You knew.
I’m not talking about you, Merritt Paulson. Or you, Gavin Wilkinson.
It’s not your turn yet.
I’m also not talking about you, the enablers and cowards who operated behind the scenes to foment a culture of unimpeded abuse and wanton misogyny. The self-protectors who took a sport that teaches our daughters strength and builds them up and let it become overrun by lechers and creeps who did nothing but tear them down.
Your time will come.
I’m talking about you.
You, the Thorns fan who protested at every game. You, the Timbers supporter since the 1970s who refused to renew season tickets. You, the Timbers Army and the Rose City Riveters who cheered for the players and the coaches but drew a firm line at the front office.
You, Portland.
You knew that far greater accountability was needed from Paulson and Wilkinson and the leaders of the NWSL. You relentlessly demanded it.
You knew that there had been no justice for Mana Shim and Sinead Farrelly and the other women who came forward to say they had been groomed, manipulated and coerced by Paul Riley.
You knew that all of the accountability initiatives could be nothing more than words as long as the Thorns and Timbers were run by men who could not pass a simple multiple choice morality test:
a. Take accountability for your own mistakes
b. Protect an alleged predator
And today, following the release of the sweeping and devastating U.S. Soccer Federation report that confirmed each one of your greatest fears, you also know this: All of them need to go.
Gavin Wilkinson must be fired. Today.
Merritt Paulson must sell the teams. Yes, both of them.
I do not say this lightly. It is not a small thing to call for the end of a professional career or for the surrender of an empire.
But Paulson’s utter lack of transparency and his backroom bargaining to keep the allegations against Riley buried make him an unfit steward of the public trust that is professional soccer in Portland.
No, Paulson is not the one who, when Riley was up for another job months after the Thorns fired him, allegedly told the Western New York Flash that he would hire him in “a heartbeat.”
Or the one who, stunningly, blamed the victim by saying Riley “was put in a bad position by the player.”
Or the one who, according to the Flash’s general manager in an interview with investigators, advocated the team bring him aboard.
“His comment at the time,” Aaron Lines said, “was to get him if we could.”
All of that was Wilkinson. Even Paulson must now realize he needs to be fired. His actions were brazenly cruel and despicable.
But Wilkinson should have been gone a long time ago. There is zero honor in firing him today.
“Depending on how you look at it,” one MLS team executive said Monday, “Merritt either enabled Gavin or used Gavin to shield himself from it.”
Neither interpretation is any more favorable than the other.
After the Flash hired Riley in 2015, according to the investigation headed by former deputy U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates, Paulson congratulated the team’s president, saying, “I have a lot of affection for him.”
Is that how you talk about a coach who allegedly terrorized his players? A coach you had to fire? But then again, none of this makes sense. Why did the Thorns go to such lengths to act as though Riley’s contract was not renewed, rather than the truth: that he was fired with cause?
Years after Riley left Portland, according to the report, Paulson misrepresented the nature of the allegations against the coach to the owner of the North Carolina Courage.
So, no. Paulson cannot solve this problem simply by firing Wilkinson. He doesn’t get credit for waiting this long to do the right thing. That is not justice for Shim, Farrelly or the other unnamed women in the report who detailed allegations against Riley.
Not for the others who may be out there or for the little girls who just want to play soccer and have no idea what kind of world they’re stepping into.
Paulson, who the report said knew about non-sexual allegations against Riley as early as 2014, made his disregard for all of those women painfully, brutally, heart-achingly clear with the lengths he went to behind the scenes to keep the allegations hidden.
But this is who Merritt Paulson has proven himself to be.
Each time he has been confronted with his own failings, he has deflected blame and attempted to keep the truth out of public view.
Despite his pledge last year in an open letter to fans that he would be transparent, nothing actually changed.
Here’s what Paulson’s transparency looks like today, from the investigation: “The Thorns refused to produce documents for months, making specious arguments … causing months of delay and impeding interviews with key witnesses.”
In summary: “The Thorns’ lack of cooperation delayed our investigation.”
For Paulson, that open letter to fans was a public relations tactic. We know that now. “Transparency” was a buzzword to buy himself time. It was not an organizational value or mandate. If it was, the Thorns would have made president of business Mike Golub — found to have made a sexual remark to a former Thorns coach in addition to the allegations of inappropriate workplace behavior reported by The Oregonian this summer — available to investigators.
They would have not been publicly admonished by Yates’ team for being so uncooperative.
Make no mistake, the Timbers and Thorns would not exist today without Paulson.
But they no longer need him to thrive. The identity of the Thorns and Timbers is not the ownership group. It is the robust and passionate fanbase that has made Portland the soccer hub it is in spite of Paulson’s presence, not because of it.
He must sell.
Just like with disgraced Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver, it is unlikely either league would seize a team from Paulson, particularly considering the way MLS Commissioner Don Garber fawned over Paulson and his father, the former Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson. In February, Garber said he has “enormous faith and confidence in Merritt Paulson, who has built one of the great sports teams in any sport in our country.”
No wonder Paulson seemed so brazenly sure he would be untouched by the fallout.
But that can’t be the final word. Paulson must be pressured to sell. By players who refuse to play and sponsors who refuse to pay.
Does Alaska Airlines condone this kind of leadership? Do Widmer and Toyota and Danner boots? If their logos are anywhere to be found at Providence Park when the Thorns return home for the postseason, I will have no choice but to assume yes.
Our city and state deserve better than this entitled embarrassment of a civic figurehead. He is not good enough for a city that has built its progressive and welcoming identity on inclusion and a commitment to human rights.
Paulson reflects none of the values our city holds most dear. He must sell and live with the shame that he not only failed the best fans in American soccer, but also the bravest women in the sport.
Yates’ investigation revealed some very dark truths, not just about the Thorns and women’s soccer, but also about what kind of country we are.
If we are incapable of providing women opportunities in professional sports without sexualizing them, then we are not nearly as advanced of a society as we think we are. Without trying to sleep with them or making them kiss one another or requesting they send nude photos — as the investigation found the former head coach of Racing Louisville FC to have done.
We have failed so many women. As a culture, we failed Mana Shim and Sinead Farrelly.
But Paulson failed them as an employer.
He failed them by putting their professional success in the hands of a coach who was allegedly fixated on getting them drunk and trying to have sex with them. A coach who allegedly benched players who did not submit to his proclivities.
And by leaving that man’s fate and future up to a general manager whose callous disregard for victims subjected countless more women to potential abuse.
He must go. They all must go.
You knew.
-- Bill Oram | boram@oregonian.com | Twitter: @billoram
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