New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel and Dianna Russini, senior NFL reporter for The Athletic, really want you to believe that it’s extremely normal for platonic friends to hang out around the pool at a known honeymoon retreat, have a sunset embrace, and lock fingers while staring wistfully into each other’s eyes.
It’s enough to make me jealous that I didn’t get to make pottery with Ron Rivera Ghost style during the five-straight 100-degree Panthers training camps I endured in Spartanburg, South Carolina in the early 2010s. I had no idea that’s how the media was supposed to act with NFL head coaches.
Maybe we have it all wrong? It’s all just a big old misunderstanding, according to the duo, who bless their hearts, are trying to use the “Nathan Fielder Defense,” claiming that they were each at the resort with separate groups of friends and just so happened to run into each other.
The coach told Page Six Tuesday, “These photos show a completely innocent interaction and any suggestion otherwise is laughable. This doesn’t deserve any further response.”
And Russini told us, “The photos don’t represent the group of six people who were hanging out during the day. Like most journalists in the NFL, reporters interact with sources away from stadiums and other venues.”
I don’t pretend to know what other friend groups do with their bonding time, especially given the kind of wealth Mike Vrabel has, but I can promise you “hang out at a couples’ resort” has never once come up in discussion, not even as a quickly shot-down micro-suggestion.
Ambiente, the adults-only resort in question, doesn’t have a golf course, or a bar, or any activities you’d typically ascribe to a group of guys hanging out. They do however, have a “saddle and sip” wine and horseback tour, romantic stargazing, and in-room canvas painting. Meanwhile the branding for Ambiente is extremely geared towards one particular group of clientele, and see if you can guess from the cover photo for the on-site restaurant.
Never has there been a better location for athletic, goateed dads to enjoy a meal with their blonde girlfriends than at Ambiente, Sedona. Let’s just say it makes the notion that Vrabel and his buds were psyched to have a guys’ weekend there a little more questionable.
It’s impossible to discuss this whole debacle without shaming Vrabel and Russini, and there should absolutely be shame involved here. Not because of the fact they’re both married to different people, because it’s impossible to know the relationship dynamics at play here inside the two marriages — but because these two dumbasses intermingled a professional and personal relationship in such a way that it became a public spectacle.
And yeah, it’s extremely icky knowing that Russini has a three-year-old and five-year-old son (both of Vrabel’s children are grown). Nobody in their right mind is buying that this is some platonic get-together at a resort that markets itself on romance, especially when they were photographed on the roof of the most exclusive two-person bungalows on the property. The least they could do is have the decency to own it.
Russini and Vrabel should be independently ashamed of their roles in this. While Russini is catching the majority of the flak on social media as people dig through her social media history and find a frankly staggering amount of evidence that she didn’t really like her husband, Vrabel clearly owned the power imbalance in this relationship. When you get down to brass tacks, he was the football coach at the center of many of her reports, and he had the ability to turn off the information faucet at any time, impacting her career as a result.
Where Russini should be independently ashamed is by turning into the trope that every internet misogynist has about female reporters, or really any women in a position of prominence at all. Guys like Adam Schefter and Shams Charania are praised for their “grind” while whoring themselves out to sports agents, but if a woman makes it on TV or gets too many bylines in sports there’s a predictable refrain of “who is she sleeping with?” echoed by pathetic, jealous men who assume there’s no possible way a woman could have a high-profile sports job without sleeping their way to the top.
Instead, she’s trying to double down on this being source maintenance, which is a very normal journalistic practice. Yes, you absolutely cultivate personal relationships with people behind the scenes, and you do spend time with them — but normally that’s resigned to having a steak and a drink together, not canoodling at a couples resort and saying you were there with friends. Friends who have about the same level of visibility as Aaron Rodgers’ wife, who absolutely exists; just ask Aaron Rodgers.
It takes two to tango, or in this case, interlock hands. Both became examples of the most harmful tropes in our society: The man with power leveraging it into a relationship, and the woman willing to do anything to further her career. It’s a two-way conflict of interest, because as recently as a month ago Russini was reporting on the Patriots’ interest in A.J. Brown, and this raises serious questions about how the information was gathered, or if there was any alternate motivation behind the reporting.
Russini’s boss, Steven Ginsburg, is echoing the line about this all being a gross misrepresentation, doubling down that The Athletic, and New York Times by extension, support their employee.
“These photos are misleading and lack essential context. These were public interactions in front of many people. Dianna is a premier journalist covering the NFL and we’re proud to have her at the Athletic.”
I’m sorry y’all got got, but you absolutely deserve the scrutiny.
