NFL stands by its leader

By Joe Nocera

Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2014 | 2:01 a.m.

In 2006, the year Roger Goodell was named commissioner of the NFL, the Washington Redskins were the most valuable team in football, according to Forbes magazine, with a valuation of $1.4 billion. Washington’s revenue that year was $303 million, with profits of more than $108 million. In second place came the New England Patriots, valued by Forbes at $1.18 billion, followed by the Dallas Cowboys at $1.17 billion.

Fast forward to Forbes’ most recent financial analysis of NFL teams, published this month. Today, the Cowboys, the No. 1 team, are valued at $3.2 billion, almost triple their valuation of eight years ago, with revenue of $560 million and profits of $246 million. The Patriots, meanwhile, saw their valuation jump to $2.6 billion. The Washington team, though now in third place, is still worth $1 billion more than it was in 2006.

And these numbers are, if anything, an understatement: The Buffalo Bills were just sold for $1.4 billion, a record price for a professional football team. Forbes had estimated the Bills’ value at “only” $935 million.

If you want to understand why Goodell’s job is almost certainly safe, despite his complete botch of the Ray Rice domestic violence case and the many calls for his ouster, this is why: The only people who can fire him are the 32 NFL owners — and they have zero interest in letting him go. After all, he makes them money. Currently, the NFL takes in about $10 billion overall; Goodell has told the owners he wants to make it a $25 billion business by the year 2027. You can practically see their mouths watering at the prospect.

Just listen to them circling the wagons: John Mara, the co-owner of the New York Giants, has said flatly that Goodell’s job is not in jeopardy. Robert Kraft, the owner of the Patriots, has come to his defense. In 2012, the owners paid Goodell a staggering $44.2 million.

“I think he’s worth it,” Kraft told The New York Times’ Ken Belson in February, when Goodell’s pay was revealed.

Of course, there is another reason the owners think he is “worth it.” He takes the heat for them when they need him to. Daniel Snyder, the owner in Washington, is adamant that he will never give up the nickname “Redskins,” even though it is deeply insulting to Native Americans. Goodell backs him up. The owners don’t want to pay pensions to their referees? Goodell locks out the referees.

“It’s a mistake to view Goodell as powerful,” says Gregg Easterbrook, the author of “The King of Sports: Why Football Must Be Reformed.” “The owners have all the power.”

And so it is in the recent controversy. Football is a violent game, and although they’d never say so out loud, NFL owners accept some violence outside the white lines as an inevitable consequence. Indeed, it happens frequently enough that USA Today compiles a database of NFL players who have been arrested.

The website Sidespin, using that database, found 56 examples of domestic violence committed by pro football players in the years since Goodell became commissioner. Once, in 2011, a player was suspended for the rest of the season — but that was by his team, the Minnesota Vikings, not Goodell. Another time, in 2006, a player was suspended by the league for two games.

In every other instance in which NFL headquarters mandated a punishment, it was only a one-game suspension. According to Sidespin, in nearly three dozen cases of domestic violence, the NFL took no action at all.

No wonder Goodell thought his original two-game suspension of Rice, a Baltimore Ravens running back, for knocking his then-fiancee out cold was enough: He had never given out a longer suspension for domestic violence during his time as commissioner. Then came the leak of the video of Rice’s punch — followed by the scene of him dragging his unconscious fiancee out of the elevator — which was so horrifying that even the NFL couldn’t look the other way.

Goodell suspended Rice indefinitely and gave an interview to CBS News in which he tried to accept the blame for his mistake but came across as evasive and defensive. And he ordered up an internal investigation to be headed by former FBI Director Robert Mueller.

There is a small chance, I suppose, that Mueller will discover that Goodell lied when he said he had not seen the video before it became public earlier this week. In that case, the owners would have no choice but to fire him. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. What is far more likely is that Goodell will survive the calls for his ouster and go back to doing the one thing he truly knows how to do: Make money for his overlords, pro football’s owners.

Joe Nocera is a columnist for The New York Times.