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POSTED 5:28 p.m. EDT, May 22, 2007
STEELERS ACKNOWLEDGE E-MAIL FIASCO
Ed Bouchette of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazetteand Scott Brown of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Reviewreport that the Steelers have acknowledged that an improper e-mail was inadvertently sent by a team employee to people throughout the league on Friday, May 18.
Steelers spokesman Dave Lockett confirmed reports of the inappropriate message, but did not disclose any of the names involved. "The sending of inappropriate e-mail messages is against club and league policy, and the sender has been warned about the policy violation. The sender has issued an apology to all of the recipients," Lockett said.
Lockett said that no other team executives will be addressing the matter, and head coach Mike Tomlin was not available to address the matter after Tuesday's launch of the team's Offseason Training Activities.
Bouchette writes that the team is not expected to punish either offensive line coach Larry Zierlein (who sent the message to the league's "All General Managers" distribution list, which includes many high-level club and league office employees and their secretaries) or pro personnel director Doug Whaley, who received the message from an external sender and forwarded it to Zierlein.
Though we don't believe that either man should be disciplined severely for the violation of the rules, some league insiders are surprised by the outcome. Said one executive from another team: "When the e-mail came to us we figured they would be fired by the end of the day."
Said another source: "I saw the e-mail. It was brutal. . . . I feel bad for Whaley, a little. He's a good dude, works hard, handles himself very professionally. He's going to have that follow him around for a long time. Zierlein's irrelevant. He's older. This would be his last job probably anyways."
We're also told that the topic of what is and is not appropriate to send via league-provided e-mail accounts was a hot topic in multiple team headquarters on Tuesday.
Here's the best advice to anyone who works for an NFL team -- set up a separate e-mail account through Yahoo! or AOL or Google or MSN, and use that address for receiving and sending things that could get you in trouble.
Meanwhile, this episode does little to clarify the application of the new personal conduct policy to non-players. The fact that there will be no discipline imposed on Zierlein or Whaley should not be interpreted (in our view) as evidence that no sanction will arise if things like this happen in the future.
Then again, we also think that the specific job that a non-player holds will have a significant influence on the question of whether the employee gets a firing, a finger-wagging, or something in between.
Thank goodness he is not one of our coaches anymore although he was a pretty good coach.
Thank goodness he is not one of our coaches anymore although he was a pretty good coach.
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