Roger Goodell Has Failed in His Duties as the NFL Commissioner
For every job there is a description of duties and expectations. Yourself, your superiors, and your subordinates all know what those duties and expectations are.
The duties for the Commissioner of the NFL are vague. They are frankly unwritten. The job of NFL Commissioner, frankly the Commissioner of any major sports league, is to be the face of the league, to help ensure fair competition, build the product, protect the product, defend the product, and make money for their superiors, aka the owners of individual teams/corporations.
The duties of the Commissioner of the NFL are also ever evolving. Forty years ago if you told Pete Rozzell his job would one day involve elevator videos or fining players for dancing, he’d think you’ve hit your head one too many times.
If you told Paul Tagliabue his successor would one day be sitting before Congress or writing 140 word statements for the general public on an hourly basis, you’d be on the streets.
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The job of the NFL Commissioner is, as I said earlier, ever evolving. He is judge and jury. He is teacher and student. He is the face and power broker of the most powerful collaboration of corporations in North America. He owns the day of the week, and he’s frankly got a revenue share of two more, then some.
As the face of one of the worlds most influential corporations, you have a duty to build, protect, and defend your product. Your product is entertainment. Your product is football.
Now as far as building the product, Roger Goodell should be in the Hall of Fame as a contributor to the sport. The amount of money he has put into the pockets of his 32 superiors is staggering. The television deals, the marketing initiatives, the sponsorships. The man has fulfilled his duty to build his product.
What about protecting and defending it? Well when it comes to that and maintaining the fair playing field his business evolves around, he’s attempted to do that and tenfold.
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By putting Tom Brady through countless hearing and wasting both NFL ownership and tax payer dollars over a piece of faux leather is neither building, protecting, or defending the product.
It is damning the product.
Now what about his regulations of off the field violations? The Ray Rice incident was a fiasco that could have cost the man his job. If he was mediocre at the building duties of his job he would have been gone the day after he gave Ray Rice minimum punishment for knocking out his girlfriend.
So many players, frankly assets in the broader aspect of the corporation Roger Goodell manages, have now gone through the league’s substance abuse, on field violation, and domestic violence protocols. Those protocols should absolutely be in place, but the judge can not be the jury.
A jury of one’s peers sounds like a good idea in some of these situations, but that is for another day.
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In the case of domestic violence and the processes and precedents Roger Goodell has laid out, he became judge, jury, prosecutor, head of appeals and while he’s at it, bailiff.
Robert Mathis was suspended four games over a fertility drug that helped him and his wife start a family.
Adrian Peterson was placed on the NFL’s Exempt list after allegations of child abuse arose. Before he saw the inside of a court room he was shown out the door of the Minnesota Vikings facility. While the NFL’s process is not the perfect process, no one who abuses a living being, human or creature, should have the luxury of being a professional athlete.
The New England Patriots play with footballs that have a lower amount of air pressure in the snow. We have months worth of investigations and Tom Brady is suspended for four games.
Over a year later we are still having hearings and special investigations being conducted and as of today the decisions announced on May 6, 2015 is unchanged.
Now here’s a case that has always had great interest to me, yet has not gotten the public outcry it deserves.
New York Jets defensive lineman Sheldon Richardson was suspended for four game after violating the league substance abuse policy for marijuana. The decision was orchestrated by the book and there was no argument, no hearings, no issues about the matter.
Two weeks later, Sheldon Richardson is driving over 140 miles per hour with Missouri police in pursuit. Richardson was street racing and was making an attempt to avoid being in handcuffs two weeks after failing a drug test. When the Jets star finally came to a stop, police reported the stench of marijuana, the recovery of a loaded weapon, and a 12-year-old child in the back of the car.
Street racing, driving more than double the speed limit, smoking marijuana, having a loaded firearm in the car, eluding police and resisting arrest. All while having a 12-year-old in the center of all of the above.
That incident occurred on July 14th, 2015. Sheldon Richardson played 11/16 games in the 2015 season. Four games for the marijuana suspension and one game for a hamstring injury were missed in all.
Zero games for the reckless endangerment of a child.
The definition of failure is the omission of expected or required action.
On January 26, 2016, Sheldon Richardson was found guilty on the counts of reckless driving and resisting arrest. The prosecutor did not go after him for reckless endangerment, possession of the loaded firearm, or substance charges. He was fined $1,000, received two years of probation, and was ordered to undergo 100 hours of community service.
The NFL says it is still investigating Richardson’s case. This case has been tried, convicted, and sentenced faster in the American court system four months ago than the criminalization of a deflated football, yet there is still not a single decision made on the matter.
I have said it once, and I will say it again.
If Roger Goodell is putting deflated footballs above the reckless endangerment of a minor, the league should have his head.
The same judge, jury, and prosecutor who suspended Adrian Peterson before a court hearing was scheduled. The same judge, jury, and prosecutor who dragged Tom Brady through the mud for 16 months. The same judge, jury, and prosecutor failed to address a motley of dangerous activity, despite having written his own rules on how to address situations such as these.
He has failed to defend his product.
Six weeks after the Sheldon Richardson incident I wrote how furious I was with Goodell for not addressing it. Forty weeks later, my mind can not fathom the fact Sheldon Richardson played, no, had the privilege and luxury of performing in 11 NFL games after his incident and players such as Adrian Peterson were declared by the NFL’s single judge before gracing himself in front of an honorable one.
Greg Hardy saw just as many games in 2015 after being charged with assaulting a woman than Tom Brady will see in 2016 for playing with a deflated football.
These are repeated cases of malpractice on the part of Roger Goodell.
He has failed to perform one of his most important unwritten duties. Protect and defend his product. Not just that, but he all but endorsed Sheldon Richardson while damning Tom Brady, Adrian Peterson, and Robert Mathis among so many others who have been his victims.
Roger Goodell simply does not deserve the luxury of representing the National Football League and by definition has failed in his duties as Commissioner of the National Football League.