“I’ll keep taking bullets if you keeping paying me.”
As terrible as Roger Goodell is at his job he’s probably not the biggest problem at the NFL. The problem is that the NFL is almost too big and too popular to be challenged. No matter what they do popularity never wanes. Roger Goodell is merely the Wizard of Oz with all the owners behind the curtain.
It’s first important to understand the NFL is the governing body of the league of 32 professional football teams. The NFL offices are the singular body that regulates the league and gives structure to create fairness and organize deals for each of the 32 teams. But the NFL offices are essentially employees of the owners of the 32 teams. Roger Goodell answers to one group of people: the owners.
The league has hid that playing football is inherently very dangerous to the long-term mental health of its players. Once a brain surgeon discovered CTE in multiple NFL players and how CTE and result in mental illnesses, such as depression that can lead to suicide, the NFL went on to discredit every study, attack the scientists, and then forcibly publish in many scientific journals their own flawed studies.
Brought to the forefront of the American consciousness by the video of Ray Rice knocking his wife out in an elevator the NFL clearly had a domestic violence problem. Maybe the more damaging part than the actual violence (not trying to minimize it) was the culture of cover-ups, enablement, and PR that hid the problem. The phony investigation into Rice’s case was essentially “pics or didn’t happen” that was only corrected when the video hit TMZ of all places and the NFL could no longer hid the problem. The NFL has a whole department that is made up of former security, police, and governments agents whose job it is to get and secure the videotapes of these types of instances. The apathy to the case was exposed when TMZ got a video that the NFL falsely claimed they couldn’t get. But it turned out that the NFL covered up many cases, the owners of each team were in on it, and even local politicians and the local/national media might have been influenced by the threat of losing NFL content.
Most recently we have the Deflategate debacle that exists purely as a media cover-up. The only reason why Deflategate is even a thing is because the discussion around domestic violence in football became so loud that the NFL had to divert the attention. Even though many quarterbacks are on NFL Network’s own content saying they like their footballs over-inflated or under-inflated that went without any consequences, and even other teams received warnings, the NFL suddenly took issue with the Patriots, the evil empire of the NFL using under-inflated footballs. The punishment was far more severe than the Falcons pumping in crowd noise for years. Investigating the case broke many rules outlined in the CBA and the NFL used comical reasoning by saying that Tom Brady not handing over his personal cellphone, which contains many private conversations and information and he is not in any way required to hand it over, as a sign of guilt. Oh, and that’s even before we get to the point where the NFL paid the “independent” investigator then changed his findings in the final report and made up multiple reports that they leaked to the public.
Roger Goodell is a terrible commissioner in almost every facet except for one. He makes the NFL a lot of money. Even though the NFL still has these serious off-field issues and the Deflategate report is a travesty of investigations the NFL hasn’t been more popular. Adam Silver wouldn’t mess this up this badly and I doubt even Bud Selig could. Dana White wouldn’t either.
The owners are paying for and allowing Roger Goodell to remain commissioner because he makes them money, and perhaps more importantly, protects the actual owners from any criticism. Nobody is saying the owners are the bad ones but by their complicity they are approving of Goodell’s moves. You can’t be neutral on a moving train. As was established in the domestic violence situations they are part of the systemic cover-ups but they aren’t discussed because all eyes are on Goodell.
Roger Goodell doesn’t even have to say, “Pay no attention to the men behind the curtain,” because we are all too transfixed on the presence and abomination that is the wizard himself.
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