This Just In: Steelers Attempt to Trade Adult Films for Draft Picks

Prisuta: Steelers hitting delete on e-mail gaffe - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Short short version:
What the offensive line coach for the Pittsburgh Steelers meant to do was send an e-mail with a pornographic video attachment to a few close friends. What he did do, though, was send it to all of the NFL's general managers, their secretaries and commissioner Roger Goodell.

How?

Probably through sending it to an e-mail list, which as you know, can be one e-mail address that automatically forwards messages sent to it to any number of recipients.

It looks like the coach will survive with an apology and internal discipline, which a few sports bloggers have said might even be too strict a punishment given the lockerroom atmosphere of professional football. This guy likens any discipline to "putting a saddle on a tiger," which is a pretty good analogy if you forget about the NFL's massive brand and business presence. While the blogger makes a good point about the difficulty in teaching the intricacies of business norms to guys who are used to huddles as opposed to memos, I think this isn't the right instance to bring that up.

You can train someone for days about the dangers of sending e-mail to the wrong address; there's still a very real chance that they'll mess up. Rarely does anyone accidentally send e-mail to the wrong recipient because they don't know what they're doing. But you can teach someone to keep business e-mail business and personal e-mail personal. And that's where the real cause of this one.

Sending porn from your work address isn't really something anyone has to learn in business school. It's just dumb. Sending it to every team in the league and the commissioner by accident, that's dumb and really quite unlucky.

The NFL, by the way, has not thanked the Steelers coach for the e-mail, nor will they punish him. They're calling it a team matter. What does it take for a coach to be punished by the league? Something like this.

(See also very funny parody myspace profile).