INDIANAPOLIS — There should be no focus at this week’s NFL combine on players that the Giants have flagged for character concerns.
There should be no leaks about players who the National Football League and its 32 teams may deem unworthy of representing their shield or logo for some gray area in their scouting report.
Not while the NFL and the Giants continue to do nothing about co-owner Steve Tisch‘s documented connection to late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Not after commissioner Roger Goodell and Tisch released statements that were varying degrees of troubling and empty and insufficient.
Not with coach John Harbaugh and GM Joe Schoen now facing questions about the organization’s thus far unacceptable stance on Tisch’s continued active ownership of the team.
“I have great respect for the ownership,” Harbaugh said Tuesday at the Indiana Convention Center when asked about his view of ownership in light of Tisch. “All the people I’ve gotten to meet: John [Mara] and Steve and Chris Mara and John Tisch and Carolyn Tisch and the Koch family have been nothing but great conversations, great interactions.”
“And we’ve been talking about the business of football,” he continued. “The business of building our team, the business of putting staffs together, all the things we’re talking about with the integration you just asked about — that’s what our conversations have been about.”
Harbaugh added later, when asked for his or the club’s stance on Tisch remaining an active owner: “I don’t have a stance on that. Steve, I think he put out a statement, right, I saw, where he expressed his regret. And that’s where it stands for me. That’s where I’m at.”
Schoen said: “Yeah, Steve released a statement a few weeks ago about the regret. So I’m just going to leave it at that. I’m not going to comment anything on that.”
So now a dark cloud hangs over the organization and the league every day that goes by with nothing meaningfully done about this scandal.
The Giants like to think of themselves as having high standards. They cannot claim that with Tisch on the masthead.
Goodell easily could use the NFL’s wide-ranging personal conduct policy to force Tisch’s and the Giants’ hands.
“Everyone who is part of the league must refrain from ‘conduct detrimental to the integrity of and public confidence in’ the NFL,” the league’s personal conduct policy reads. “It is not enough simply to avoid being found guilty of a crime in a court of law. We are all held to a higher standard and must conduct ourselves in a way that is responsible, promotes the values of the NFL, and is lawful.”
The policy also says: “Ownership and club or league management have traditionally been held to a higher standard and will be subject to more significant discipline when violations of the personal conduct policy occur.”
Instead, the commissioner weakly would not even commit to an investigation of Tisch at the Super Bowl. In fact, when asked if Tisch could be subject to discipline, his first comment was that the reporter “may be getting ahead of yourself.”
“We’ll continue to follow any of the facts that come up, and we’ll determine whether we open an investigation or not based on those facts,” he said.
It is despicable that Tisch’s emails with Epstein were first reported on Jan. 30 by The Athletic, more than a month ago, and that the Giants and NFL still have taken no action.
In one thread of correspondence in April 2013, Tisch emailed Epstein, who was already a convicted sex offender, to say he’d just had lunch with a friend of one of Epstein’s assistants. Describing her as a “very sweet girl,” he asked Epstein if he knew anything about her, the documents released by the Justice Department show.
“no but I will ask [redacted] (all confidential) I will get all info, did you contact the great a-- fake t-- [redacted],” Epstein wrote back in a typo-laden response. “shes a character, short term, has an older boyfriend going to acting school, a 10 a--.
“I am happy to have you as a new but obviosly shared interest friend.”
Tisch thanked Epstein and said he was “curious to know” about a woman whose name was redacted, inquiring about whether she was “pro or civilian?”
Epstein then told Tisch to send him a cell number as he didn’t “like records of these conversations.” He soon followed up with another email saying the unnamed woman “was not on this trip” and another cryptic email, purportedly about a Ukrainian woman.
“report just in, you did very well , she wants to go to the play„ —-she is a little freaked by the age difference but go slow and wati, i will try to convince her not to return to ukraine, having her crying worked,” Epstein wrote.
Tisch’s statement on Jan. 30 fell far short of the standards the Giants and NFL purport to uphold.
“We had a brief association where we exchanged emails about adult women, and in addition, we discussed movies, philanthropy, and investments,” Tisch said in the statement. “I did not take him up on any of his invitations and never went to his island. As we all know now, he was a terrible person and someone I deeply regret associating with.”
Regular email exchanges between Epstein and Tisch, 76, however, show that Epstein took young women from his nefarious web of influence and delivered them to Tisch, as The Athletic and The Wall Street Journal reported on Feb. 12.
Multiple NFL owners have been forced to sell in recent years due to behavior that undermined the integrity of the league.
Jerry Richardson sold the Panthers when several past settlements with team employees came to light, and Daniel Snyder had to sell the Commanders due to multiple examples of alleged workplace misconduct.
It should not be difficult for the NFL and the Giants to understand the gravity of Tisch’s association with Epstein and to impose severe and permanent consequences, if they truly believe in the integrity they claim to uphold.
But so far, their response amounts to the most frightening sound when it is time for someone to stand up and do the right thing:
Silence.