Devil is in the details
Taking aim at Goodell hurts Jones long term
In Mark 3:24-26, it’s written: “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come.”
Not sure where you’d put Jerry Jones or the NFL on that spectrum from kingdom to Satan, but therein lies a message to him, his fellow owners and commissioner Roger Goodell that they would be wise to heed.
The intramural argument Jones escalated this week by threatening to sue if his fellow owners go through with an effort he endorsed in May to work out a five-year extension of Goodell’s contract is a sign of a growing problem inside the NFL that could prove to be its undoing if it continues unchecked. It is a problem of memory; of forgetting how the league came to be what it has become.
Jones’ threat that he has commissioned well known legal gadfly David Boies to prepare a suit challenging the present rules on such an extension, even though it appears Peg Leg Pete has a firmer leg to stand on than Jones, is one of a mounting number of signs that a league that was built on unity is being torn apart by greed, selfinterest, ego, short-term thinking and warring factions.
According to several sources within ownership, Jones has four other owners willing to support Goodell’s removal. There are at least a half dozen more who are noncommittal on an extension without markedly altering the parameters of Goodell’s lucrative contract. That deal has paid Goodell over $200 million in the past decade, including $78 million in 2014-2015, the last time his compensation was public record. Some in ownership wonder why.
Jones’ point of view on commissioners didn’t take long to surface. In 1989, when ownership was undecided on who would replace retiring Pete Rozelle, a brash young owner in Dallas opined that it didn’t matter because the owners ran the league anyway. He and a number of his peers have now begun to wonder if Goodell forgot that.
There has been mounting opposition among owners to continue paying Goodell well more than its biggest stars, the belief being what they’re selling is not Goodell’s marketing skill but their players’ football skills. When the pie kept growing exponentially, most owners ignored Goodell’s swelling compensation but with TV ratings sliding, a number of national advertisers seething, at least one threatening to pull his ads over Goodell’s inability to end the national anthem controversy and with the high-handed nature of the league office’s handling of recent discipline cases there is a growing minority who believe it’s time for a change.
Patriots owner Bob Kraft is not yet one of them, but a remark he made years ago is telling. When asked about the general nature of commissioners he said, “It’s a funny thing about commissioners. Eventually they begin to think they’re owners. And then they must go.”
This was not a reference to Goodell but a general feeling that owners in all sports hold. There are renters and owners. Goodell is a renter.
Bert Bell is widely seen as the savior of the league in the lean years just after World War II. Yet after Bell’s death in 1959, George Preston Marshall, a friend of Bell and the owner of the Redskins, led what became a days-long fight to name Bell’s replacement.
Sports Illustrated football writer Tex Maule described the most important requirement of the new commissioner in the opinion of Marshall was “a commissioner who was amenable to suggestion.” Marshall wanted a puppet, which Bell was not. Most owners do, but that is not necessarily good for business because, as Bell used to caution Marshall and other powerful owners, “someone has to look out for the have nots or you have no league.”
Jones is angry not only over the six-game suspension of running back Ezekiel Elliott which he believed would never happen (sound familiar, Bob?) but also over Goodell’s ham-handed handling of a number of controversial issues that have wounded the NFL brand. He may have a point and such discontent among his bosses could come back to haunt Goodell, but Jones’ threat to have legal papers served as early as today on the Compensation Committee’s six members seems more saber rattling than legitimate.
According to several owners, Jones may try to challenge the rule that requires a two-thirds approval of the 32 owners to extend Goodell, an argument in part based on the fact it once took three-quarters of ownership. This begs the not very legal argument known as “So what? You guys changed it.” Worse, Jones and his peers voted 32-0 to authorize the Compensation Committee to make Goodell an offer.
Jones reportedly also contends there has been a negative economic impact as a result of Goodell’s recent decisions, an argument that while possibly true will be difficult to sustain considering that gross revenues have more than doubled under Goodell.
The real issue here isn’t economic. It’s the issue of a commissioner mistakenly beginning to think he’s an owner, or at least ownership beginning to believe he feels that way.
Rumor has it some owners want Goodell paid like a player, basing his compensation on his performance at a time when ratings are slipping and advertisers are wavering. Goodell wants no part of that.
But this dispute is more about power than money. As Houston Texans owner Bob McNair recently put it “we can’t have the inmates running the prison.”
Players took that to be a reference to them and their anthem protest, but it was actually a reference to the feeling McNair and some other owners share that the league office now acts like the owners work for them. If Jones can make that feeling grow, time will run out on Goodell.
There is another, larger issue raised by Jones’ threat and it’s the question of a growing fissure in “the shield.” The NFL grew into a business colossus and cultural phenomenon because Bert Bell and his successor, Pete Rozelle, turned it from a capitalist enterprise into socialism. Owners large and small shared revenue equally, meaning they would all prosper.
Some teams, like the Cowboys and Pats under Kraft, make more than their peers in Oakland or Jacksonville and keep some of it, but the largest pieces of the pie are divided so all feast relatively equally. Goodell had nothing to do with creating that, but his consolidation of power in New York may be contributing to the demise of that collegial — and communistic — mindset. If Jones eventually brings down Goodell what will he and his cabal of like-minded owners push next? More sharing? Not likely.
One powerful owner, Donald Trump, single-handedly destroyed the USFL. If the NFL thinks it can’t happen in their house just let the most powerful guys take over and see what follows. Or just open your Bible to Mark 3:24-26.