More often than not, that means serving as a Tom Wambsgans-style corporate Christmas tree from which owners can hang an assortment of controversies. Where Goodell’s father, Charles, broke with a hawkish Congress while calling for an end to the Vietnam War, Roger lives by a single code – “ protect the shield”, his oft-reaffirmed oath to put the league’s interest above all others. At a trim 5ft 11in he could pass for a retired pro wideout, despite not playing football past high school. And while Goodell appears for the moment to be only about $6bn short of that target, given the league’s current rate of growth with its existing financial commitments, he could get close.Ĭertainly from the team owners’ standpoint, you couldn’t ask for a more ideal kingpin for this enterprise than Goodell – the lifer who scored an internship with then-commissioner Rozelle through a postgrad league-wide letter-writing blitz. Early in his administration, he’d set an ambitious goal of pushing the NFL to $25bn in annual revenue by 2027. While Warner Bros’ David Zaslav and Disney’s Bob Iger sweat over fragmented audiences and eroding market share, and executives in rival sports monopolies struggle to keep eyeballs trained, Goodell leveraged an historic 17th regular-season game from the players, scored a quick $110m from Peacock for a one-off playoff broadcast and kept pace with constant demand for football. The Super Bowl has reliably drawn more than 100 million viewers since 2009 clearly drunk off that success, Goodell isn’t even hiding his longing to do the unthinkable and move this American holiday to London or elsewhere abroad. On viewership alone the league is a ratings monster, more watched than any presidential address or awards show by a significant margin. The NFL’s undying popularity would seem to back him up. If you let him tell it, NFL football isn’t outright dangerous or overly masculine or ultra-conservative rather, it’s the wholesome through-line that binds families, communities and a fragile national patchwork. Goodel, meanwhile, is a shameless brand manager who values the league’s image above all else. Baseball purists are convinced MLB’s Rob Manfred is a saboteur. The NBA’s Adam Silver relates more closely to players. His fellow sports commissioners are a different breed. When they initially huddled together last year to consider whether to continue paying Goodell, an altercation broke out between Jerry Jones, humble steward of the world’s most valuable sports franchise, and the New England Patriots’ owner and NFL’s compensation committee chair, Bob Kraft. The new extension – reportedly, an even sweeter package tied to the league’s continued economic prosperity – puts Goodell on track for $700m in career earnings, effectively making him about as rich as some of his ‘poorer’ owner bosses. His last contract extension in 2017 was speculated to have paid him $40m a year, or about what Dak Prescott makes to quarterback the Dallas Cowboys. Goodell’s bald servility has made him a very rich man. “It’s a tough job, but he’s worked very hard for the NFL and its success.” “He’s done so much for the league with stability,” Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay said in May. When the Minnesota Vikings changed hands just before Goodell took over as commissioner, the closing price was $600m earlier this year the Washington Commanders sold for 10 times that. ![]() The impact on team values during Goodell’s reign is no less outsized. He has been a faithful servant, returning not one but two franchises to Los Angeles, securing labor peace with the players through 2030 and a TV rights extension that could well hoover in more than $120bn over the next decade. This is Goodell in a nutshell: oblique, uninspiring and thoroughly beholden to the cabal that put him in power. ![]() “There are a lot of challenges out there, but there are also a lot of opportunities for us.” “When we talked about the long-range plan, we talked about, ‘This is your long-range plan,’” he droned in a typically dull news conference. He was equally blasé running through his gameplan for the league going forward, an agenda he punted to the owners.
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