With the NFL giving up its tax-exempt status, we assumed that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s 2014 salary was the last that would have to be publicly reported. But thanks to some logistical issues, the league had to reveal the commissioner’s salary one last time.
This means that Goodell was hit with a $2.1 million pay cut, continuing a downward trend that began in 2012, when he earned $44 million. The intriguing thing about this pay cut is that it comes on the heels of Goodell’s complete and embarrassing mishandling of a variety of scandals within the league, including the Ray Rice fiasco. His 2014 pay was approved before Rice and Ballghazi and the league’s meddling in concussion research could be taken into account, so this is the first time we’ve been able to get a sense for how the owners who write Goodell’s checks feel about his recent performance.
The next time your favorite team tears up a player’s contract because he wasn’t playing well, prompting some shithead like Mark Schlereth to go on TV and say, “Hey, that’s how it goes in the NFL. This is a business, and it’s a win-now league,” remember how the owners responded to Goodell turning in one of the all-time worst performances as the commissioner of a major sports league: they hit him with a seven-percent pay cut.