Roger Goodell is the worst commissioner ever. Period. End of story. Simply, the worst ever. Objectively speaking he is bad at his job, and anyone who tells you otherwise is probably a direct beneficiary of his poor decision making, Or, to put it simply, if you think Goodell is good at his job, you’re probably an NFL team owner.
Players hate him, the union hates him, fans hate him and I’m almost positive the justice system hates him. How can a guy like Roger Goodell, who otherwise carries a poise and high standard of himself, be so hated by so many? Do you think he enjoys it when every time he talks to a large crowd of fans—be it at the super bowl or the draft—they boo him mercilessly? Is Roger Goodell a masochist? Who knows?
Here’s the problem, or problems, with Goodell’s leadership. First, he’s botched seemingly every scandal that’s come his way. Ray Rice beats his wife in an elevator? Two game suspension. Oh but wait, new footage from inside the elevator emerges which coincides with public outrage. Well, then it’s an indefinite suspension. Ah, but Mr. Goodell you cannot punish someone twice for the same crime, because that’s against the constitutional principle known as double jeopardy. Congratulations you made a wife-beater, the victim in his own case.
Adrian Peterson beats his kid with a switch—known to everyone else as a tree branch—and yet he’s somehow still able to play football. Tell me in what universe is that fair?
For a sport, nevermind a league, that prides itself in being hardcore in its discipline and code of ethics, it sure seems like they haven’t been able to figure out how to stop their players from doing stupid things. Remember Richie Incognito? He bullied his former teammate Jonathan Martin sending him horrifying voice messages and forcing him to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a vegas trip and used racially charged words in his exchanges with Martin. How does a guy like that still get to be in the NFL?
But it’s not just Goodell’s inability to get player conduct right, he also botched the concussion issue. For those unaware, the NFL has tried to hide the fact that playing football can lead to concussions, and repeated concussions can cause something called, “CTE” which is short for Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. The brain basically dissolves, and is associated with memory loss, motor skill loss, rapid deterioration of cognitive skills and eventual death. It was the subject of the Will Smith movie, “Concussion.” What has been the league’s response since these revelations about brain injury? Nothing, or at least nothing of substance.
It’s not just these reasons that have contributed to the comedy of errors that is Goodell’s tenure as commissioner. Replacement refs, union tensions, deflategate, public relations nightmares, the bad overtime rules and a countless number of other league problems have been under the watchful eye of Roger Goodell.
Will he be removed from his position because of his gross incompetence? Likely not, you know why? Because if there is one thing Roger Goodell is really good at doing, it’s making the 32 owners of NFL franchises very rich, and subsequently very happy. The day that Goodell stops making them billionaires, is the day they boot him from the league. Seeing as it hasn’t happened so far, the likelihood of it happening ever is very little. But who knows? If Goodell is as bad at his job as this article indicates, then if anything, he’ll probably give himself the boot.
