Roger Goodell--His Game, His Rules

When you have time, as the articles are long but worth the read--

How Roger Goodell made the NFL bigger, richer, more powerful -- and now more divided -- than ever before--

Over the past five months, ESPN has interviewed more than 80 people and obtained thousands of confidential documents for this story. (Goodell, however, declined multiple interview requests.)
The league has never been more divided. Last year's Bountygate was the latest disciplinary action to turn into a fiasco, breeding distrust of Goodell in many players. While fans lavish more attention on the league than ever before, many diehards ask whether the end is near, saying they'd never let their children play such a dangerous game. At the center of these swirling tensions is Goodell, whose decisiveness and relentlessness have come to define the NFL, for better or worse.
http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/page/RogerGoodell/game-rules

Roger Goodell, in a year of high-profile controversy, remains a formidable force as leader of NFL--

"The negative reaction that players currently have toward the commissioner is in essence the product of being ill-informed and poorly led," Cornwell said. "If they did not want the commissioner to have this power they had all the authority: We are not agreeing to this collective bargaining agreement under these circumstances.'

"If it wasn't important enough to miss some games during the lockout then it can't be so important now. They had plenty of time to challenge it. But not only did they not challenge it but they gave this power for 10 years. That's like giving somebody a stick in a fight and when they hit you with it complaining that they hit you too hard."
http://www.nola.com/superbowl/index.ssf/2013/01/roger_good_reworked_profile.html

On Further Review, Roger Goodell F%*&ed Up This NFL Season From End To End--

Cowboys-Redskins was the biggest matchup of the year, a win-or-go-home game for two division rivals. It turned out to be the most-watched regular-season sporting event in 15 years. But one familiar face was missing from the FedEx Field suites: commissioner Roger Goodell, who found something else to do Sunday night. Maybe he was busy. Or maybe he knew he wasn't exactly welcome at a game featuring two of the teams he penalized—to the tune of tens of millions of dollars—for the crime of not colluding to hold down player salaries.

A brief recap, which is easy to do because none of these facts are in dispute. 2010 was the last year of the old CBA, and as such there was no salary cap in place. But the owners got together and agreed that no one would spend more than $123 million—in other words, that they would keep payrolls down with a gentlemen's agreement. This was outright collusion, and Giants owner John Mara said it "came up several times in our meetings."
http://deadspin.com/5972260/on-further-review-roger-goodell-f%*&ed-up-this-nfl-season-from-end-to-end You're going to have to put in the "uck" and remove the %*& in the link for it to work. It was the only way I could use the link without violating the WZ rules because I don't want a warning.

Don't get me wrong -- I don't care much for Goodell -- but I don't quite understand all the bad feelings towards him.

As Commissioner, he's appointed by the team owners. All the rule changes, blackouts, and price hikes (etc, etc) we like to complain about? The owners (by majority decision) voted for all of that. The Commissioner is just merely a figurehead tasked with executing the plan.

IIRC, his authority is pretty much limited to disciplining players and clubs (by way of fines, suspension, cap space forfeiture, draft picks, etc) but that's really it. Of course, his primary function is to keep the money coming in for the owners.

Bringing it back in, while he does strike me as a bit of an egomaniac, it's the powers afforded to him by the owners that allow him to carry on as such.

And I doubt that anyone in his position would behave differently.

Troubled days ahead for the commish

James Harrison Considering Legal Action vs. NFL After Deflategate Ruling
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2562747-james-harrison-considering-legal-action-vs-nfl-after-deflategate-ruling

Originally posted by Marty:
Troubled days ahead for the commish

James Harrison Considering Legal Action vs. NFL After Deflategate Ruling
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2562747-james-harrison-considering-legal-action-vs-nfl-after-deflategate-ruling

It's about time. The owners are figuring out that another commissioner can get them the same TV money without all the negative press. The beginning of the end was when he lost Kraft's support.

Originally posted by Ronnie49Lott:
It's about time. The owners are figuring out that another commissioner can get them the same TV money without all the negative press. The beginning of the end was when he lost Kraft's support.

Well I hope he kept a backup copy of those Spygate videos to hold over the Patriots as leverage

Goodell is a piece of s**t. He tried to punish Brady with no evidence. lol

Originally posted by Young2Rice:
Goodell is a piece of s**t. He tried to punish Brady with no evidence. lol

They had hard evidence against the ball boys but none against Brady. He made sure of that and he had his fall guys in place. Brady knew that he had taken steps to prevent any conviction in a court of law. The ball boys took the fall at the end of the day. I don't fault Goodell for trying to hit Brady for cheating like he is supposed to but I do fault him for not trying to do things the right way. He should have warned them and given them the chance to fix it and then if he caught them cheating he should have levied discipline. I believe those ball boys acted on behalf of the QB but I also believe Brady outsmarted Goodell and by right he will be playing this season

http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/13533995/split-nfl-new-england-patriots-apart

Originally posted by JustinMT:
http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/13533995/split-nfl-new-england-patriots-apart

NE dun goofed, they got a little too self righteous, a little too cocky in their attitude towards ESPN over Deflategate for a franchise with so many skeletons in their closet, now ESPN is basically unloading both barrels into them.

Originally posted by Phoenix49ers:

Originally posted by JustinMT:
http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/13533995/split-nfl-new-england-patriots-apart

NE dun goofed, they got a little too self righteous, a little too cocky in their attitude towards ESPN over Deflategate for a franchise with so many skeletons in their closet, now ESPN is basically unloading both barrels into them.

I only read half that because it was pretty long but wow. I guess when spygate broke i didnt really care so i didnt spend much time on it. Now reading up on its makes you think. What i know is where there is smoke there is fire and while i read that story with a grain of salt as to what the media trys to do there sure is a lot of smoke

"He told me, 'The league doesn't need this. We're asking you to come out with a couple lines exonerating us and saying we did our due diligence.'"

Mike Martz, ex-Rams coach, about commissioner Roger Goodell

I'm for Goodell in this. We are talking about the Patriots here. The one that continually comes up with creative cheating attempts. For Goodell's part he has to protect the NFL integrity. It's just good business for the fans and owners alike. You really don't want people to think the games can be manipulated in any way. And if there's a cheating scandal, it is in all parties' interest to cooperate, to get it over as quickly as possible and minimized the degree of the scandal.

Brady is the one that went retard, didn't get with the system,didn't turn over his phone. The league does not want to tarnish their star qb any more than necessary. Because they would rather like to promote the game with him than without him. Goodell was setting an example, that cheating, even a hint of it, can't be tolerated, even by its star qb. Look how quickly he handed down the penalty on the spy gate, bounty scandal, deflate gate, etc. He basically had them investigated very quickly, not to prolong the scandal in the media than necessary.

These guys just don't get it. When it's a negative, it's not good for anyone in the league. Best not to drag it out any further than necessary. When there's a scandal in the league, it's a no win situation for Goodell. If he seems lax on the investigation and penalty. People will criticized for not enough oversight. When quickly investigated and penalize, the guilty party cried to the media.

They are tarnishing the brand that provided them with billions of dollars every year.

Originally posted by qnnhan7:
I'm for Goodell in this. We are talking about the Patriots here. The one that continually comes up with creative cheating attempts. For Goodell's part he has to protect the NFL integrity. It's just good business for the fans and owners alike. You really don't want people to think the games can be manipulated in any way. And if there's a cheating scandal, it is in all parties' interest to cooperate, to get it over as quickly as possible and minimized the degree of the scandal.

Brady is the one that went retard, didn't get with the system,didn't turn over his phone. The league does not want to tarnish their star qb any more than necessary. Because they would rather like to promote the game with him than without him. Goodell was setting an example, that cheating, even a hint of it, can't be tolerated, even by its star qb. Look how quickly he handed down the penalty on the spy gate, bounty scandal, deflate gate, etc. He basically had them investigated very quickly, not to prolong the scandal in the media than necessary.

These guys just don't get it. When it's a negative, it's not good for anyone in the league. Best not to drag it out any further than necessary. When there's a scandal in the league, it's a no win situation for Goodell. If he seems lax on the investigation and penalty. People will criticized for not enough oversight. When quickly investigated and penalize, the guilty party cried to the media.

They are tarnishing the brand that provided them with billions of dollars every year.

lol. Goodell has been on a witch hunt. I don't understand how people don't see or get that. He was fully aware during the Colts / Pats game, that supposedly the Pats were deflating footballs. So instead of picking up the phone and calling somebody in the Pats organization and telling them to knock it off (whether they were doing it or not) he decides to let this happen, just so he can catch them red handed. I really wonder who leaked the information to Mortensen (during SB weekend) that balls were deflated? Hmmm...

On top of that, two reports that came straight from the NFL was that 11 of 12 footballs were deflated, which was a lie because it was only 2 of them. And the other one was that Tom destroyed his cell phone (they came up with those headlines), because they wanted everybody to have an image in their head of Tom stomping on his cell phone in driveway. Tom said he had to replace it because it broke, and even if he did destroy it, why go this route and try and play around with this TMZ style reporting?

And the "independent" report that Wells came out with is so bogus, even the judge was using quotation marks when using the word "independent" because the NFL PR department decided when to release it as well as went over it, and did the editing before publishing it...ya very independent reporting there lmao.

Look at the OTL reports today, Goodell was forcing Mike Martz to say things they weren't true just because he didn't want a congressional hearing to happen, which former Senator Specter was pushing for.

Goodell makes 50 million dollars a year to play judge, jury, and executioner, and now with these new OTL reports, everybody will see what a POS he is, and he is only interested in protecting himself, and not the NFL or the players.

The commish has changed way too many contact rules. Yes a deliberate hit to injure a player should be fine worthy and suspension worthy.

Craft loved Goddell and the changing of the strike zone to hit QB's after Brady got hurt....yet that doesn't apply to running QB's. Bring back the old rules and let Brady take every hit.



But right now the Pats are repeat cheating jack asses and don't give a s**t. They've been caught twice....what else are they doing that we haven't discovered yet? Goddell should go after them, this actually hurts the integrity of the game.

Originally posted by TheHYDE49er:

Originally posted by qnnhan7:
I'm for Goodell in this. We are talking about the Patriots here. The one that continually comes up with creative cheating attempts. For Goodell's part he has to protect the NFL integrity. It's just good business for the fans and owners alike. You really don't want people to think the games can be manipulated in any way. And if there's a cheating scandal, it is in all parties' interest to cooperate, to get it over as quickly as possible and minimized the degree of the scandal.

Brady is the one that went retard, didn't get with the system,didn't turn over his phone. The league does not want to tarnish their star qb any more than necessary. Because they would rather like to promote the game with him than without him. Goodell was setting an example, that cheating, even a hint of it, can't be tolerated, even by its star qb. Look how quickly he handed down the penalty on the spy gate, bounty scandal, deflate gate, etc. He basically had them investigated very quickly, not to prolong the scandal in the media than necessary.

These guys just don't get it. When it's a negative, it's not good for anyone in the league. Best not to drag it out any further than necessary. When there's a scandal in the league, it's a no win situation for Goodell. If he seems lax on the investigation and penalty. People will criticized for not enough oversight. When quickly investigated and penalize, the guilty party cried to the media.

They are tarnishing the brand that provided them with billions of dollars every year.

lol. Goodell has been on a witch hunt. I don't understand how people don't see or get that. He was fully aware during the Colts / Pats game, that supposedly the Pats were deflating footballs. So instead of picking up the phone and calling somebody in the Pats organization and telling them to knock it off (whether they were doing it or not) he decides to let this happen, just so he can catch them red handed. I really wonder who leaked the information to Mortensen (during SB weekend) that balls were deflated? Hmmm...

On top of that, two reports that came straight from the NFL was that 11 of 12 footballs were deflated, which was a lie because it was only 2 of them. And the other one was that Tom destroyed his cell phone (they came up with those headlines), because they wanted everybody to have an image in their head of Tom stomping on his cell phone in driveway. Tom said he had to replace it because it broke, and even if he did destroy it, why go this route and try and play around with this TMZ style reporting?

And the "independent" report that Wells came out with is so bogus, even the judge was using quotation marks when using the word "independent" because the NFL PR department decided when to release it as well as went over it, and did the editing before publishing it...ya very independent reporting there lmao.

Look at the OTL reports today, Goodell was forcing Mike Martz to say things they weren't true just because he didn't want a congressional hearing to happen, which former Senator Specter was pushing for.

Goodell makes 50 million dollars a year to play judge, jury, and executioner, and now with these new OTL reports, everybody will see what a POS he is, and he is only interested in protecting himself, and not the NFL or the players.

I disagree. All the things you've mentioned in your post, he has to give some sense of oversight in the league with 'independent investigation'. A league that policed it self. Otherwise Congressional hearing steps in. There will be a lot of s**t coming out of that the owners do not want.

No businesses would want the Fed to step in of any degree.