a hat like that, he attempts to appeal to these dark forces of progressivism who want to ruin our culture and destroy our families.  Ultimately, the NFL product is a family sport that many people can share over several generations.  That is the ultimate attack progressives have against the NFL.  Wearing a gay hat won’t stop them from attacking.  It might just appease them for a while, which is the game that Tampa Bay is playing. “Hey, we’re woke, don’t hurt us.  Look, we got rid of any reference to Jon Gruden.  We don’t have a spine.”

The NFL has been attacked for years, and you can see the game Roger Goodell is playing with these attacks.  I said last year that he’s doing a good job keeping the product going.  He managed during the previous year to get an entire season in even while Covid was shutting everything down. That’s because of how woke the NFL has become.  The progressives thought that the messaging by the players union and the protests against the American flag might be worth letting them play.  So, Roger has been caught accepting a few evils here and there to play the NFL games on the field.  People can say what they want about compliance and what they would and wouldn’t do but look at all our companies caving to the vaccine mandates from an illegally inserted President Biden.  Lawyers and human resource departments have been rushing to get in line to be the next Judas to the Constitution, acting like desperate dogs looking for a table scrap from some obese human patting the dog on the head for doing silly tricks for a morsel of food.  Most everyone has caved under the Biden executive order, including most of our tough talking politicians.  Nobody has stood up for Constitutional rights, so they are no better than Roger Goodell.  And going back to Bruce Arians and the Glazer family behind the Buccaneers, they know the game.  If you have things of value, like a sports franchise, or a big paying job, you are a target for these progressive insurgents, so you appease them by giving them what they want and hope they go away.  But all that does is feed them for the next time. 

It’s nice to know there are people like Jon Gruden out there. I’m still a fan of him, and if he loses all connection to the NFL, which we will assume he will, then whatever he does in the future, I’ll be a fan of.  Hopefully, he’ll start a podcast.  He doesn’t need the NFL or ESPN.  He could probably do better as a podcaster the way things are these days.  Traditional media is in a transition.  The woke attackers have penetrated our institutions, but that’s not where the action is, as usual.  It will always be people like Jon Gruden who make the world go around, no matter what language they use to convey it. I’ve been at this point for a while, it is not just because of this Jon Gruden story, but I’m not playing this game.

The woke rules, as far as I’m concerned, mean nothing. I’m not building my life around them or appeasing them in any way. I’m not worried about anybody digging up any emails on me or secretly recording what I say. I’m not a football guy.  I hear things like what Jon Gruden said every day and in a lot more explosive detail.  People are still people. We’re not going to change people to the snowflakes of existence.  In my life, I use a lot of three-syllable words, even in my most private settings.  I doubt these woke losers taught in government schools even know what I’m saying half the time, so good luck.  But molding our life to these woke rules, no, I’m not going to be doing that.  Progressives are a threat to American life, and it’s time we start to treat them that way.  We need to be less inclusive and a lot more judgmental.  What they did to Jon Gruden was simply a warning shot to the rest of us.  He was a big target because he had a big contract in a game most of us love a lot.  Progressives don’t like that we are back to somewhat normal with Covid, and they took a shot at Gruden to remind us that they are still there.  And to me, that’s not acceptable.  I love Jon Gruden and always will.  I will still proudly show his Super Bowl pictures on my walls, even if the Buccaneers wimped out and caved to the rainbow Marxists and gutter rats of anti-American sentiment. 

Rich Hoffman

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