The NFL claims to hold owners to a higher standard than players. Whether it actually does is a different issue.
Regarding Giants co-owner Steve Tisch and his not-so-“brief association” with Jeffrey Epstein, the league seems to be willing to kick the can until the controversy blows over.
It shouldn’t. And the league shouldn’t look the other way while the nation’s attention inevitably shifts to something else. Beyond the fact that the questions raised by the Epstein files aren’t going away, it’s wrong to rely on the passage of time to take the air out of a troublesome balloon.
The emails shared by Tisch and Epstein are skeevy. They objectify women. They show, at a more troubling level, an effort by Epstein to connect young women with men who can help them — at a price.
A recent report from The Athletic gives the NFL all it needs to aggressively investigate whether Tisch engaged in quid pro quo sexual harassment by conditioning “help” on something else. Per The Athletic, a woman recently interviewed by Radio France One told a story about a 2013 interaction with an “American producer,” who may have been Tisch.
The producer, whoever he was, seemed to be trying to secure sexual favors in exchange for professional assistance. He may have committed battery by placing his hands on the woman’s thighs, which would open the door to civil and criminal liability.
The NFL should mobilize to determine whether it was Tisch, and whether he did what the woman claims he did.
That said, the league’s power is limited. It has no subpoena power, no way to force the woman to cooperate, if she chooses not to. But the NFL also has the power to interrogate Tisch, and to determine whether it believes he’s telling the truth if/when he denies everything.
The league has done that to multiple players. The league absolutely should do it to Tisch.
Will it? Probably not, absent more reporting that creates enough external pressure that forces the league to act.
Either way, it won’t be the league mining the facts for new evidence. It will be for the media to uncover facts that will give the league no choice but to do something that, by all appearances, it has no inclination to do.
As to the other owners, there’s a clear element of self-preservation. The creation of pathways to oust owners opens the door to other owners being ousted. For that reason alone, the NFL’s likely strategy will be to do nothing unless and until it has to.
Even if it already should.