Kraft had been making a big show of still being mad at the league over the endless Deflategate saga. He believed Goodell and a group of his bitter rivals are intent on messing with his dynasty, stealing his draft picks, soiling his reputation, and railroading his quarterback. “Jealousy and envy are incurable diseases” had become Kraft’s signature refrain.
Woody Johnson, owner of the Jets and heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, trailed several paces behind Kraft in the lobby, as he has for years in the AFC East. He wore a white Jets cap and crooked backpack. Kraft would diagnose Robert Wood “Woody” Johnson IV with the “incurable disease.” On the day that the league announced its sanctions against the Patriots and Brady, Johnson’s wife, Suzanne, tweeted out a smiley face emoji before deleting it. Even worse was when the Wood Man himself “favorited” a tweet calling for his own general manager at the time (John Idzik) to be fired. Johnson apologized and called the move “inadvertent.”
There is much about the Membership that is “inadvertent,” starting with who gets to join this freakish assembly. They are quite a bunch: old money and new, recovering drug addicts and born-again Christians and Orthodox Jews; sweethearts, criminals, and a fair number of Dirty Old Men. They are tycoons of enlarged ego, delusion, and prostate whose ranks include heir-owners like the Maras, Rooneys, and Hunts, of the Giants, Steelers, and Chiefs, respectively, whose family names conjure league history and muddy fields, sideline fedoras and NFL Films. There is also a truck-stop operator whose company admitted to defrauding its customers in a $92 million judicial settlement, a duo of New Jersey real estate developers who were forced to pay $84.5 million in compensatory damages because, according to a judge, they “used organized crime–type activities” to fleece their business partners, an energy baron who funded an antigay initiative, a real estate giant married to a Walmart heiress, tax evaders, etc. One imagines those black felt pictures from the seventies with dogs playing poker around a table. Trails of ex-wives, litigants, estranged children, and fired coaches populate their histories.
Shopping mall developer Edward John “Eddie” DeBartolo Jr., the beloved 49ers owner who won five Super Bowl championships during his twenty-three-year tenure, was suspended by the league for a year and eventually gave up control of the team to his sister after pleading guilty to his role in a gambling fraud scandal in Louisiana. In an ill-fated effort to get a riverboat gambling license, DeBartolo had agreed to pay Governor Edwin Edwards $400,000 in $100 bills. Somehow “Eddie D” managed to avoid prison and was sentenced instead to the pro football Hall of Fame in 2016.
Membership positions come with no term limits, let alone reelection campaigns. “I own this football team,” 49ers CEO Jed York, DeBartolo’s nephew, told a group of reporters after firing his general manager and third coach in three years after the 2016–17 season. “You don’t dismiss owners,” he felt the need to remind everyone. In an otherwise defensive and bumbling performance, this was York’s one indisputable line. Technically, York’s mother owned the team and she could fire him (as Panthers owner Jerry Richardson once made his sons resign). But his larger point was clear: York served at the pleasure of the roost he then ruled, and so did everyone else.
League meetings offer incidental bits of access at an oligarchic theme park. Normally reclusive and fortified figures favor us with happenstance encounters. Niners cochairman John York happened to be standing next to me in the valet parking line; he is a retired cancer research pathologist and brilliantly credentialed to own an NFL team. How? Because he was smart enough to marry Eddie DeBartolo’s sister years before model owner Eddie D became a felon and lost his team. I introduced myself to Mr. York, asked him how the 49ers were looking, and mentioned that I was a reporter, which appeared to stun and terrify him. “We are very excited about our team under Coach Kelly,” he said, referring to the team’s newly hired coach, Chip Kelly. I wished Mr. York luck in the coming season, by the end of which it would be “former coach Chip Kelly.”
* * *
—
As it does every year, the league kicked off its annual meeting with a welcome party that was open to all branches of the family. There were splendid buffets, a live band, bright renderings of the Shield in various forms, and even a magician for the kids. Guests balanced cocktails and plates of food around a swimming pool. Everyone was there, Roger and the Membership on down to the lowliest league officials. Even Dr. Elliot Pellman was attending, the notorious former Jets team doctor who went on to become the league’s go-to concussion denier for many years. He had chaired the NFL’s Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee despite turning out to be a rheumatologist who was trained in Guadalajara and had limited expertise in heads. As best anyone could tell, Pellman’s chief qualification for the job seemed to be that he was former commissioner Paul Tagliabue’s personal physician.
“Is that Elliot Pellman?” I asked a league executive. I recognized Pellman from the various reports I’d watched and read over the years about the league’s fumbling of its concussion problem. “Yep, he’s still here,” the league official said, head shaking. I suggested that maybe the magician could make Dr. Pellman disappear. The executive laughed, but it turns out the league was already on the case. “He’s retiring,” the NFL’s executive vice president for health and safety policy, Jeff Miller, told USA Today the very next day.
My main goal for the reception was to eat as much shellfish as possible and to specifically avoid two people. The first was Tony Wyllie, the antagonistic head of communications for the Washington Redskins. He was mad at me because of a story I had written for the New York Times Magazine about Goodell a few months earlier. Wyllie had arranged a brief interview for me to discuss Goodell with Redskins owner Dan Snyder. It was a session that essentially amounted to Snyder’s telling me about one hundred different ways in fifteen minutes that Goodell “always protects the Shield.” Wyllie monitored our interview (as PR guys do), or “babysat,” as I described Wyllie’s role. Wyllie registered his displeasure to me earlier at being called a “babysitter.”
“We’re done,” Wyllie told me, after also saying that I had no right in the story to mention the issue of the name “Redskins” being offensive to Native Americans. I had indeed mentioned the Redskins name in the story, mostly because Houston Texans owner Bob McNair had weighed in on the issue in a particularly striking fashion. McNair told me he was not offended by the name “Redskins” and explained that he had grown up in North Carolina around many Cherokee Indians. ‘‘Everybody respected their courage,’’ McNair said of the Cherokees. ‘‘They might not have respected the way they held their whiskey, but . . .’’ McNair laughed.
This not surprisingly drew criticism from offended Native American groups, anti–Redskins name protesters, and people who can appreciate the irony of headlines like this one, on Deadspin: NFL ASSURES FANS THERE’S NO TOLERANCE FOR RACIAL SLURS AT REDSKINS GAMES. But I had been told that McNair was mad since the “Redskins” name was not the designated topic of our interview (the unquestioned greatness of Roger Goodell was said designated topic). As for the commissioner, I had asked the Texans owner whether he was concerned about the volume of criticism Goodell had been receiving. With success comes scrutiny, was how McNair had replied, although once again he said it in a much more excellent way. “It’s like the old saying,’’ McNair said. ‘‘The higher up the palm tree the monkey climbs, the more of his ass is exposed.’’ McNair laughed. If the commish objected to being compared with a monkey’s ass by one of his bosses, he had about 40 million reasons this year to take it like a man.
* * *
—
McNair, then seventy-nine, has a bald oval head and a slight resemblance to Mr. Clean. I saw him standing with his wife at the reception looking clean in a pressed white suit. I surveyed the monkey’s ass in full. Everyone was dressed for leisure: Kraft in a too-unbuttoned dress shirt and his customized Nikes; Jones in a powder-blue blazer, no tie, and a glass (sorry, tumbler) o
f something; Ravens chief Steve Bisciotti in beautifully pressed jeans, white shirt with an open collar, and loafers without socks.
49ers coach Chip Kelly elbowed his way up next to me at the paella table. He had been talking to Rex Ryan, who was then coaching the Bills and whom I barely recognized after he had lost considerable weight following a lap band procedure in 2010 (Kelly might consider this). I had, for the record, never seen so much paella in my life. The league does know how to feed itself.
After a few minutes, I gravitated to a mountain of lobster meat, crab, and shrimp. And also to Woody Johnson. I was eager to discuss politics with the Wood Man given his longtime involvement with the Republican Party. He had been the national finance chairman of Jeb Bush’s ill-fated presidential campaign until it had been officially euthanized a few weeks earlier. Trump had taunted Johnson via a tweet, saying, “If Woody would’ve been w/ me, he would’ve been in the playoffs, at least!” The Jets owner was now slowly warming to Trump.
He gushed to me about how brilliant “build a wall” was as Trump’s signature theme. The phrase sent a simple, elegant message of what he stood for and what his campaign was about. Johnson was hopeful that Trump could act in a more restrained and presidential manner going forward—hopeful enough that Johnson would eventually raise nearly $25 million for the future president, much of it from fellow NFL owners.
ESPN’s Herm Edwards, the former Eagles defensive back and Jets head coach, came over to say hello to Johnson. “Love you, man,” the owner said, greeting his former coach. Johnson had also professed his “love” for Herm following the 2005 season exactly six weeks before “releasing him from his contract” under mysterious circumstances. I excused myself from this discussion, walked about ten feet, and found myself face-to-face with Goodell. “Good to see you,” Goodell said to me, and I reminded him I had interviewed him two months earlier for a story he claimed not to read. Suddenly there was a loud pop. I turned my head to see that a kid’s balloon had burst and its poor owner had burst into tears. By the time I turned back around the commissioner was gone, escaping behind a wall of owners.
The highlight of the evening came about a half hour later. Cynthia Hogan, then the league’s head of public policy and government affairs, walked over and introduced me to Jane Skinner Goodell, Roger’s wife. Her Majesty is a former Fox News anchor and the daughter of Samuel Skinner, a former transportation secretary and White House chief of staff under George H. W. Bush. I felt immediately at ease with Mrs. Goodell, though it might have been the booze. I asked her if she could help get the Pats’ stolen draft picks back after the Deflategate travesty. She chuckled, and then I asked her how many Shields Roger insisted they display around their estate in Bronxville, New York. “Only one,” she said evenly. “It’s tattooed on his chest.” I had heard rumors that Mrs. Goodell had an actual sense of humor, despite her husband’s being the enemy of lightness in any form. This confirmed it. She had a friend in me for life at that point.
“It doesn’t sound sexy,” Mrs. Goodell elaborated on her husband’s Shield tattoo. “But there are times . . .” Her voice trailed off and everyone who was listening laughed. But then she appeared to become nervous. “Okay, the tattoo on the chest is off the record,” she insisted to me. No way, I replied, and so the Queen of the Shield doubled down: “I didn’t say anything about the tattoo on his ass,” she said.
3.
NUGGETS
No less of a genius than Bill Belichick appeared to be lost. I watched him and ESPN’s Trey Wingo passing each other twice down the same hallway. They then pivoted and changed directions and passed each other again. Belichick was wearing flip-flops, cargo shorts, and a trademark gray hoodie with big sweat blotches on the back. He also wore his trademark “I hate this fucking league” scowl, a few notches more grim than his usual default scowl.
This aloofness goes well beyond Belichick’s well-established commitment to “ignoring the noise.” “Ignore the noise” is one of the many anodyne phrases that get elevated to branded merchandise by the Patriots because it happened to emanate from the tongues of Mr. Kraft or Coach Fucking Genius (“one of the most active organizations in sports as far as trademarking phrases goes,” ESPN reported). When 345 Park is involved, Belichick has been known to ratchet his contempt to Hall of Fame levels. A few minutes after the Patriots defeated the Seahawks in Super Bowl 49, an NFL flunky assigned to the Patriots coach mentioned a few “league things,” like interviews and posing for photos, that were expected of the winning coach. “Fuck the league,” Belichick said at this moment of pinnacle triumph. They should trademark that, too, if they haven’t already.
The closer one works to a football field, the less use one would have for a league meeting. Conversely, these are crunch-time events for the parasites, support staff, and media eavesdroppers who can get a great deal done here. In the lobby I encountered the perma-tanned Drew Rosenhaus, who pimps himself as “the NFL’s Most Ruthless Agent.” Rosenhaus stood a few feet away from the NFL’s leading media busybody, ESPN’s Schefter.
These league powwows are like Adam’s bar mitzvah. He knows everyone here. He waves to passing GMs, coaches, and agents in the lobby, holds a phone to his left ear and checks a text on another in his right hand. This is the population that makes up the “per sources” that Schefter cites whenever he tweets out a nugget to his seven million followers. Schefter is the prototype of a sports media subspecies that has gained cachet: the NFL Insider.
“Dannon goes with Cowboys QB Dak Prescott after dropping Cam Newton, per source,” Schefter tweeted after the Panthers’ quarterback went off on a sexist riff at a press conference, costing him endorsements. Schefter did not specify whether his scoop came per football or yogurt sources. But take it to the bank (an insider catchphrase) the man has sources; or even more than sources, he has “relationships,” as Schefter described them to me. “There are some that are friends,” he said. Schefter mentioned that a head coach had invited him to his son’s wedding last summer. “My friends in the sport, they call me for advice, ask what I think,” Schefter told me.
But, I asked, isn’t the notion of “friend” a bit fraught in the journalism business? Maybe, but the nugget racket is its own distinct subset. The Schefters of the space do not play for the Pulitzer Prizes (the eight-part series and textured storytelling). He was named “Most Influential Tweeter in New York” by New York magazine is more like it.
Insiders have their own reward system and play by their own rules. I asked Schefter what would happen if he had to report a critical item about one of his “friends” in the business. His tone became slightly defensive. “Hold on,” Schefter said. “How often am I writing a critical thing? That’s not what I do. My job is trafficking information—who’s hired, fired, traded, extended.”
Nuggets!
Nuggets aren’t “news” necessarily, in the same way that Chicken McNuggets aren’t really food. But they have become pleasing, even addictive, components of the fan diet nonetheless. When I was growing up, NFL transactions—like those from the other major leagues—were mostly rendered in agate type in the back of the sports pages. That’s where one would learn, for instance, that the NFL fined Steelers safety Mike Mitchell $48,620 for his late hit on Chiefs quarterback Alex Smith, or that the Redskins were signing kicker Nick Rose or that former 49ers linebacker NaVorro Bowman had struck a one-year deal with the Raiders. These items were packaged as the afterthoughts they were. Even among hard-core fans, the privilege of learning that the Colts had placed running back Robert Turbin (elbow) on injured reserve could wait until the morning. These followers did not have fantasy moves pending—because fantasy football did not exist, and neither did the Internet and neither did Adam Schefter in his multiplatform embodiment.
There is no great Big Bang theory to explain how yesterday’s agate type became the nugget cosmos that Schefty rules. Or, if there is, he isn’t pondering cosmic questions like that. I once asked Schefter w
hether it bothered him that the half-life of his art form—the nugget—lasted roughly as long as a single dose of Ritalin. “Everything’s fleeting,” Schefter said, shrugging. He checked his phone as if it were an involuntary brain function, like breathing.
Schefter would be loath to waste a second before discharging some morsel of “breaking news,” just as his customers would be loath to learn of a transaction one second later than they had to. With his always-refilling hoard of data snacks, Adam feeds a dynamic market of incremental news in which he is also the chief broker and disseminator.
Schefter is coiffed, suited, and perpetually made up. He cultivates a harried bearing, as if carrying the weight of each follower’s information needs. Increasingly, he is feeding their addiction to fantasy leagues. “There’s been a shift over time,” said Schefter, who joined ESPN in 2009 after five years at the NFL Network and more than fifteen years covering the Broncos for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News. “I am rarely asked how a team is going to do, and I am regularly asked whether I should start this player or that player, draft this player, who’s a sleeper, who’s a breakout guy.” Schefter is, to paraphrase Hair Club for Men president Sy Sperling, not only the Nugget Club for Men president but also a client. He is a devout fantasy owner in his own right. His team is called “Per Sources.”
Schefter’s full-on life commitment to the hunt for nuggets is his brand animator. He enjoys the fact of his one-dimensional existence—no hobbies, no time for anything besides job, family, and venti soy chai lattes. He sleeps five fitful hours a night (“in bursts, never continuously”) and tries to get a date night in with his wife on weekends. He works out Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and never without his phone. A driver takes him the two-to-three-hour distance between ESPN’s Bristol, Connecticut, headquarters and his home on Long Island, which allows Schefter to work en route or maybe to steal an extra burst of shut-eye. “I regret to say I am not the most well-rounded individual,” he told me. He barely writes anymore beyond firing off a few lines via Twitter and TV. And that’s fine. “I’m a hit man,” he said. “I hit a story, bounce to the next one.” Schefter no longer ventures into locker rooms and attends just one game a year (the Super Bowl). He engages “per sources” almost entirely by phone and text message. This makes these league gatherings a rare opportunity to lay eyes per them.
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