Goodell scores big with $200M contract
Bitter debate over whether to retain commissioner ends with five-year extension
The NFL extended the contract of commissioner Roger Goodell for another five years on Wednesday, ending an unusually rancorous standoff with Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who wanted to derail the deal.
A committee of owners negotiating Goodell’s compensation signed off on a contract worth roughly $200 million (U.S.) over five years, which is in line with his current deal. But, unlike his current arrangement, nearly 90 per cent of the potential compensation will be paid only if a variety of financial targets are met. The NFL and its commissioner routinely negotiate such matters behind closed doors. But this year, disorder among owners spilled out in public, leading to an extraordinary tit-for-tat of threats of legal action and rebukes that added to the sense of a league anxious over its future.
Despite declining television ratings, persistent worries about the safety of the game and a backlash against the league because of players protesting during the national anthem, the league is still a financial juggernaut, with $14 billion in annual revenue. That is a big reason the owners are comfortable keeping Goodell — who became commissioner in 2006 — on for another five years.
But with anxiety over the league’s weaknesses growing, Jones and other owners wanted to ensure Goodell continued to focus on growing the league’s business. As a result, they have insisted that most of his compensation in the coming years be based on the NFL hitting financial targets, with various owners signing off on bonuses linked to the targets.
Jones sparked one of the most bitter intra-league fights in years when he threatened to sue the members of the six-man compensation committee. The committee had been working since May on the new contract, which would take effect in March 2019. The owners were eager to finish the deal before talks to renegotiate the league’s labour and media deals begin in earnest in the next couple of years.
Jones, one of the most powerful and mercurial owners, had other plans. Though he voted along with every other owner in May to extend Goodell’s contract and empower the compensation committee to work out the details, he tried to disrupt the negotiations starting in August, after Goodell suspended Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott for his role in a domestic violence case.
After months of pressuring the committee as an ad hoc member, and lobbying the wider group of owners, Jones told the six committee members in early November that he had drawn up legal papers and would sue them if they did not bend to his will. The unusually caustic showdown that followed, which has led the committee to communicate with Jones only through lawyers, all but ended last week when Jones dropped his threat.
Jones has denied he was trying to upend the contract talks as payback for the suspension. But the timing of his efforts looked more than coincidental.
Two days before Elliott’s suspension in mid-August, Jones signed off on the broad outline of Goodell’s new contract, which was based largely on bonuses Jones wanted as a way to ensure that the commissioner worked hard to raise league revenue.
After Elliott was suspended, Jones began to insist that all 32 owners, not just the committee, have a chance to vote on the new contract, because conditions at the league had changed, including a continued decline in television ratings and a widening controversy over players refusing to stand for the U.S. national anthem.
But after Elliott’s legal appeals to his suspension ran out, and the committee continued to work quietly on the contract extension, Jones told the committee on Nov. 2 he had hired the high-profile lawyer David Boies and that he was prepared to go to court to stop the negotiations. Faced with potential punishment, Jones dropped his threat to sue just before Thanksgiving.