Former NFL coach Jon Gruden has joined Barstool Sports. The company welcomed Gruden — who previously served as head coach of the Raiders and Buccaneers — in a video posted on its X account Thursday. He’s joining on a multi-year deal, according to ESPN.
The move comes three years after Gruden resigned from his role with the Raiders in 2021, following a report from The New York Times that revealed he used racist, homophobic and sexist language in emails.
Gruden, 61, previously said he wanted to return to coaching. He told CBS Sports in September he wanted a shot to coach a college football team.
“Yeah, I’m interested in coaching,” Gruden told CBS. “My dad was a college coach, I was a college coach at Pitt, my wife was a cheerleader at Tennessee when I met her. Hell yeah, I’m interested in coaching. I know I can help a team, I know I can help young players get better, and I know I can hire a good staff, and that’s the only thing I can guarantee. But yeah, I’m very interested in coaching at any level, period.”
Gruden sued the NFL in November 2021 in a lawsuit that accused NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and/or others on his behalf of leaking Gruden’s emails to the media to get him fired. (The NFL denied leaking the emails.) A Nevada Supreme Court panel sided with the NFL in May, sending the case to arbitration, after a district court order denied the league’s motion to send the complaint into its arbitration process.
When asked by CBS in September if he had remorse about what he wrote, Gruden said: “The due process will take care of itself.”
“I haven’t even had my due process yet, so for me to sit here and say, ‘Who said what?’ You know, we’ll just go through the process and leave it at that,” he said.
Gruden worked as an ESPN analyst on “Monday Night Football” from 2009 to 2017.
Required reading
(Photo: Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
