Appreciate his ability to articulate his thoughts.
It's natural his suggestions mainly involve transfer of power out of the hands of the commissioner (and thus the owners) and towards the players, because he's a player himself and thus writes from that perspective. Affecting the power balance in the NFL sounds like a good idea to a player, but that isn't the commissioner's job. The commissioner's job is to maintain the health of the league. Making players happier is sometimes in conflict with that goal.
A committee to evaluate fines? It's not a terrible idea, but is the fairness of fines impacting the NFL's image negatively enough to warrant a change? I say no. A commissioner, when he levies fines, considers things such as "how does this action impact the league's image?", which are more political considerations, but that's as it should be. From an image standpoint I think there's an argument that Goodell in specific is shaping NFL behavior in a way that hurts the product (e.g. legislating out big hits), but that's more an argument for having a different commissioner than it is an argument for moving towards decision-by-committee. Shaping NFL behavior is simply too outward-facing of a task (meaning PR has to be a large consideration) to leave up to an aggregate of players, no matter how bad of a job Goodell is doing of it.
Let me reiterate, fairness of fines is not a primary goal in and of itself. This isn't the justice system, it's a privately-owned business. The fines exist to enhance safety, to shape behavior to maximize the positive image, and in some cases provide cover against future legal exposure. Safety is a consideration, but it is not the only consideration. Good companies I think make an honest commitment to safety above all else, yes. But if safety is a concern, the players are the last people you want in charge of fines because they've resisted the safety measures so far.
Re: the disability benefits, nobody will disagree with that, even Roger if the system is truly difficult to navigate.
The individuality thing...I don't really disagree with that much either. There does need to be some level of uniformity of appearance on the field, but the NFL gets a little bit too into the weeds with that and really doesn't have to.
I also don't see what it'd hurt to let guys promote things in the locker room, but on the other hand there's lots of time to promote those things outside of work, and it is still the workplace in the locker room doing interviews. I don't believe there's much of a hardship argument there for the league to tell players to promote their stuff outside of work. It may be for charity but there are a million ways guys contribute to charity already.
Transparency of where fine money ends up...eh. Again, this isn't a public institution. Now, I think it might be good PR to make it transparent, but lack of transparency isn't something that fans care about that much I think. They like to whine about it but really I think fans want Goodell to make decisions that don't make football suck. I think if a commissioner did that, and nothing else, fans would be just fine. I do think that putting all that fine money towards head trauma would be "the right thing" to do ethically, so I like the suggestion on those grounds.
