Earlier this week, a former HR employee of NFL Films sued the company for racial discrimination but the allegations include the claim that NFL Films kept a database of lewd shots of women. Incredibly, NFL Films has not denied the existence of the database but we’ll explain what they do deny and what the lawsuit involves.
NFL Films is one of the most successful sports-related film companies in the world. That’s no surprise when you realize it’s the film and production company of the NFL. Started in 1962 by Ed Sabol, NFL Films took pride in filming games and presenting them in unique retellings. Although they aren’t a broadcaster, their highlight packages and storytelling helped define how football was perceived.
At one time, people even relied on NFL Films to show highlights of the games they didn’t see, or highlights from games of previous eras. Their annual Super Bowl highlights, which tell the story of the game in 25 minutes, are constantly rewatched by NFL fans every year thanks to the NFL Network.
The combination of filming and showing their highlights at slower speeds, along with voiceovers that made their narrators famous in the sports world — such as John Facenda — cannot be understated.
Along with the game they were hired to film, NFL Films cameramen would always take footage of the atmosphere surrounding the game, including numerous shots of the crowd, shots of the coaches, shots of the players on the sideline whose discussions were often picked up by mics, and shots of the cheerleaders.
Former NFL Films employee, Victoria Russell, worked for NFL Films in the HR department from 2018 to 2022 and is now suing NFL Films for discrimination. In the lawsuit, Russell, who is black explains that she approached the NFL’s diversity officer and complained about the company showing favoritism towards white employees.
That favoritism was shown in many ways, she claims, including the white employees receiving consistent and timelier raises while many of the black employees were overdue for promotions. She claims that NFL Films ultimately reacted to her complaints by firing her. Russell states in the lawsuit that NFL Films is “rampant with misconduct against women, particularly women of color.”
NFL spokesperson, Brian McCarthy, told The Wall Street Journal, “We are committed to providing all employees a workplace that is respectful, diverse, inclusive, and free from discrimination and harassment. The NFL didn’t discriminate or retaliate against Ms. Russell during her time as a temporary staff member. We will vigorously defend against these claims.”
McCarthy’s claim that Russell was a temporary staff member may become crucial to the case. Temporary staff members work for a company for an agreed-upon time. Once that time ends, the company can choose to hire the employee permanently or just not bring them on board — which is not similar to firing an employee.
Russell has not yet responded to the NFL’s claims, nor is it clear if she was hired as a permanent employee by the company or a temporary staff member, as McCarthy states. However, her four years on the job don’t suggest that she was temporary.
Nonetheless, there are other potentially damaging allegations against NFL Films detailed in the lawsuit. Russell explains that she found an archival database of lewd shots of women while she was auditing the human resources system of the company. Specifically, she came across a “chatroom log tracking time stamps on NFL footage and linking the time stamps to sexualized and offensive descriptions of women captured on that footage.”
Those categories allegedly included the following labels:
“Close up of cheerleaders’ breasts; cleavage shot“
“Random woman; cleavage shot”
“Cheerleaders rear end”
“Naughty camera work”
“Cheerleaders’ buttocks”
There are allegedly a further 14 pages of similar sexualized descriptions of women as part of the database.
McCarthy also responded to these claims, stating, “Those frames are logged as ‘sensitive’ so that they can be removed from circulation, meaning they will not be accessible to employees whose job it is to locate footage for productions.”
He added that Russell did not have credentials to access the logging system or the footage.
It’s curious to note that McCarthy’s defense comes with an admission of the footage existing and apparently the alleged labels existing. This begs the question — why wasn’t the footage just erased, especially considering the footage wasn’t used presumably because it’s lewd footage?
Perhaps the bigger issue is that NFL Films cameramen clearly filmed the footage in the first place — something that was not addressed in the lawsuit nor in the immediate response to it. At some point, people will likely realize that’s as big of an issue as the other claims.
All of this comes on the heels of another racial discrimination lawsuit that the NFL faces from coach Brian Flores. Today, a judge finally ruled that Flores’ lawsuit against three NFL teams can move forward.
That lawsuit gained serious traction thanks to, of all things, Pittsburgh Steelers fans. In 2020, former Tennessee Titans head coach, Mike Mularkey, made an honest admission while appearing on a small Steelers fan podcast. Mularkey, a former Steelers player, said that the Titans “told me I was going to be the head coach in 2016 before they went through the Rooney Rule.”
The Rooney Rule effectively ensures that each NFL team, when interviewing for their head coaching position, must interview at least one black candidate. Mularkey, a white coach, stated what others were afraid to, alleging that NFL teams — in the least, the Titans — were simply interviewing black candidates to fulfill their obligation to the rule despite already knowing they would hire a white head coach.
The small Steelers fan podcast that conducted the interview is called Steelers Realm and they managed to book Mularkey thanks to another Steelers fan/historian named Steel City Star, a highly regarded Steelers history account on Twitter who also heavily promoted the podcast, proving that highly informed fans and football historians can be significantly more useful than mainstream media.
Without them, Mularkey’s admission probably never happens, and the Flores lawsuit, in which he claims he was denied a head coaching position because he is black, may have not been so widely supported. Afterward, Flores was hired as an assistant coach by the Steelers.
Now, as the NFL braces for another racial discrimination lawsuit, and one that involves an apparent database of lewd shots of women, one must wonder how the NFL maintains such intense popularity and if that popularity will ever suffer in this cancel culture era. The answer is likely not.