The Roger Goodell thread

[homerun1970]

I think Hardy should be out of the league as well Roland. I do believe he will be as soon as the next phase of court is completed. The fact is though he shouldn't even be sniffing a football field now as well. Who is ultimately able to stop him from seeing the field? Would it be either the Panthers Org. or Commissioner? That doesn't help his case for reasons he shouldn't be getting trounced in the media and public opinion as he is.

 

[Smelly McUgly]

I think that it's fair that people are coming down on Goodell because this is another example of a way that he has mishandled a major issue. CTEs, concussions, quality-of-life for players after they retire, and insuring that kids continue to play the game are all major issues tied up together. Goodell had a number of options, including making harsher penalties for not strapping their helmets on properly for players (must sit out the rest of the drive, maybe) or leaning on the NFLPA that he dominates all the time to make safer helmet tech mandatory.

Instead, he makes the hitbox where defensive players are able to contact receivers very small and then asks the referees to take on the impossible task of calling every headshot they think they see in an incredibly fast game where people get hit hard and have their heads snap back fairly regularly...all the while continuing to glorify the hitting aspect of the game (just watch a recent NFL Films production on pretty much anything). This, out of all options available, was one of the worst. It just slows down the game, changes the tide of games with phantom flags, and still doesn't do much to keep bonehead players from not fully protecting themselves by, say, strapping in their helmet because they think it looks cooler with one strap hanging down.

The way that he has dealt with marijuana use, I actually am not that down on him for. Marijuana has a stigma that still isn't going away in most corporate arenas regardless of its legality both medicinally and recreationally in a number of states. Expecting Goodell to be out in front on that wave is unreasonable; Goodell is not the pioneering type.

However, the WE LOVE WOMEN! BREAST CANCER MONTH! WE WEAR PINK! BUY OUR TINY JERSEYS FOR WOMEN AFTER YOU SEE THIS COMMERCIAL WITH MOMS WHO LOVE FOOTBALL ON IT! pandering to women can probably accurately be called "pandering" in the first place when you consider how Goodell botched the Ray Rice thing by not giving Rice a harsher punishment in the first place. If he didn't see the tape, he should have at least made it clear why he didn't (not legally allowed, etc.). If he did, he seems like a pretty heartless dude.

Should it matter that there was a tape? No. Greg Hardy should be out of the league if he really did throw a woman onto a pile of guns and punch her or whatever. But just because it SHOULDN'T matter doesn't mean it DOESN'T. We know that in order not to sit around, catatonic from all the horribleness in the world, we block out stuff, and that pretty much includes stuff we don't see. When we actually see it, like we saw Rice dragging his then-fiancee out of an elevator while she was unconscious, then it becomes "real" to us. Just him dragging her should have been enough for Goodell to guess how bad it looked inside the elevator and do more than suspend Rice for two games. Is Goodell cold-hearted or just an idiot? I guess there could be a third option here, though I'm not sure what it is.

Essentially, Goodell never really seems to make the right choice. If he can't navigate making $$$ for the owners while at the same time protecting the Shield from the threat of football dying due to parents not letting their kids play, the threat of being seen as insensitive to women, etc., he's not the right man for the job.

 

[rigelian]

I think that if Goodell goes we're likely to get a political hack like Condi Rice. She said she would want the job a long time ago.

 

[Uncle Si]

I love how Ray Rice hits his fiancee so everyone wants the commissioner gone while nary a word is spoken about Greg Hardy, who is GUILTY of even worse, and more than once.

But since we've got VIDEO of this one, everybody's up in arms. SMH.

its a great point.... Chris Cook strangled his girlfriend unconscious as a member of the Vikings. Very little was said and done. He was suspended, but it was not haedline news (you can guess what team he plays for now). edit... he was suspended 10 games by the Vikings until his trial. NFL did nothing

if anything, the video evidence has just thrust the leagues lack of integrity in dealing with these issues, and fans permittance of it, into the spotlight.

This simply shows Goodell's unwillingness to address the situation though. Hardy and Cook should have been expelled from the league long ago.

 

[huskylawyer]

Goodell should have been fired after he destroyed the Spygate tapes. That is just incredibly shady, and there is no excuse for it. I'm hopeful one day the full tapes come out (someone had to have made copies). IMHO, the Pat's super bowl wins are about as legit as Bonds' home run record.

The Ray Rice fiasco is just the straw that broke the camel's back. Goodell has been a train wreck ever since he came into the league. He's mishandled so many things, and Americans in general love to watch people who engage in rampant hubris get what is coming to them. Yes, we like firm. Yes, we like tough. But we don't like dickheads.

Chickens coming home to roost.

 

[RolandDeschain]

Goodell should have been fired after he destroyed the Spygate tapes. That is just incredibly shady, and there is no excuse for it. I'm hopeful one day the full tapes come out (someone had to have made copies). IMHO, the Pat's super bowl wins are about as legit as Bonds' home run record.

The Ray Rice fiasco is just the straw that broke the camel's back. Goodell has been a train wreck ever since he came into the league. He's mishandled so many things, and Americans in general love to watch people who engage in rampant hubris get what is coming to them. Yes, we like firm. Yes, we like tough. But we don't like dickheads.

Chickens coming home to roost.

All the perfect saint commissioners prior to Goodell must appreciate your post.

 

[Anonymous]

I think another thing that some folks are not thinking about is the fact that, just like the president has his cabinet, Goodell has a staff of assistants, admins, attorneys and handlers that feed him info and whisper various things in his ear. The man cannot be everywhere at once so he relies heavily on his people to gather intel, collect and summarize communications, et. al, so he can act. It is entirely possible that along the way certain facts got misconstrued and/or items of importance not properly communicated and decisions made that ultimately exploded.

This absolutely does not remove any fault from Roger, but it does speak to the possibility that in the heat of the battle he may not have taken the advice of key folks and made calls without considering what counsel or consensus may have proven a better course of action. In which case, those heads need to roll also, IMO, because they lacked the balls to tell him he was an idiot.

I have had situations in my career in which my bosses made calls I completely disagreed with. Against the better judgment of my colleagues, I spoke my piece in meetings to that fact. I did so because I did not want to be part of the BS that I knew would come down with little regard to my long term status in the group. In one instance, my doing so paid off in every one of them getting fired but me. Another time, resulted in a promotion and a nice raise. Call me what you want but I look out for number one and respect from my family means more to me than the guy in the next cubicle.

If I was one of those fools I would do some damage control to save my kids college fund and fall on the sword of truth. If nobody does they are all pansies and deserve to get axed along with him.

There is no such thing as a fair fight. There is nothing wrong with kicking somebody in the balls in a standup fist fight, and what other people think is their problem. Save yourself, tell the truth, and when it all goes down you'll be respected by the right people and you still be eating steak. Loyalty is overrated when it comes to paying your mortgage.

 

[volsunghawk]

I love how Ray Rice hits his fiancee so everyone wants the commissioner gone while nary a word is spoken about Greg Hardy, who is GUILTY of even worse, and more than once.

But since we've got VIDEO of this one, everybody's up in arms. SMH.

This is just another example of Goodell's inconsistency in meting out punishment. If you want to read a piece that I think makes a good argument for why people are up in arms over Goodell right now, you can check out the following:

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/94 ... er-up-tape

This is as bad as it has ever gotten for a North American sports commissioner. This is the nightmare scenario.

This is, in fact, a political scenario. This is how political scandals happen. Keith Olbermann has compared Goodell to Richard Nixon, and while a lot of that is Keith Olbermann being Keith Olbermann, the whole scandal has taken on the form and function of a President's downfall. It's not the crime, it's the cover-up. What did he know, and when did he know it? The thing about this is that this is not, generally, how the job of commissioner has worked. You're not supposed to even have the chance to be Nixon. You're not supposed to have that much power. You're not supposed to want that much power.

And that's why Roger Goodell is here, in the position he's in, today. Don't look just at the Ray Rice tape, or a voicemail the AP grabbed, or what NOW or Congress is saying. This has been Roger Goodell's construction, his NFL, all along.

You see, for Roger Goodell, it has never quite been enough that the NFL be the most profitable entertainment corporation in the country, or that the league basically run the cable television industry, or that every other sports league has been desperately trying to emulate its success in ways that are often self-destructive. No, to Goodell, the NFL must be right. It must be the bastion of morality -- morals it has written and prescribed itself -- around which the rest of the universe revolves. Goodell's NFL is more than just a sports league: It is a way of life, a state of mind, a universe to itself. Goodell has held his league up as some sort of moral beacon since he was a kid, writing 40 letters to the NFL league office and teams trying to get an interview in 1982. Goodell's obsession with The Shield has turned the league into something larger than it is, something it ever had to be. It is the center of the galaxy to him, and he has tried to make it that way for the rest of us.
...
The problem with this dogma is that when you hold yourself and your league up as this beacon of moral virtue … you better have your house in order. You better be as perfect as you demand everyone else to be. Because the minute you look like you made a mistake, the minute you screw up like the people you've come down on so hard for screwing up in the past … you're toast. You look like the congressman who ran on family values but was secretly cheating on his wife. You look like the law-and-order tough-on-crime guy who couldn't obey the law himself. You look like a hypocrite. And America comes down harder on no one than they come down hard on hypocrites.

It's not about the specific players. it's about how Goodell has handled the league since he became commissioner. He was supposed to be the league commissioner. He chose to be the league disciplinarian. And then he was wildly inconsistent in how he played that role.

Add to that how he has botched the judgments handed down for Spygate vs. Bountygate, not to mention that his time as an NFL executive and eventual commissioner saw the league attempt to discredit research done into CTE in NFL alumni and fight against the concussion lawsuit before finally settling when the science became too overwhelming to refute.

 

[huskylawyer]

Goodell should have been fired after he destroyed the Spygate tapes. That is just incredibly shady, and there is no excuse for it. I'm hopeful one day the full tapes come out (someone had to have made copies). IMHO, the Pat's super bowl wins are about as legit as Bonds' home run record.

The Ray Rice fiasco is just the straw that broke the camel's back. Goodell has been a train wreck ever since he came into the league. He's mishandled so many things, and Americans in general love to watch people who engage in rampant hubris get what is coming to them. Yes, we like firm. Yes, we like tough. But we don't like dickheads.

Chickens coming home to roost.

All the perfect saint commissioners prior to Goodell must appreciate your post.

Rozelle and Tags had their flaws, but it is no way on the level of Goodell. People weren't even talking about Tags when he was commissioner, because he generally kept his mouth shut and didn't mess with the game. Sure, he was leniant on the players, but he was astute enough to know that making mountains out of molehills was not a priority that fans cares about (and as an attorney (something Goodell isn't), he knows a thing or two about due process).

Goodell on the other hand has, through his inept leadership, made it about HIM instead of the game. Constant rules changes that incredibly make the college game more physical than the pros (yes, the competition committee overseas, but Goodell pushes the agenda). I was watching a ton of college football this weekend, and I was like, "that would be a flag in the NFL, but thankfully, not in college).

The best commissioners are the ones you don't see. I rarely recall major discussions about Tags (other than the strike/likeout, which the NFL came out on top because they ran circles around Upshaw).

Goodell needs to go away in a bad way.

 

[RolandDeschain]

I'm gonna laugh when people see a lot of the same stuff from the next commissioner.

 

[Marvin49]

ZING!!

ouch.

 

[Anonymous]

Goodell should have been fired after he destroyed the Spygate tapes. That is just incredibly shady, and there is no excuse for it. I'm hopeful one day the full tapes come out (someone had to have made copies). IMHO, the Pat's super bowl wins are about as legit as Bonds' home run record.

The Ray Rice fiasco is just the straw that broke the camel's back. Goodell has been a train wreck ever since he came into the league. He's mishandled so many things, and Americans in general love to watch people who engage in rampant hubris get what is coming to them. Yes, we like firm. Yes, we like tough. But we don't like dickheads.

Chickens coming home to roost.

All the perfect saint commissioners prior to Goodell must appreciate your post.

Rozelle and Tags had their flaws, but it is no way on the level of Goodell. People weren't even talking about Tags when he was commissioner, because he generally kept his mouth shut and didn't mess with the game. Sure, he was leniant on the players, but he was astute enough to know that making mountains out of molehills was not a priority that fans cares about (and as an attorney (something Goodell isn't), he knows a thing or two about due process).

Goodell on the other hand has, through his inept leadership, made it about HIM instead of the game. Constant rules changes that incredibly make the college game more physical than the pros (yes, the competition committee overseas, but Goodell pushes the agenda). I was watching a ton of college football this weekend, and I was like, "that would be a flag in the NFL, but thankfully, not in college).

The best commissioners are the ones you don't see. I rarely recall major discussions about Tags (other than the strike/likeout, which the NFL came out on top because they ran circles around Upshaw).

Goodell needs to go away in a bad way.

Don't forget his secretary, his attorney, his owner liaisons, his assistants, his media consultants, etc. etc. Basically anybody that had an opportunity to be in his presence, conduct his business and entertain his thoughts, but didn't have to common sense to tell him he is making a mistake(s). They are all just as much at fault.

 

[King Dog]

 

[kearly]

I'm gonna laugh when people see a lot of the same stuff from the next commissioner.

Typically in these kind of situations, an employer will not seek a similar hire to the guy that just created a shitstorm. That, plus Goodell is a bit of a megalomaniac (Pehawk coined the perfect nickname for Goodell: "il duce"). Gonna be hard for the next commissioner to be as bad as Goodell. Goodell is a special blend of prideful, arrogant, incompetent, idiotic, manipulative and insensitive.

Odds are, Goodell will keep his job and we'll hate him more than ever. But if the NFL does crack, I have to believe they'd have the sense to go after a different kind of hiring. It's okay for a commissioner to be in the owners pockets to an extent, that's basically in his job description, but Goodell is a special case.

 

[Sgt. Largent]

Odds are, Goodell will keep his job and we'll hate him more than ever. But if the NFL does crack, I have to believe they'd have the sense to go after a different kind of hiring. It's okay for a commissioner to be in the owners pockets to an extent, that's basically in his job description, but Goodell is a special case.

Like any business, nothing will facilitate change until it hits the pocket book........and as of now I don't see advertisers running for the hills, nor fans refusing to attend or watch games.

This all points to Goodell going nowhere. He may be dragged up in front of congress or have a long apologetic press conference where he cries and says how sorry he is for not doing the right thing. But the bottom line is the owners are the only ones with the power to fire Goodell, and they aren't going to stop this money train, not even for a problem like this.

 

[kearly]

Well done.

 

[Scottemojo]

What irony it would be, when all are grandstanding about how wrong it is to blame the victim, if it all comes down to a wife who begged the DA and Roger for leniency? And ends up indirectly blamed by Roger and Co. for the mistakes they made.

 

[RolandDeschain]

What irony it would be, when all are grandstanding about how wrong it is to blame the victim, if it all comes down to a wife who begged the DA and Roger for leniency? And ends up indirectly blamed by Roger and Co. for the mistakes they made.

That would be funny as hell, for real. It's also looking like a real possibility based on how she's been acting and what she's been saying the past couple of days.

 

[Scottemojo]

What irony it would be, when all are grandstanding about how wrong it is to blame the victim, if it all comes down to a wife who begged the DA and Roger for leniency? And ends up indirectly blamed by Roger and Co. for the mistakes they made.

That would be funny as hell, for real. It's also looking like a real possibility based on how she's been acting and what she's been saying the past couple of days.

Even if it isn't true, she has been willing to nail herself to a cross for some time now. It is the easiest way out for everyone, and seems to be exactly what she wants.

 

[RolandDeschain]

What irony it would be, when all are grandstanding about how wrong it is to blame the victim, if it all comes down to a wife who begged the DA and Roger for leniency? And ends up indirectly blamed by Roger and Co. for the mistakes they made.

That would be funny as hell, for real. It's also looking like a real possibility based on how she's been acting and what she's been saying the past couple of days.

Even if it isn't true, she has been willing to nail herself to a cross for some time now. It is the easiest way out for everyone, and seems to be exactly what she wants.

This is rather judgmental of me, but it really seems rather sad. I don't know if she's just alright with that kind of treatment, or what, but...It doesn't look good.