There’s at least one more level to the Jon Gruden disaster that NFL fans should consider about the league’s remarkable influence. Like many other enormous corporations the NFL, selling a slick, bristling mix of testosterone and patriotism, ducks away from anything with a whiff of political conflict.

I concede, as others who know him personally have, that I’m stunned that a guy like Gruden who has been a high-profile media/cultural presence for over 20 years, regularly giving live interviews, chewing up air time as a TV analyst and obliging all the other requests for personal contact that go with being a football celebritry … could conceal his essential meat-headedness so long and so well. I suspect he had help. His is another example of how well powerful systems, in this case, the almighty NFL, can throw a PR cocoon around people and project to the public only the parts of its culture that serve its business interests … until they don’t.

Two Gruden compadres, ex-Gophers star and former NFL coach Tony Dungy and his ESPN partner Mike Tirico, both black, are in a bad spot for defending Gruden about his “michellin [sic] tires” description of another black guy’s lips. That coming the day before the New York Times dropped the bomb(s) about Gruden calling the NFL commissioner a “faggot”, ripping the league’s concussion protocols, (in other words, Gruden’s pro-concussion) and trading nudie pictures of cheerleaders. All of which is, y’know, really classy stuff.

My suspicion is that while Dungy and Tirico and dozens if not hundreds of other NFL “leaders” may have been surprised by Gruden’s racist imagery, they aren’t as unfamiliar with his other boy’s club stupidity.

So that’s Gruden. A reckless high-profile meathead, now out the $60 million remaining on his contract.

But it’s the NFL itself that should be held to greater account and responsibility than it ever is. Given its footprint, we have good rights to expect a lot more from this monolith.

The Gruden e-mails were leaked from a (way too) long-running investigation of the toxic (i.e. meathead) culture inside the team formerly known as the Washington Redskins. A company where we already know from law suits the team’s executives treated its cheerleaders like Vegas escorts and, yup, traded nudie pictures of them changing outfits.

The trouble is that the NFL is not coming clean on that investigation. It is making no promises that it will reveal everything it has found out about the Redskins and others who had contact with the team. (“Confidentiality”, you know.) It is in effect protecting the team’s owner, a guy regularly reviled by sportswriters, players and fans as a (very wealthy) toxic idiot.

To anyone interested in a deeper dive into NFL culture I strongly recommend, “Big Game” by New York Times Magazine writer Mark Leibovich for an inside-the-suites sense of who says what to who when it’s more or less just them — peer billionaires — talking. (To his enormous credit, Leibovich burned up all the access his name and the Times brand afforded him to tell a story the average sports writer only dares hint at.) The NFL owners club is a remarkable collection of avaricious gargoyles. One where guys like the Vikings’ Mark and Zygi Wilf and Arthur (Home Depot) Blank of the Atlanta Falcons come off as comparatively rational.

But the level where this Gruden idiocy touches the country’s perilous moment is where the NFL — arguably one of the most popular and therefore influential organizations/corporations in the country — could and should use Gruden’s buffoonish racism and sexism to make unambiguous statements to its fans, which is to say just about everyone in the country.

The NFL could and should be a leader among other giant corporations in taking stark stands against belligerent stupidity like racism (which it is sort of good at in a lipservice/signage kind of way, considering 70% of its players are black) and sexism (where it has a long ways to go, despite promoting Breast Cancer Awareness Month with pink shoes), but also right now … for … wait for it … COVID vaccinations.

The league has recently been running in-game PSAs pushing cancer and mental health awareness screenings, etc. Players and coaches appear giving quick testimonials. That’s great.

But what, I ask, would be the effect of a dozen or so top current and former stars, coaches and league executives stepping up to a camera and telling pro football’s millions (and millions) of fans to get vaccinated … for the sake of other people — like the season ticket holders sitting next to them — if not themselves? In order to put this grinding pandemic behind us once and for all?

I seriously doubt the league’s TV ratings or ad revenue would suffer an iota.

The problem for the big, powerful, macho NFL, as it is for every other giant public entity, is that racism and cancer are kind of the easy stuff. They have no serious public, political advocates. (And I’m not forgetting Colin Kaepernick’s protests against police violence, and how the league effectively blackballed him before paying him off to avoid a certain-to-be-nightmarish public trial.)

But COVID vaccination, as a consequence of being made “political” by belligerent partisans, many of whom love football more than life itself, is terrifying territory for the NFL. (Airlines resisting vaccination mandates for passengers are another prime example of failure of true “leadership”.) It’s appalling how heavily-to-tightly-managed entities, especially those controlled by a small cluster of well-heeled egos turn into shuddering eunuchs at the thought of riling just an ugly faction of its consumer base.

How best to put it? Shrinking from conflict over something as valid, real and life-protecting as a vaccine is not what I’d call, manly, brave, courageous or patriotic. It’s more like cowardly, and meatheaded.