A New Book Says Goodell's Awfulness is 'a Big Problem' for NFL Owners and Tom Brady Almost Quit Over Deflategate
There’s a new football book coming that’s getting a lot of buzz as the early reviews come out. I mean, besides this one (cha-CHING). “Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times” is by Mark Leibovich, a New York Times political reporter who says he took a break from covering Washington over parts of four years to go the behind-the-scenes at the NFL. The office politics, the in-fighting, the power struggles, the bad blood. The whole Telenovela drama. They used to call the U.S. Senate the World’s Most Exclusive Men’s Club. But there are 100 senators and only 32 NFL owners. And it should surprise no one that Dan Snyder has more juice inside the beltway than any solon.
Most of what I’ve read about the book is stuff we all just infer without being an embedded reporter for four years. Jerry Jones is an asshole who admitted he’d rather make the Hall of Fame than win another Super Bowl. Snyder is an even bigger asshole and the other owners want “Redskins” changed. There’s tension on the Patriots and at some point they won’t dominate the league any more. The league is waiting for the next, inevitable, post-Jerry Richardson #MeToo shoe to drop. This club of billionaires is all intimidated AF by Donald Trump. No Earth-shattering news there.
What I’ve read that resonates the most with me is what Leibovich told Peter King when asked what he’s learned in his research:
“I learned that Roger Goodell is very damaged, a deeply unpopular leader not only among players and fans but in the country at large. That is a big problem for the league, and every owner knows it. Roger is capable of incredible humanity, but there is a huge gap between the Roger Goodell as a human being and the cold Roger Goodell at the podium. He’s sort of straightjacketed, and he creates this very scared dynamic around the league. I don’t think he realizes how jarring it is. The league has no clue how to deal with it. I don’t think he wants to hear that, though. He can be diplomatic, like with the anthem issue last year. The league basically rode that thing out. They knew Trump would pipe up again, but Goodell brought players and owners together. Then for whatever reason, he flipped in May and ham-handed a solution no one but a handful of the owners was happy with.”
And from the book review in The Boston Globe:
“[Alex] Guerrero says it took much of the 2015 offseason for Brady to get ‘back to center’ during the Deflategate proceedings, and even thought about retiring, though it’s unclear how seriously he actually considered it.”
Damaged. Deeply unpopular. A big problem for the league. Every owner knows it. A scared dynamic. Jarring. The league has no clue. Well, well, well. How the mighty have fallen. Remember when this Spawn of Satan was America’s darling and all the world outside of New England worshiped him and sung his praises for finally standing up to the evil that is Tom Brady and his nefarious, diabolical cheating schemes? Especially in the other 31 markets? Remember how we always heard how as long as the TV ratings keep going up and the NFL keeps printing money the owners will tolerate Der Commissar as a good luck charm, the way baseball teams used to keep a dwarf around? A lot can change in four years.
Suddenly this soulless, dry-mouthed automoton’s act isn’t so cute any more. His horrible appearances when he does his CommissionerBot 2000 routine, programmed to put words like “safety,” “process” and “transparency” into every sentence was good enough when he was cocking up the Ray Rice elevator assault, trying to force an 18 game season on the public or hiding CTE data. Back then the owners were hiding behind him like a(an artificial) human shield. But after a thousand more terrible decisions, they find out he’s a lightning rod and the heat from all that electricity is getting too hot to deal with.
And now, thanks to this book, we find out that Goodell’s multi-million dollar Paranormal Investigators search for phantom underinflated footballs almost made the Biggest Winner His League Has Ever Known walk away from the game rather than put up with his nonsense. So football fans would’ve been denied Brady’s heroic performance in 2015, single-handedly carrying a decimated team to within a missed extra point of a trip to the Super Bowl. The Comeback from 28-3. His third MVP trophy. And almost 1,000 combined passing yards in the past two Super Bowls. If for no other reason than the fact Goodell almost drove the best player in football out of his league with years of greatness still ahead of him, he should be fired immediately. But at least it sounds like his bosses are finally coming around to seeing what a disaster this man’s very existence is. I just pray that Brady is still in the league when Goodell does finally get the axe. Please, God, let that happen.