Even though he got to hand pick the people that are investigating the NFL Commissioner’s office, Roger Goodell is still in a peck of trouble. He probably won’t step down and he probably won’t be fired, but these are the darkest days ever for the controversial commissioner of professional football in America.
To his credit, Goodell efficiently runs the most profitable sports league on the planet with annual revenues approaching the ten billion dollar mark. That’s a huge business, and the business part of it is what Goodell does best. NFL team owners pay him around a million bucks each every year to keep the league running and growing.
However, Goodell has come under criticism over the years for using the broad powers granted him in his job description to create almost a monarchy in the upper echelons of the National Football League. He has taken on decisions concerning punishment and fines for NFL players and handed out his sentences seeming without any outside influence. That may now be coming to an end.
Meanwhile, Roger Goodell has been meeting with members of the NFLPA, which is the players union, in an effort to come together on modifying the current league drug policies and their related punishments.
De Maurice Smith of the Players Association met personally with Goodell to discuss the changes in the drug testing policy, which will set a higher tolerance for marijuana testing, among other things and a new look at the personal conduct policies for NFL players who have all come under the spotlight thanks to the Ray Rice incident, among others.
The issue of domestic violence as it relates to NFL players will continue to be at the forefront of public attention until we stop seeing more headlines each and every week concerning a professional football player, all big strong men caught in some act of violence against women or even children.
So now the league and the players union are working together to form a new personal conduct committee which they hope to have in place and working before the upcoming Super Bowl in February.
For all its money and power, the NFL has come under some very sharp public criticism in the past few weeks, marring the opening weeks of the new football season and causing distractions when and where none are called for.
Let’s hope that these unsightly issues will be quickly resolved and America can go back to respecting its favorite professional athletes, unburdened by daily disclosures reporting yet another wrong doing by another one of our sports heroes.
