NEW YORK — The NFL was really feeling itself at this week’s fall meetings in lower Manhattan. Scoring is through the roof! Games are historically close! Ratings are up! Concussions are down! It was impossible to chat up a league official without being reminded of how swell things are going, and ain’t it grand?
You may have to squint hard to follow along on this one: The commissioner of an American sports league thanked the American president for helping to overturn a Canadian regulatory rule that forced a Canadian broadcaster to show American advertisements during the Super Bowl, which is the signature American sporting…
Kaepernick collusion case be damned, Roger Goodell is trying his best to be the corporate face of social progress for the NFL.
Back in May, NFL owners terrified of Donald Trump approved a new jingoistic national anthem policy decreeing that “all league and team personnel shall stand and show respect for the flag and the Anthem,” before games. The new rule essentially banned any kind of visible protest—such as Colin Kaepernick and many other…
Excerpted from Big Game: The NFL In Dangerous Times, out today from Penguin Press.
Papa John Schnatter did an interview on Friday with Terry Meiners of NewsRadio 840 WHAS, reflecting upon his extremely bad and dumb week and the bizarre and offensive comments that got him into so much trouble. I suggest listening to the whole thing. Meiners is direct and reasonably tough, and calls Schattner on some…
Yesterday, Roger Goodell proudly unveiled the NFL’s new policy regarding players and the national anthem. A lot of people hated it and President Donald Trump loved it, but the league made sure to note that the policy passed with a “unanimous” vote by the owners. That’s what mattered, that the obscenely rich guys…
Just after the NFL introduced its new and grotesquely vague anthem policy, Yahoo Sports reported that the league hired a Washington consulting firm to poll Americans about whether they believed Colin Kaepernick should’ve been signed by an NFL team. The study, which was conducted four months into Kaepernick’s 2017 free…
God help me, I’m back on my bullshit.
Last month, former Saints cheerleader Bailey Davis filed a discrimination complaint against the NFL after she was fired for posting an Instagram photo of herself in a bathing suit. The photo violated a Saints rule forbidding cheerleaders from “appearing nude, seminude or in lingerie,” which is an equally regressive…
ESPN and the NFL are getting on each other’s nerves. A new report from Sports Business Journal outlines a slow boil of escalating feuds, which could eventually end the partnership of the two sports giants.
The NFL machine should be napping right now, but the rich white dudes who run the league will never stop trying to swing their otherwise useless dicks. The latest drama was a spat between Roger Goodell and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who Goodell ordered to pay about $2 million of the NFL’s legal fees for their defense…
By now you know that NFL Commissioner and comic book henchman Roger Goodell is planning to fine Jerry Jones $2 million for DISGRACING THE SHIELD, and that Jones plans on appealing this fine to Goodell personally. If this goes the way of every other NFL billionaire quarrel, both men will leak harsh words about one…
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’s reported bitching and moaning about Roger Goodell’s actions over the last season has earned him a dose of NFL justice, which is regular justice that comes with an even more hollow feeling. Ken Belson of the New York Times reports the NFL commissioner will fine Jones “millions of…
After the Cleveland Indians announced that they’ll be taking Chief Wahoo off of team uniforms by 2019, the Washington NFL team naturally drew scrutiny. Would they follow suit and ditch their comically racist name for something more palatable, or at least scrub their logo for something more neutral?
It was announced yesterday that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell had agreed to a five-year contract extension with the owners. None of the contract details were shared, but ESPN’s Adam Schefter is reporting what everyone probably already assumed: Roger Goodell will make so much goddamn money.
In a “nearly unanimous” decision that almost certainly does not include one flamboyantly rich guy in Texas, commissioner Roger Goodell and NFL owners have signed a new contract extension, according to ProFootballTalk.
Another thrilling update in this saga of powerful old football men sending mean letters back and forth! Jerry Jones has announced that he will not be suing the NFL to block commissioner Roger Goodell’s contract extension, as he’d previously threatened to do. But that doesn’t mean he’s given up putting stumbling blocks…
Jerry Jones is fond of the secret ballot as an instrument of dealmaking, and today, he’s reportedly introduced it as the latest weapon in his siege against Roger Goodell and other NFL owners. According to Pro Football Talk, Jones wants to use this secret ballot to get the owners to vote on, well, something. Nobody’s…
Again, there are many, many delicious morsels to chew on in Don Van Natta’s and Seth Wickersham’s latest smorgasbord of NFL insider delights for ESPN The Magazine. But let’s take the revelation that many owners—most especially Jerry Jones—are increasingly unhappy with the shadow bureaucracy Roger Goodell has created…