A No-Win Situation For The NFL

Roger Goodell

By now we’ve all heard the reported ins and outs in regards to Deflategate as the National Football League has dropped the hammer down on the New England Patriots for reportedly using under inflated footballs during last season’s AFC Championship Game victory over the Indianapolis Colts. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell summoned Ted Wells to do an “independent” investigation on the matter in regards to the Patriots and their starting quarterback Tom Brady. Wells recently released his report and in his findings he found that Brady “probably” was aware of what was going on in regards to the football being doctored by someone on the Patriots staff. Goodell was okay with Wells’ finding and in turn suspended Brady for the first four games of the upcoming NFL season along with fining the Patriots organization $1 million and stripping them of two draft picks. Brady is vehemently denying and fighting the findings from Wells which has produced a situation where there will absolutely be no winners.

Tom Brady

Through the National Football League Players Association, Brady has appealed the suspension that was handed down by Goodell. Goodell in turn has decided to name himself as the “independent” arbitrator on the suspension which is something straight out of kangaroo court. The NFLPA wants Goodell to remove himself from the case due to the fact that they want him to testify in the matter as they are looking to grill him on what grounds that he has to suspend Brady for as long as he did. Publicly, Goodell will make it appear that he came down on the Patriots for the integrity of the NFL. But anyone who has followed the NFL will know that integrity was lost by this league a long time ago.

Goodell has been on the job as NFL commissioner since 2006 and the one thing that he has been since taking over as far as reprimanding league personnel is “consistently inconsistent”. Goodell took over a league where player misconduct was out of control and in 2007, he suspended cornberback Adam “Pacman” Jones for the entire season after his numerous run-ins with the law. In 2007, quarterback Michael Vick was convicted in a federal court for dog fighting and he spent two years in prison. Vick missed two years away from the NFL and when he was released from prison in 2009, Goodell decided to still suspend him for two games. But in 2010, Goodell suspended Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger for six games for his off-the-field conduct which was ultimately reduced to four games and it drew the ire of many critics. Last July, Goodell suspended running back Ray Rice for the first two games of the season following his arrest for a domestic violence incident. Rice met with Goodell and gave the commissioner a detailed description of the incident. But Goodell didn’t decide to lay the hammer down on Rice until TMZ released detailed footage of the incident. In a move to clearly save face, Goodell then suspended Rice indefinitely after public backlash. The NFL players have always been critical of how Goodell treats them as opposed to the team owners as they believe that the owners should be held to an even higher standard. And when Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay pleaded guilty last September to OWI, Goodell missed a chance to gain some cool points with the NFL players as he suspended Irsay for six games and fined him $500k which is a drop in the bucket to a billionaire like Irsay. But when Goodell recently disciplined the Patriots, was the punishment too severe for the crime or was it that the media took the story and ran with it?

Ted Wells

When the reports began to surface about Deflategate, there were those that wanted Brady suspended for the Super Bowl. And then when Wells released his findings, some folks wanted Brady suspended for a full season. And for what? The footballs didn’t have any outcome in last season’s AFC Championship Game, and when the world waited to see Brady fall flat on his face in the Super Bowl this past February, it was his right arm that beat the Seattle Seahawks who possessed the best secondary in football. This is the same public outcry that has forced Goodell’s hand in the past and as a result things have generally blown up in his face.

In 2012, the New Orleans Saints were punished by the NFL and Goodell for running an illegal bounty program where former Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams was found to have been paying players for injuring players on opposing teams. The NFL will not come out and directly say it, but bounties have been around the game for years. But when the public got a hold of it; especially in the wake of the heigthened awareness around head injuries and overall player safety, the NFL and Goodell came down hard on the Saints organization. Goodell would strip the Saints of multiple draft picks while also suspending several Saints personnel including head coach Sean Payton for the 2012 NFL season and Williams indefinitely. Goodell also handed down suspensions to Saints players, Jonathan Vilma, Anthony Hargrove, Will Smith, and Scott Fujita. Unlike the coaches, the players, under the representation of the NFLPA took the NFL to federal court where they had their suspensions overturned as just like the current case with the Patriots, Goodell was reprimanding people on hearsay instead of cold hard facts.

The under inflated footballs that the Patriots used were only in the first half of the AFC Championship as they took a 17-7 lead to the locker room at halftime. But the Patriots outscored the Colts 28-0 in the second half as they beat the brakes off of them. And in the findings of Wells, he only claimed that Brady “probably” knew about it which in a court of law doesn’t carry that much water.

Robert Kraft

The Pats and Kraft have accepted Goodell’s ruling after clearing the air on the matter. And if Goodell had gone back on what he has handed down, he once again looks soft, and if he upholds the suspension, he’ll look like a guy that simply overreacted.

As long as Goodell is the commissioner of the National Football League, he will never have the full support of the players as they feel that he is unfair. And for those who will read this and say that life is unfair should harken back to any job that they’ve had where their employer treated another employee different and better from them. Goodell’s job is not to protect the players and keep them happy as it is all about pleasing the owners because they are the ones that he works for. In his ruling, Goodell appeared to have lost the support of one of the most powerful NFL owners in Patriots owner Robert Kraft who is one of the longest tenured owners in the league. More than any other commissioner in the history of the NFL, Goodell has found himself front and center with pressing issues like never before as his job appears to be as stressful as that of the President of the United States. The more money that you make generally comes with more problems and as the NFL is currently sitting on a pile of money that would make the folks at Fort Knox jealous, they are dealing with public relations issues that couldn’t fit into all of the 31 stadiums combined.

Where the Patriots organization decided to throw in the towel, Brady will still fight this matter and being that the NFLPA is one of the strongest unions in America, he has a puncher’s chance as it will be very hard for Goodell to convince a federal judge that Brady should be reprimanded in the same fashion as those players who have had run-ins with the law for a matter that was ticky-tack as best. The NFL continuously wants to change its image, but they appear to be stuck in the Bermuda Triangle of a public relations mess.