NFL villain Jones worth rooting for in this instance

Commissioner Goodell’s competency being challenged by self-serving Cowboys owner

It was a lot simpler when you could just sit back and judge Jerry Jones for his avarice and his hubris.

Jones, the Dallas Cowboys’ owner, is a model villain. He built a gaudy football stadium, helped by more than US$300 million from local government, and last year opened an even-more-gaudy practice facility, complete with luxury hotel, the anticipated billion-dollar cost of which was, again, supported by funds from the local municipality and the school(!) district.

His ego resulted in Super Bowlwinning coach Jimmy Johnson basically quitting the team in the early ’90s, and at 75 years of age, he continues to run the Cowboys’ football operations despite not getting to a conference final since 1995. He’s downplayed football’s brain-injury problem, sued the NFL when he didn’t get his way regarding licensing deals and, notably, publicly supported the league’s bumbling commissioner.

Now it’s hard not to root for him. For months Jones has been impeding the contract extension for that same commissioner. Roger Goodell’s contract runs through 2019 and pays him an absurd US$42 million annually, and in the late summer the league’s owners voted — unanimously — to let a small committee work out the details of the next contract. Jones, though, flipped on Goodell, and is now said to be determined to make him take much less guaranteed money, and has threatened to sue (again) if his fellow owners do not agree.

This has been explained in some quarters as Jones belatedly coming to the realization that $40-something-million for a commissioner who has never handled a player discipline matter he couldn’t spectacularly botch, and who is presiding over a league facing many serious long-term challenges, is way too much money.

But it is also plainly evident Jones changed his mind on Goodell right about the time the commissioner decided to suspend star Dallas running back Ezekiel Elliott six games for violating the league’s domesticviolence policy. ESPN published a report on Friday, authored by Seth Wickersham and Don Van Natta, Jr., that said Jones was furious about the Elliott suspension, that Goodell assured him the allegations of physical abuse from a former girlfriend of Elliott lacked evidence, and that Jones considered the harsh sentence against one of his best players a complete betrayal.

And while one can certainly question the purity of Jones’ motivation — he didn’t complain much when Goodell suspended Tom Brady after one of his famously torqued investigations — it’s also true the man has a point: Goodell is awful at this.

The Elliott case was supposed to be the test run of the NFL’s new domestic-violence policy, developed after Goodell embarrassed himself and the league in the Ray Rice case. Instead of the half-assed investigation that blew up in Goodell’s face when more evidence emerged against Rice after a light punishment, the new policy would see league investigators spend plenty of time and money before handing the results to Goodell for consideration.

Then Goodell went and botched the Elliott case anyway. After a year-long investigation in which the NFL’s own lead investigator found the accuser to not be a credible witness and recommended against a suspension, Goodell ruled in the opposite direction.

Rather than offer transparency, the league kept its investigators’ concerns out of the ruling, instead issuing a letter with many damning details about what Elliott is alleged to have done to the former girlfriend in the spring of 2016.

While only Elliott and his alleged victim know what happened, Goodell’s handling of the case looks entirely like someone who, faced with difficult and contradictory evidence, decided he had to pick a side and then disregarded everything that might have supported the other side. This is ultimately a system in which the standard of proof is whatever the commissioner wants it to be.

It bears repeating that Jones was fine with all the other stuff Goodell has overseen as commissioner: the foot-dragging on concussions, the shameless and dangerous move to weekly Thursday-night games, the franchise relocations, the falling television ratings. Jones even played a lead role in some of that.

But if the Elliott matter, and his obvious bias in it, is the thing that finally turned Jones against Goodell, I am fine with that. Friday’s ESPN report includes a money quote in which Jones is said to have told Goodell he should want no part of the Wrath of Jerry. Invoking New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, once displeased with the Brady suspension, Jones said: “Bob Kraft is a p---y compared to what I’m going to do.”

I don’t think he said “party.” As that comment shows, Jones could easily alienate as many fellow owners as he brings to his side in his fight with Goodell. The prospect of a great big squabble among the NFL’s high-and-mighty billionaires club? I am fine with that, too.