Many of those interviewed described a workplace they found abusive and intimidating. Bidwill told ESPN he is working to improve team culture.
The workplace culture under Arizona Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill has come under scrutiny since a former executive filed an arbitration complaint against him and the team in April.
"It was so uncomfortable," another witness said."It felt he was putting Ron up on a stake in front of everybody." The Cardinals' workplace culture under Bidwill has come under scrutiny since April, when Terry McDonough, the team's former vice president of player personnel,In his complaint, McDonough said Bidwill retaliated against him for objecting to the owner's alleged plan to improperly communicate with Keim during his suspension by using burner phones.
"He's a yeller. He's just miserable to people," said Minegar, who left the team in January 2020, about five months after his DUI arrest."There is a deep culture problem, and in my mind it emanates from one source." Bidwill told ESPN in a statement that the Cardinals have"worked hard over the last several years to improve our culture across the board."
Bidwill worked as a federal prosecutor in Arizona until joining the Cardinals as general counsel in 1996. He took control of team management decisions from his father, Bill, in 2007 after he successfully lobbied state and local governments to build State Farm Stadium. He became team owner after the elder Bidwill died in 2019.
Minegar said he often found himself mending fences with powerful outside parties that the team needed but whom Bidwill had driven away, including team lobbyists and a former state employee who helped create the stadium authority."People who thought they were friends with Mike, somewhere along the way, it sours," the person said."It ends fairly abruptly."
"When things happen and it's a male authority figure raising their voice at me, it just sends me into a blackout, to be quite honest," said one of the sources."It's pervasive." Amanda Flanagan, the team's former scoreboard production manager, asked her boss whether one of her direct reports could use sick time for jury duty. Under Arizona law, employers don't have to pay employees for such time missed.
Bidwill stormed out of the room after he suspended Flanagan for two days without pay for raising the jury duty issue, according to the accounts. Flanagan, who declined to be interviewed by ESPN, wrote in her March 2021 email that she was"more demoralized and humiliated then ever imaginable in my career" and later saw a trauma counselor because of the incident.
Some women who worked at the Cardinals' Tempe facility said the team treated them differently than men and prevented them from accessing the same areas of the building. that"Bidwill cursed at and berated a young African American employee in a racially charged manner. Such hostile conduct on the part of Bidwill created an environment of fear for minority employees."
Mayo emphasized the team's historic hires, including the NFL's first Black general manager and head coach pairing in Rod Graves and Dennis Green in 2004. Bidwill sits on the NFL's diversity, equity and inclusion committee and its social justice working group. "I don't believe he has a racist bone in his body," Minegar told ESPN."Rather, he's an equal opportunity offender."by the NFL and its teams, including the Cardinals. The Cardinals went 3-13 during Wilks' single season with the team. Wilks alleges the Cardinals considered him a"bridge coach" and gave him no"meaningful chance to succeed" before his dismissal after the 2018 season.
Some women were told they were not allowed to use that stairwell, according to several former employees. One female former employee recalled a situation where she and her male boss needed to access a storage area in the basement. The woman said she had to go outside the building and take a service elevator down while her boss simply took the stairs. Afterward, she had to walk back the same way while he went straight up.
Minegar said he believes managers told their people to avoid certain areas in the facility to save themselves headaches. Some women on the business side were chastised by their managers for responding to coaches, scouts or players who spoke to them as they passed by the women's desks, former employees said. According to two sources, managers called subordinates on the phone to interrupt conversations that occurred. The team installed frosted glass extensions on top of cubicle walls that effectively ended communications, one former worker said.
McCarthy said the league has met with Bidwill and the Cardinals to review the workplace policies and changes. "He just got up there and gave him a verbal ass-whipping in front of all of us," said a third person who was there. "We worked our asses off to get that survey," Minegar said."The last thing I wanted people to do is sugarcoat it."
Minegar said the survey highlighted what he already knew about Bidwill's management of the Cardinals. He continued to defuse potential blowups while trying to pinpoint what it was that bothered him so much. Eventually, he broke. He took out the letter he had started writing to Bidwill 10 months earlier.
Minegar's two-decade Cardinals career ended in January 2020, alarming team staffers in Glendale and Tempe. One manager told his staff, according to a person who attended a meeting,"It's going to get bad."Former Cardinals COO Ron Minegar, who left the team in 2020 after two decades, said about Bidwill:"He's a yeller. He's just miserable to people. There is a deep culture problem, and in my mind it emanates from one source.
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