Behind the scenes look at American football is first rate

AS ANYONE who has been around G.A.A. long enough knows, politics is just part of the whole show at this stage. From club to county, from county to national organisation, every limb of the tree is susceptible to influence by wagging jaws and self-serving agendas.

So ratchet that up a level, or even several billion. The NFL, or National Football League, to give the sporting organisation its full title, is the largest and most successful of all American sporting bodies. It’s not even close, as if baseball is America’s pastime, football is its real love.

But if football is the sport, politics is the game sunken into the bowels of the stadia. Behind the NFL is 32 teams; 31 of those teams are owned by billionaires (the Green Bay Packers are publicly owned), and where there’s an owner there’s an ego.

Each owner wants the league run his way, but it’s a democracy after all so the 32 teams - 31 owners and Packers C.E.O. Mark Murphy - must appoint a chief referee, a face of the league. That man is Roger Goodell, and his title is Commissioner of the National Football League.

Goodell earns in excess of $40 million a year, a huge sum but small chunk in the league annual revenue that topped eight billion in 2017.

To mollycoddle the 32 teams is quite the job. Keeping so many powerful figures with big opinions and bigger wallets happy is a tough task, but obviously he is well remunerated.

What most people only get brief snippets of is what goes on behind the ‘shield’ (the shield is used as the default term for the

NFL logo).

It was therefore prudent of ‘New York Times’ journalist Mark Leibovich to make a sideways step from politics into the NFL hierarchy in his new book, ‘Big Game’.

Over the course of a couple of years, the author dives nose first into the business side of the NFL. He goes to all the big gatherings, meets all the right people and gives the reader a bird’s eye view of how the game is run, right from the top.

Leibovich talks to all the people that matter. He outlines the Commissioner’s job, his trials and tribulations, and mixes in stories that give away his personality. He’s also never afraid to poke fun at Goodell, and he does it really well.

There’s something beautiful about the fact that, out of everyone Leibovich features to any extent in the book, the person that comes out of it better than they went in is Goodell’s wife, Jane Skinner.

Tom Brady’s father, Tom Senior, is another who comes across well, and the New England quarterback’s story provides the spine of the book, from a sporting and political standpoint.

Owners like Robert Craft, Jerry Jones and Mark Davis are all featured and they are all who you though they were.

Donald Trump is featured too in an interesting side story, and Leibovich quickly identifies the real reason why the former reality show host likes to take shots at the sport - as usual it’s really all about him.

This is one of those rare books that transcends a genre but holds enough intrigue to entice in both sports fans and those who enjoy reading political works.

For those who like to forget that these shenanigans go on, there’s enough soft reading between the heavy stuff to keep you coming back for more.

For those that would never pick up the latest Premier League star’s autobiography but will venture to a sports book with a bit more meat on the bone, this is the book for you.

DEAN GOODISON

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