Earlier this month, former Cardinals executive Terry McDonough filed an arbitration claim against the team and owner Michael Bidwill. As Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk details, the specific causes of action are breach of contract, retaliation after engaging in protected activity, intentional infliction of emotional distress, defamation, and civil conspiracy. In response, Cardinals PR consultant Jim McCarthy released a statement that has attracted widespread criticism.
The statement, which can be found here, levies a number of personal attacks against McDonough, including allegations that he engaged in “extreme domestic violence,” abandoned responsibility to one of his daughters by cutting her off financially, and made a practice of undermining fellow employees. Assuming those allegations — some of which, like his purported abdication of his parental duties, are seemingly unrelated to his duties with the Cardinals — are true, it is fair to wonder why Arizona would have employed him for the past 10 years (according to NBC Sports’ Peter King, McDonough was just dismissed earlier this year).
It would seem, as Florio suggests in a separate piece, that the more prudent course of action for the team would have been to simply deny the allegations and allow the arbitration process to play out. Claims like McDonough’s are resolved via internal channels that are generally weighted in the team’s favor, and the Cardinals’ response may prove to be an unnecessary measure that has, at best, resulted in bad optics for the franchise.
Per Daniel Wallach, legal analyst for The Athletic (Twitter thread), the statement may have also created additional causes of action for McDonough that would allow him to take his fight to the public forum of a courthouse as opposed to the more sheltered arbitration setting. Wallach suggests that the “extreme domestic violence” claim in particular could give rise to two separate torts: “false light invasion of privacy” and “public disclosure of private facts.” If McDonough chooses to file suit, the homefield advantages that Bidwill and the Cardinals enjoy in the league’s arbitration procedures would no longer be present.
As King writes, if it becomes clear throughout this impending saga that Bidwill, as McDonough alleges, supplied McDonough and former head coach Steve Wilks with burner phones to secretly communicate with then-suspended GM Steve Keim, then the NFL would be forced to suspend Bidwill. Interestingly, Wilks’ existing lawsuit against the Cardinals alleging racial discrimination included an averment that, “there is evidence of Mr. Keim’s input and participation during his so-called suspension” (via Florio). It is possible that Wilks’ allegation is a reference to the burner phone scheme, which would seem to corroborate McDonough’s claims. Arizona, meanwhile, does not deny that the burner phones were used; the team simply asserts that Bidwill acted swiftly to end the practice when he learned about it.
From a long-term perspective, the portions of McDonough’s filing that do not include burner phones could be more damaging to Bidwill if they are substantiated. McDonough accuses Bidwill of treating a Black employee and two pregnant women poorly and creating “an environment of fear for minority employees.” He avers that Bidwill is abusive and engages in widespread workplace misconduct, and he is not the only former staffer to make such a claim.
As Florio details, former Cardinals executive V.P. and COO Ron Minegar wrote a resignation letter to Bidwill in December 2019, one page of which was included in McDonough’s arbitration claim. In that letter, Minegar, like McDonough, asserted that Bidwill put an end to a review of the team’s workplace culture in 2019 when the early responses were largely unfavorable and cast Bidwill himself in a negative light.
Minegar wrote, “sadly, we learned that a majority of our employees are working in fear. There are several factors, but much of this was directed at you based on the poor interaction they’ve had with you. … What was your reaction when you saw the preliminary responses? Instead of leaning into it and trying to change things for the better, you shut the study down.”
He added, “I am sad for you and worried about you. You deserve to be happy, but you are miserable. You know it. The people around you feel it daily and it impacts them more than you understand.”
In 2022, Minegar sent an email to Bidwill in which he congratulated his former employer on the halftime tribute the team conducted in honor of Bidwill’s father. He took that opportunity to apologize to Bidwill for his part in the deterioration of the relationship between the two men, and said, “I wrote this very private note to Michael to ‘Make Amends’ as part of my program of sobriety which I have undertaken for the past 1000+ days.”
Minegar says that, for the first time since his resignation three years prior, Bidwill recently reached out to him, asking if he could use Minegar’s email in his response to McDonough’s claims. Minegar agreed, but only if the entire email and the entire resignation letter were publicized. Much to Minegar’s dismay, Bidwill did not oblige.
“Unfortunately, [Bidwill and McCarthy] opted to pick and choose segments of the letter in an attempt to put their position in a favorable light,” Minegar said. “I stand by the statements I made in my December 2019 letter and am willing to discuss with the involved parties as part of the NFL’s Arbitration Process.”
McDonough argues that Bidwill’s conduct is “significantly worse” than that of Robert Sarver, the former owner of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns who was suspended by the NBA for a year and fined $10MM before ultimately selling the team. It is obviously far too soon to consider whether the Wilks and McDonough actions will lead to a similar outcome for Bidwill, but the reports stemming from those disputes and Bidwill’s responses thereto do paint an unflattering picture of the owner and his club. Time will tell whether the Cardinals can reverse their on- and off-field fortunes under Bidwill’s stewardship.
