Goodell signs 5-year extension
Roger Goodell signed a five-year contract extension to remain commissioner of the NFL through 2024.
A memo from the NFL’s compensation committee to team owners yesterday confirmed Goodell. Committee chairman Arthur Blank, owner of the Atlanta Falcons, signed the extension.
That extension has been a source of controversy because Dallas owner Jerry Jones objected to the process.
All 32 owners approved in May the compensation committee’s power to negotiate and sign a deal with Goodell, who replaced Paul Tagliabue in 2006.
Since then, the league’s total revenues have more than doubled to $14 billion.
A person familiar with the contract said it is worth almost $200 million, with a base salary of $40 million. But the deal reportedly is incentive-laden.
Among those incentives are continued increases in revenues, stable or rising television ratings, a new labor agreement with the players (the NFL-NFLPA deal expires in 2021), and how much the NFL gets in rights fees when it renews its broadcast contracts.
Goodell earned nearly $32 million in 2015, the last year in which public records for the NFL are available.
“Our committee unanimously supports the contract and believes that it is fully consistent with ‘market’ compensation and the financial and other parameters outlined to the owners at our May 2017 meeting, as well as in the best interests of ownership,” Blank wrote.
“We also have expressed in those conversations our strong and unanimous belief that we should proceed to sign the agreement now, consistent with the unanimous May resolution and to avoid further controversy surrounding this issue. We are pleased to report that there is a nearly unanimous consensus among the ownership in favor of signing the contract extension now.”
That would not include Jones, whose objections surfaced publicly after his star running back, Ezekiel Elliott, ran out of legal options to appeal a six-game suspension handed down by Goodell under the NFL’s personal conduct penalty.
The next owners meeting is Wednesday in Dallas.