Big Game

by Mark Leibovich

  Thankfully, Bills owner Pegula had diagnosed the problem. The league, he said, was battling a perception and “media problem.” He had a solution. Wouldn’t it be great for the league to find a compelling spokesperson—preferably a player—to promote all of the good things they were doing together? He suggested that the league could learn from the gun lobby in this regard.

  “For years we’ve watched the National Rifle Association use Charlton Heston as a figurehead,” Pegula said. “We need a spokesman.”

  Yes!

  Also, the NFL’s Charlton Heston would need to be black.

  “For us to have a face, as an African American that could be in the media,” Pegula said, “we could fall in behind that.”

  With that, Ross felt it was important that everyone know that Dr. King’s march on Selma was “the most important thing in my lifetime.”

  The meeting concluded with the commissioner and owners going on about how positive the session had been and how proud they were. More summits would be convened, Goodell assured everyone.

  “We have a chance to do something monumental,” declared Giants owner John Mara.

  “I think this is great,” said Kraft.

  “This is obviously great,” affirmed Jacksonville’s Shad Khan.

  Belson and I wrote a story for the Times about the meeting. One response from a reader struck me as on-point: “Does Mr. Pegula not realize that Charlton Heston has been dead for 10 years?”

  A week later, I met Arthur Blank in the family office he keeps in Buckhead, the suburban Atlanta neighborhood, with a personal golf range in the basement. Blank is known for his sleekly tailored suits and the pride he takes in them. “I say to the players, ‘You put your uniform on every Sunday, the owner should, too,’” Blank said as he slurped up the culminating drops of a massive Nutella milk shake he had brought in from a nearby Steak ’n Shake.

  Blank gave off a vibe of exasperation, largely over the anthem protests and counterprotests that were then in full rage. “A lot of what the players are protesting in my view is very legitimate,” Blank told me. When Trump weighed in as he did, he said, “it became a manhood issue” for many of the teams—“or in some cases a brotherhood issue.”

  Blank’s relative outspokenness also reflects the demographic makeup of his customers. The Falcons’ African American season-ticket base, at 40 percent, could well be higher than that of any professional sports team in America. Likewise, Kaepernick’s 2016 protest, and York’s support for it, were bound to receive a more sympathetic hearing in liberal San Francisco than they would have in, say, Dallas, home of the Cowboys and dominion of Jerry Jones.

  $200 Million Buys a Lot of Therapy

  Before the 2017 season started, there was growing sentiment inside the league that Jerry Jones had been flying closer to the sun than usual. Variations on a “Jerry thinks he runs the league” complaint have flared from time to time since Jones bought the Cowboys in 1989; but even by Jones’s outsized standards, 2017 was extreme.

  The Cowboys were coming off a 13–3 season in 2016, led by star running back Ezekiel Elliott, and the team had been picked by several experts to go to the Super Bowl the following year. Jones also remained stuffed with self-approbation over his Hall of Fame selection. He celebrated his August induction with a blowout party at Glenmoor Country Club in Canton, under a white tent fit for a circus. He assured me this would be an epic party. He was not wrong.

  Cowboys past and present showed up en masse, an entourage of Gold Jackets as well as Jones’s extended network of family, staff, partners, and random celebrity friends (Warren Buffett, Jon Bon Jovi, Chris Christie).

  Guests passed through three checkpoints before getting taken the rest of the way to the party tent via golf cart. I stood in the golf cart line behind Raiders owner Mark Davis, who wore an all-white suit over a white sweatshirt and was guzzling from a large bottle of Poland Spring water. Davis appeared to have gained considerable weight since he announced his team’s move to Las Vegas—those $1.99 buffets on the Strip can kill you. This scene was itself a splendid buffet of Jerry-mandered humanity: Earl Campbell made his way into the party tent in front of me, with the aid of his walker. Cowboys cheerleaders—dressed in gold—lined both sides of the front entrance to welcome us. Hall of Famer Warren Sapp wore a bizarre pajama top–like sweatshirt with bright-colored NFL logos, and practically tackled Jones upon greeting him in the middle of the party floor. Nutty former coach Barry Switzer parked himself outside the men’s room and posed for selfies. Cocktail napkins were imprinted with inscrutable “Jerryisms,” memorable lines that Jones had uttered in public over the years (e.g., “You don’t have to spend a lot of time going over and kind of circumcising the mosquito”). Guests received sleek black boxes filled with miniature donuts.

  Jones was a late arrival, as he was held up at the Gold Jacket dinner back at the Canton Civic Center—where Paul Anka performed again, naturally. I had stopped by the dinner earlier, long enough to see longtime NFL insider Ed Werder receive the Dick McCann Award for excellence in NFL reporting from the Pro Football Writers of America. Werder worked for ESPN for twenty years before being laid off a few months earlier along with about a hundred other employees at the network, many of them well-regarded journalists. No one was better wired for Cowboys nuggets than Ed Werder—he fed millions of fantasy players every week. “I relied on him every Sunday to tell me how DeMarco Murray was looking in pregame warmups,” my wistful colleague Mark Mazzetti said of Werder upon news of his departure. (Mazzetti added that his interest in DeMarco Murray was purely fantasy-related, and that he hates the Cowboys.)

  ESPN had been moving toward more personality-based opinion shows, as opposed to the news gathering—or nugget gathering—from the Werders of the world and his ESPN colleague John Clayton, also let go. That wasn’t really their game, the yelling and personality racket, although Werder did manage to get his photo taken with Lady Gaga at midfield before Super Bowl 51, which is no small consolation (nugget credit to SI’s Peter King for that).

  There would be more layoffs coming at ESPN, as well as Sports Illustrated and other “insider” destinations. Suddenly these were dark days in the House of Nuggets.

  “I was recently laid off by my employer,” Werder said in his award acceptance speech. “Now I’m getting an award for lifetime achievement. Someone might be telling me something.” Werder did not bother thanking ESPN in his remarks, or even mentioning the network, which was kind of awesome.

  Jones entered his party to the Script’s “Hall of Fame” and the requisite fuss. “The greatest owner in the history of sports is being honored tonight” is how Justin Timberlake described the guest of honor during the private ninety-minute set he performed. “This is such a great, great night,” Jones kept saying as he greeted guests, nursing a tumbler of “something cold.”

  The party felt like it would rampage forever. Cowboy tight end Jason Witten finally grabbed the mic around 2:30 a.m. and told his teammates to head to the buses. They handed out fat cheeseburgers in golden foil on our way out. Sunday’s Hall of Fame Game went off without getting canceled. It was, as always, utterly meaningless, but even “utterly meaningless” draws 8.2 million viewers in the NFL.

  Goodell was among the dignitaries under the tent. We had a brief exchange at the bar. He asked me what this book would be titled, and I said I didn’t know. “How about ‘The Shield’?” Goodell suggested. I think he might have been serious.

  The commissioner greeted Jones with a hug. Goodell did not happen to mention a piece of business he knew would put a damper on Jones’s big weekend. A few days later, the NFL would announce it was suspending Ezekiel Elliott for the first six games of the 2017 season following accusations of assault from a former girlfriend. (Elliott was never charged.)

  Jones was not happy with this verdict, to say the least. When the commissioner called with the news, Jones promised, in so many words, to make
Goodell’s life a living hell. Jones compared himself with Robert Kraft, who had made a big stink against Goodell after he whacked Brady over Deflategate. “If you think Bob Kraft came after you hard, Bob Kraft is a pussy compared to what I’m going to do,” Jones told the commissioner, according to an account of the conversation that appeared in ESPN The Magazine. One owner familiar with Kraft’s thinking told me the Patriots’ owner was “really, really upset” by Jerry’s pussy characterization. Manhood, challenged! There would be more conversations between Jones and Goodell in the coming days, none pleasant.

  Members of the compensation committee said Jones never raised objections to the particulars of Goodell’s contract until the Elliott decision came down. But after Elliott, Jones changed his position and went aggressively rogue. Blank’s committee became the main battleground through which Jones would wage his uprising.

  He told at least two owners that he represented a silent majority, giving voice to the noncommittee owners’ frustration over the commissioner’s leadership. Jones tried to rally support to not only scuttle Goodell’s new contract but also, as some owners interpreted it, topple him altogether. He hired the powerhouse litigator David Boies, and, in a conference call with members of the committee, vowed to sue them all if they went forward with Goodell’s new deal.

  Jones also became more vocal in his disapproval of how the NFL was handling the anthem protests. He tore into the Clinton alum Joe Lockhart, who he believed had been too aggressive in response to Trump’s attacks on the league—and disrespectful to the president himself. “Everyone should know, including the president, that this is what real locker-room talk is,” Lockhart said in a September conference call with reporters. It was a clear shot at Trump’s attempt to explain away a leaked Access Hollywood video in which he infamously described grabbing women by their genitals.

  As alternative programming to the anthem controversy, the NFL was offering up all different sorts of bad news. On a single October afternoon, these were the top headlines I found on ESPN.com:

  Texans DE Watt Fractures Leg, Out Indefinitely

  Dolphins Assistant in Video Snorting Powder

  Chiefs’ Reid: TE Kelce Had Trouble Remembering

  Raiders LT Penn Confronts Fans in Parking Lot

  OBJ Breaks Ankle as Beat-up Giants Fall to 0–5

  Also on that day, Jones announced that any Cowboys player who did not stand during the national anthem would not take the field. This contrasted with some of the unsavory Cowboys Jones had allowed to play—Greg Hardy being a recent example. Jones’s ultimatum was deemed unhelpful by many of the owners struggling to quell the issue, and by Goodell, too. “I think Roger’s feeling on it was that any ultimatum would only prompt a larger protest if you attempt to enforce it,” the Giants’ John Mara told me. Some owners, like Jones and Washington’s Snyder, might have believed Goodell should have “put the hammer down,” Mara said. “But I think most of us believed that would cause more problems than it would have solved.”

  Not surprisingly, Jones’s threat to would-be kneelers also caught the attention of Trump, who promptly tweeted approval: “A big salute to Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, who will BENCH players who disrespect our Flag. ‘Stand for Anthem or sit for game!’” This was a week and a half after Trump advertised that he had spoken to Jones (“Jerry is a winner who knows how to get things done”). If there’s one thing Trump understands, it’s how to manipulate needy billionaires.

  Jones had drawn considerable resentment at an October league meeting in New York where he described himself as the “senior ranking owner” in the room. In fact, many of the owners had been in the league much longer than Jones, who purchased the Cowboys in 1989 for $140 million. Other than a few smirks and quizzical looks, Jones’s “senior ranking owner” remark went unchallenged at the time. But it would linger, even as the season sputtered forward, the anthem controversy receded, and Goodell’s contract extension moved closer to a done deal. Blank moved to complete the new deal for Goodell before the owners were scheduled to meet again at the Four Seasons in Irving, Texas, in December. Blank would present the final details of the contract there to the rest of the membership.

  Blank was wary of celebrating too early (as one would expect from the owner of a team that blew a 28–3 lead in the Super Bowl). He expected that Jones would make a final gambit to blow up the deal. “When Jerry stands up, it’s like Showtime,” Blank told me. “It’s just entertainment. I’m being serious.” He contrasted that with the more understated owners—next to Jones, basically all of them.

  Sure enough, Jones delivered a “Showtime” speech in Dallas, complaining that the thirty-two owners did not have enough say on how the league was being run. The “big government” force at the league office had run amok, he said. But Jones’s message appeared lost on most of the room. “Jerry, you just spoke for about forty minutes, and I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Kraft said after Jones finished.

  Some of the “legacy owners” with long family ties to the league had taken offense at Jones’s “senior owner” diatribe. Chief among them was Chicago Bears chairman George Halas McCaskey, grandson of the team’s fabled coach and founder, George Halas. Collegial and mild-mannered, McCaskey would nonetheless become an unlikely source of resistance against Jones, telling at least two partners before the meeting that he was insulted by the Cowboys owner’s attempts to undermine the compensation committee. “I’m sick of this shit,” McCaskey told another owner before the meeting. “Look out.” He ran into Goodell at the hotel gym that morning and said the same thing.

  McCaskey stood up during the owners-only session and listed the several owners in the room who were more “senior” than Jones: the Maras of the Giants, the Rooneys of Pittsburgh, the Hunts of Kansas City, and the Bidwells of Arizona, among others. “Jerry, you don’t represent me,” McCaskey said to close his remarks. “The committee represents me.”

  Jones had almost no allies in the room, except for his friend and sidekick Daniel Snyder, the Redskins’ owner. Snyder typically says little in league meetings—“because,” as one NFC owner theorizes, “his face is buried in Jerry’s colon.” (Normally I would not include such a gross and unsourced slander in a mature and dignified book such as this, but the image is irresistible.) Snyder did make a generalized complaint in Dallas about how badly he believed the league had been run in certain areas. He took particular aim at Lockhart, who he said was using the league to carry out “a political platform.” Snyder was one of several owners who had donated to Trump’s campaign and inauguration.

  The only other owner to cast any aspersions on the process was Jim Irsay, the flighty owner of the Colts, who walked in an hour late and expressed confusion over Goodell’s presence. “I thought this was owners only?” Irsay said. It had been owners-only, he was told. But after about a half hour—before Irsay had arrived—the partners agreed to invite Goodell back to hear their feedback. This was before Irsay showed up. He still appeared confused.

  Beyond whatever that was, the meeting was a romp over Jones, ending with the Cowboys’ owner being repudiated, if not humbled. David Moore, the Cowboys beat writer for the Dallas Morning News, declared December 12 to be a “good day for Jerry Jones.” How so? “The Cowboys owner wasn’t forcibly removed from the grounds of the Four Seasons Resort,” Moore wrote.

  Everyone agreed that it was time to end this chapter and move on to the final weeks of the season. In a news conference after the meeting, Goodell was asked if he took Jones’s rebellion personally. “Do I look like I take it personally?” Goodell replied. No one knew how to answer that. “Jerry, do I look like I take it personally?” Goodell said, pointing to Jones, who was standing behind him and didn’t seem to know how to answer that either. Regardless, $200 million can buy a lot of therapy.

  Goodell vacated the dais in favor of Jones, who promised to be “uncharacteristically brief” before launching into a (characteristi
cally) rambling set of remarks. Jones concluded by saying that he appreciated how much Goodell loves the National Football League. “He should love it even more right now,” he added, to laughter.

  Goodell flashed something between a grin and a smirk. He had a plane to catch back to New York—his own plane. He did not stick around for the rest of Jerry Jones.

  29.

  JUST COMPARTMENTALIZE, BABY

  January 8, 2018

  I went to see Goodell at NFL headquarters on a Monday in January, the morning after a sluggish docket of first-round playoff games. He had spent the weekend crisscrossing the country to catch two contests—Los Angeles on Saturday night to see the Falcons and Rams, Jacksonville on Sunday for the Bills and Jaguars.

  The commissioner was sitting in his sixth-floor office, sipping water and battling a cold. Goodell, who was about to turn fifty-nine, wore a beige V-neck sweater and looked somewhat worn down but freshly worked-out; he had just come from a Pilates class. Regrettably, there had been no time for a Sunday workout: Goodell had to wake up at 3:30 a.m. in L.A. to fly to Jacksonville in time for Bills-Jags. He also told me he had gone through two canisters of Purell over the previous two days. He is a beast.

  It had been a rough season—“challenging,” to use the language of the undaunted leader. There are never “problems” for this commissioner, only challenges. Goodell was now finishing his twelfth season as head of the league, thirty-sixth overall. He has been through strikes, lockouts, rival leagues, “existential” lawsuits, litigious owners, Al Davis, 9/11, Ray Rice, and, now, Donald Trump. It would be a bad look to complain, especially at his price. “We’ve always had our challenges,” he said. But even by Goodell’s embattled standards, this had been quite a year.

  Goodell walked me to a small conference table in the far end of his office. I took a seat next to the shiny silver rendering of an NFL Shield. I mentioned to Goodell that I had met his wife, Jane, at a cocktail party during the league meetings, and that she had suggested—presumably joking—that her husband had a tattoo of the Shield. Roger Goodell laughed at my retelling of the exchange but also felt the need to set the following straight for the record: