Generous behind-the-scenes access was granted the reporter, Monica Langley. “I blew it,” Goodell was quoted about a dozen different ways. “Our penalties didn’t fit the crime.” Langley portrayed Goodell as the “face of the league” and well known to fans (“he is often stopped for fist bumps . . . and photos and has his own bobble-head doll”). She showed him really listening in a variety of settings, soliciting advice on how best to deal with domestic violence from a cross section of leaders (police, military, corporate). She described how Goodell had convened eleven former NFL players to collect their input—and then brought home the high drama. “Former Chicago Bears star Mike Singletary slapped his hand on the NFL shield in the middle of Mr. Goodell’s conference table and said: ‘This means excellence. If a player isn’t living up to that standard, he shouldn’t be part of the NFL brand.’”
But the pinnacle moment involved a killer anecdote, one for which this article should always be identified: “the cold pizza story.” Scene: a late-night meeting at 345 Park Ave. Goodell had called his team together to brainstorm about how best to convince people they were not covering up for Ray Rice, for the Ravens, or for their own incompetence. Pizza was ordered and brought into the meeting room. Langley then delivers the rest from here. “No slice was taken until Mr. Goodell ate,” she wrote. “He never did, and the slices turned cold in the box.” Anyone who overlooks Roger’s zeal to erase the scourge of domestic violence need only recall that cold pizza. It should be frozen and sent to Canton! (One league executive who was in the room disputed the account to me, insisting that he himself ate a few slices of the four pizzas—two cheese, two pepperoni—which he claimed were still warm and depleted by meeting’s end. An additional pizza-related nugget: Goodell does not in fact care for pizza himself. He was turned off to cheese in general at an early age after he accidently bit into an individually wrapped piece of American cheese that still had the plastic wrap on it. It disgusted little Rog and apparently soured him on the pleasures of cheese forever. And this explains everything about everything—or perhaps nothing at all.)
Regardless, no one was buying it. Confidence in Goodell was in a free fall. There were calls for him to resign. He was in a funk for much of that season, eager to regain credibility but uncertain how. With some exceptions (cold pizza!), the glowing press coverage Goodell had once enjoyed had flipped. “Roger Goodell uses his office as if he’s a blackjack-wielding tough from the 1920s with a crank-starting car,” Sally Jenkins wrote in the Washington Post.
Even the talking heads of the Nugget Industrial Complex were becoming cranky. ESPN’s Adam Schefter called the Rice breakdown “arguably the biggest black eye the league has ever had.” (Before the second video surfaced, Schefter had wondered whether Rice’s two-game suspension was “lenient enough.”)
When you’ve lost Schefter, you know it’s big trouble—we’re talking Cronkite Speaking Out Against Vietnam–level trouble! The diminished commissioner needed a lifeline. Enter Deflategate.
Brady and the Patriots were set up as perfect bull’s-eyes. Goodell went to work. He slapped the league’s biggest star and “model owner” over such an amazingly stupid story—among the most ridiculous sports “scandals” in history. But more amazing still was that the story simply would not end, no matter how trivial it became.
Goodell’s decision played well across his NFL nation-states. He was not exactly tackling an important cultural issue, like domestic violence, but in this case Goodell had done something even more important in the eyes of most NFL players, team officials, and fans: he did something to hurt an opposing team.
And not just any opposing team: the Borg. Fans lapped up the Patriots’ pain, which was the point: the delicious nothingness of Deflategate, a pleasing snack to follow the heavy indigestion of Ray Rice.
I was in Foxborough for the last game before the innocence died, almost a year earlier; the Pats had defeated the Ravens, 35–31, in the divisional playoffs, after twice overcoming double-touchdown deficits. The game became memorable for a few reasons. One, the Patriots’ offense deployed an exotic formation in the third quarter that confused the Ravens (and the referees) about which players were eligible to catch passes. While the Patriots’ scheme was determined to be within the rules, Ravens coach John Harbaugh was furious after the game, accusing the Pats of “deception” and calling the formations “an illegal type of a thing.” This led Brady to counter smugly that “maybe those guys gotta study the rule book,” which naturally pissed Harbaugh off further, and, depending on your interpretation of the reality show, might have triggered the events that led to Deflategate. (Harbaugh was suspected of tipping off the coach of the Patriots’ next opponent, the Colts, his former assistant Chuck Pagano, that Brady and Co. might have been messing with the air pressure in their footballs.)
Late in the first quarter, I headed to the men’s room where I caught a few minutes of the NBC broadcast of the game on a press box TV. NBC cameras happened to be trained at that moment on Commissioner Goodell and Her Majesty, Jane, who were sitting in the Gillette Stadium stands. This would be the last time Goodell would set foot in Foxborough for thirty-three months, fearing Deflategate-generated vigilante justice from Pats fans.
But no one knew that at the time. And what struck me as I watched the telecast were NBC announcers Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth discussing the Ray Rice episode that had consumed much of that season. A few days before the game, the former FBI director, Robert Mueller, had issued a report commissioned by the league that described several deficiencies in the league’s handling of the Rice affair. Michaels, whose network pays billions of dollars to be a “broadcast partner” of the NFL, went on to praise how thorough the investigation was and how transparent the league had made itself to Mueller. The acclaimed announcer then landed on a note that absolved Goodell from knowing anything about the security footage of Rice assaulting his fiancée on the elevator. “The report concluded that there was no evidence that Goodell or anyone else in the league had received or seen the tape prior to it going public,” Michaels said. “Cris, not a lot of good came out of this. Obviously, the whole situation, at least it made it part of the national conversation, and that was good.”
When in doubt, always salute your bungling patron for making it “part of the national conversation.” And give kudos to the league for helping us look so hard at ourselves, and for sprinkling its football customers with the fairy dust of “awareness.” Normally Michaels and Collinsworth are an excellent duo. But this was, well, something—at best, a reminder that the league leaders have a broad and powerful collection of enablers at their disposal, even ostensibly independent (if not journalistic) megaphones.
And then Collinsworth got started. “The decision to suspend, initially, Ray Rice for two games was a mistake,” the former Bengals wide receiver began. “Roger Goodell has admitted that.” This would have been a good place to leave it, which meant Collinsworth did not. “But I never once in all my dealings with the commissioner ever doubted his integrity,” Collinsworth said, “and I think that came out in the report as well.”
“It did,” Michaels affirmed.
This was not the prevailing view among the football populace. Goodell has been America’s most loathed sports commissioner this decade, easily. In a February 2016 poll of football fans, only 28 percent of respondents approved of the job he was doing. But the sport nonetheless appeared insulated from the contempt fans held for the people in charge. To reiterate: we compartmentalize well.
Whatever, soon all anyone would be talking about were Ideal Gas Laws, football air pressure, and equipment managers in the men’s room. You can’t help but wonder whether the league concocts these things. “What I have facetiously (I think) referred to as the Deflategate Marketing Plan has worked splendidly,” wrote the Sports Illustrated business columnist Andrew Brandt, a former Packers executive.
Jerry Jones told me he worried that the threat of Deflategate bleed
ing into another season could be “a downer” for the league. He feared that it might depress fan interest. He was wrong. “It shot up interest,” Jones marveled with a slightly devious smile (as all Jerry smiles tend to be devious). “Now, please don’t interpret this as me trying to drum up negative attention. But make no mistake about it, legitimate negative criticism does not diminish interest. There is a lot to be said for that. Deflategate was on CNN. It was just all over the place.”
The previous summer, after Goodell had denied Tom Brady’s appeal of his four-game suspension and the quarterback’s legal team was trying to get the ruling overturned in U.S. district court, I stopped by the TB12 offices in Foxborough and visited briefly with Guerrero. He said Brady had been in a funk over Deflategate and wondering if the whole thing was worth it—that maybe he should just retire. It had taken Brady much of that off-season to get “back to center,” Guerrero said.
Brady had become miffed at Kraft that spring. Despite the owner’s grousing about how “unfathomable” and “incomprehensible” the league’s punishment of his star quarterback was, he stood down and did not challenge the commissioner’s ruling in court—as many around the league feared, and many in the Brady camp were hoping. Kraft opted for his business partners over his “fifth son.”
Kraft had sound reasons for not contesting the league’s ruling. “You can’t sue the league,” Kraft told me, and then invoked the example of Al Davis, the rogue owner who did during his checkered Raiders reign. Kraft wants to be liked and considered statesmanlike inside the NFL.
As a practical matter, Kraft learned quickly that his grievance over the punishments had little support among his fellow owners. Ever the pragmatist, he concluded this would be a lonely and pointless fight. Kraft also believed that if he did not contest the original punishment, Goodell would reward him with good soldier points and knock down Brady’s suspension on appeal.
But Kraft’s fighting words in support of Brady and against the league gave the impression he was ready to go to war. When Kraft announced at the league meetings in San Francisco that he would not contest the punishment, Brady was devastated. “Crestfallen” and “betrayed” was how someone who was with Brady at his home on that day described him. Brady had not spoken publicly on the matter. His new team of NFLPA lawyers, led by Jeffrey Kessler, a celebrated union attorney with an impressive track record of beating the league in court, had urged Brady to go dark. He was also careful not to voice any public displeasure with the Krafts. Whenever Brady would complain to Guerrero, Guerrero would remind him that he’d worked with players on all thirty-two teams, and there is no real difference between the teams. It’s always about business and bottom lines.
After a while, Brady concluded that Deflategate had very little to do with him per se. He was superstar collateral damage caught up in a long-running Game of Thrones that involved many kingdoms and agendas. Brady had effectively become a political football.
Several owners and team officials across the league were eager to see Goodell wallop the Pats. They were weary of Kraft’s sanctimony, jealous of his success, and resentful of what they considered his too-close relationship with Goodell. They cheekily dubbed Kraft “the assistant commissioner.” Conjecture also burned over whether the puzzling severity of Goodell’s Deflategate penalties might have been a case of the commissioner trying to appease owners who believed he had gone easy on them during Spygate. “A makeup call,” one owner described the cause-effect of the two scandals to ESPN The Magazine’s Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham in an exhaustive report that September.
The owner most vocal in support of Goodell’s whacking the Pats was Jerry Jones, probably Kraft’s closest rival for first among equal status within the Membership. Jones had been through his own tangles with Goodell over team discipline. In 2012, Goodell docked the Cowboys $10 million in salary cap space for what the league determined to be an improper restructuring of receiver Miles Austin’s contract two years earlier. Jones was apoplectic over that ruling, but elected not to sue the league and has remained mostly steadfast in his public support of the commissioner. “I think he’s doing a great job and I’m a big supporter of his,” Jones said of Goodell that summer when asked about the Deflategate sanctions.
When I spoke to Jones a few weeks later, he said that Goodell’s role as the singular arbiter of discipline lent drama and clarity to the reality show. In this regard, Jones recalled the whuppings he would endure from his own father. If young Jerry had the nerve to question the verdict, his daddy would have none of it. “You know why and I know why I’m doing this, I don’t even need to tell you,” his father would say. “Now bend over.” Jones told me this with a wink, clearly enjoying the specter of Bob Kraft bent over Daddy Roger’s knee.
12.
“WE PAY HIM DAMN WELL TO BE NEUTRAL”
December 2, 2015
No matter where the league was headed, the swagger of Roger Goodell’s “new sheriff in town” days was long gone. By the end of the 2015 regular season, one in which the number of reported concussions jumped 58 percent over the previous season, the difference in the commissioner was unmistakable. His face broadcast the burdens of his job. “I think he’s highly sensitive,” Jones observed to me about Goodell that November. “He wears his challenges, there’s no question.” Giants co-owner John Mara said the stresses of recent years have “definitely scarred him a bit.” Whereas he once enjoyed the give-and-take with fans and media, Goodell effectively shut down. He went a full 578 days without tweeting. On the increasingly rare occasions when he would speak publicly, Goodell would swaddle himself in talking points. “We’d like to see him more relaxed and smiling and answering the questions,” Houston Texans owner Bob McNair told me. “You know, he’s got all these legal advisers telling him you can’t say this or you can’t say that.” Another owner compared Goodell, especially in public, with a team that is playing “not to lose.” He became jittery, overcautious about making a mistake, which can become self-fulfilling.
I met McNair at an NFL owners’ meeting held in Dallas in early December. We met under a Christmas tree in the lobby bar of the Four Seasons overlooking a lit-up swimming pool. McNair, who was raised in the foothills of western North Carolina, is a born-again Christian who had recently been criticized for contributing $10,000 to help repeal a Houston ballot initiative that protected gays and lesbians from discrimination. (McNair later withdrew the donation, but not before Chris Kluwe, a former Vikings punter-turned-progressive-NFL-gadfly, accused McNair of holding “clearly outdated ideals and bigotry and intolerance” and describing the Texans owner as “a pants-on-head, cow-humping glue-huffer.”) I asked McNair what he thought of having his team featured the previous summer on the HBO reality show Hard Knocks about life at an NFL training camp. He said it was a net plus overall but added that he was distraught and embarrassed over how profane certain Texans personnel were on camera. He addressed this afterward with head coach Bill O’Brien, who himself had used fourteen forms of “fuck” in the first installment alone (O’Brien had already heard from his mother on this). McNair said he suggested to O’Brien that he introduce a “cuss jar” in the locker room to discourage future swearing. He agreed, with proceeds going to charity. This actually happened.
McNair, who sold his energy company to Enron in 1999, is often referred to around Houston as a “billionaire philanthropist.” His name adorns numerous buildings, fields, wings, and causes. “I tell my fellow owners all the time that all of our value is in intangible assets,” McNair told me. “We have the game, but that’s intangible. Most of the stadiums are owned by the cities and counties. Even the players, we don’t own them, we rent them.” Given what became of Enron, McNair said, he has an acute sense of how ephemeral success can be for even the most invincible-seeming enterprise. The end can come fast and from out of nowhere. He has seen a bounty of intangible value vanish. “The market lost confidence” in Enron, McNair said. “The banks lost confiden
ce and they shut off the lines of credit, and they were out of business, virtually overnight.”
McNair brought the Texans into existence in 2002 after the Houston Oilers departed for Tennessee in 1997. He has seen his influence around the league grow despite having survived multiple battles with cancer and employing some of the most inept and overpaid quarterbacks ever to stain the Shield (see Osweiler, Brock). He is considered one of the sharper and more outspoken businessmen in the game, happy to weigh in on dicey issues like Goodell’s paycheck (way too high) and Deflategate (“a mountain out of a molehill”). He is also prone to saying things that most owners might believe but would never express out loud.
When I met with McNair for the first time, he was being consumed by the same issue that was then consuming the rest of the league—the three-team battle for the right to move to Los Angeles. As a member of the committee overseeing relocation, McNair held outsized say in the fates of three established franchises (the Rams, Chargers, and Raiders), not to mention a market that the league had been obsessed with reoccupying since the Rams left for St. Louis and the Raiders left for Oakland in 1995. My New York Times colleague Ken Belson, who joined us at the bar, asked McNair for his view on the three owners seeking to move—Stan Kroenke of the Rams, Dean Spanos of the Chargers, and Mark Davis of the Raiders. “Oakland gets nothing,” McNair said. Why? McNair immediately invoked Davis’s late father, the black sheep owner Al Davis, who was at constant war with the Shield. “Al used to sue us all the time,” McNair explained, waving the back of his hand (I quoted McNair saying this in the Times; since then, every time I’ve spoken to Mark Davis, he’s urged me to be sure to “keep the tape” of that McNair interview—spoken like a man with litigation in his genes).
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