The NFL is having a less-than-ideal week when it comes to optics.
Beyond the ongoing mess arising from the handling and the messaging relating to the health situation involving Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts, former Giants co-owner Steve Tisch continues to pop up at team and league events.
The January release of the Epstein files implicated Tisch, through emails he exchanged with Jeffrey Epstein, and created an obvious problem that needed to be investigated. The league vowed to “get the facts first” before deciding whether to discipline Tisch. Then, after Tisch and his siblings transferred their equity into their children’s trusts, Commissioner Roger Goodell pointed out when pressed on the inaction that Tisch is no longer an owner.
But Tisch remains the Giants’ chairman of the board. And he was front and center in the draft room in April. The photo attached to this article was taken at the Week 2 Monday night game in L.A.
Most recently, Tisch was present for Tuesday’s quarterly ownership meetings in New York, via Mark Maske of Front Office Sports.
The obvious question is why? And the best explanation for the entire situation seems to be that, when the league and the Giants faced a delicate situation regarding what to do about Tisch, someone decided that the right answer was for Tisch to put his equity into trust for his children and otherwise behave as if nothing happened.
And so Tisch is technically out, but he’s still very much in. And the paperwork regarding the equity transfer to the people who would have inevitably inherited it anyway gave the NFL the perfect cover not only to take no action but to otherwise turn the page and move on.
That’s always the play. Find a way to turn the page and move on. Given the NFL’s 365-day news machine (which has allowed this specific outlet to survive for nearly 25 years), there’s always a next page.