From the moment Tom Brady officially became a minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders, it felt like a conflict of interest that he would remain a broadcaster for FOX Sports. Now that the end of the NFL season is nearing and awards talk is upon us, another conflict has arisen.
Over the past decade, the AP Awards have become the official NFL Awards. The votes for these awards are disseminated among 50 media members. Brady, despite his ownership stake, is still a media member and thus still has an award vote.
According to Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, Brady still has one of the votes for the AP Awards, which presents an obvious conflict of interest:
Fox analyst Tom Brady has one of the 50 votes for the Associated Press awards, which have been the official NFL Honors awards since the league turned the dissemination of the various trophies into a TV show more than a decade ago. That’s not a problem.
Raiders minority owner Tom Brady also has one of the 50 votes. That is a problem.
No team employees (and especially no team owner) should be voting on league-wide awards. It’s an obvious conflict of interest, even more obvious than Brady’s dual role as the owner and a commentator, in theory, on all 32 of them.
The conflict of interest here is obvious and probably something the NFL should have addressed long ago. No one is saying Brady would be biased in his votes or that he could cast votes for some undeserving players just because they play for the Raiders, but that shouldn’t even be a possibility.
Brock Bowers will be a finalist for the AP Offensive Rookie of the Year award and is more than deserving of winning the award with his record-setting season. But the runaway favorite remains Washington rookie QB Jayden Daniels, and there is no denying that it would look a certain way for Brady to vote for Bowers, even if others did the same.
It seems like a pretty simple solution for Brady’s vote to go to someone else. His being a broadcaster on his own brings its own set of concerns in terms of potential conflicts of interest, but awards voting as Raiders owner is just another level, and the NFL would be wise to fix that issue.
Antonio Pierce addresses fans angry at Raiders win hurting draft position
The focus for the Raiders franchise right now should be on the team finally ending their 10-game losing streak with a victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars. However, there are many fans unhappy with the win as it dropped the Raiders from the second overall pick to sixth, hurting their chances of drafting a top quarterback.
But that wasn’t a concern for head coach Antonio Pierce who responded simply with ‘talk to Tom Telesco’ when asked about those angry fans in the postgame press conference. For Pierce, who is not guaranteed to be around as Raiders coach next season, he is locked in on winning and getting the best out of this roster right now.
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