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By Adam Cancryn

Three disastrous weeks put Roger Goodell's legacy in danger. Six years into his tenure, it's time now for him to stand up and take charge.

Surely you could not have seen this coming. Who could?

In your six years as NFL commissioner, we've witnessed scandals and controversies, infighting and sniping and all-out hostility. There was the player lockout, those damn concussion studies, the retired player lawsuits, the active player lawsuits and the string of arbitrary punishments, just to name a few; and that's in addition to the daily contemptible act of being a shill for 31 old rich guys.

And yet after making it through all that, it was the referees who brought you down, who tarnished your legacy and rewrote the first lines of your bio. The referees! The only NFL constituency loathed by everyone had turned the tables and pitted nearly everyone against you. If you cannot be blamed for one thing during your time in office, it is that you did not see this coming.

But there you were, presiding over a catastrophe. Three weeks in, and the NFL was burning. On one side were the owners, those 31 penny-pinchers (and the Packers' board of directors) who got you into this mess. On the other side sat the referees, backed by an army better referred to as the entire football-watching free world. Even Scott Walker and Paul Ryan opposed you, and they spend their free time forcing firefighters and teachers to fight to the death for a satchel of golden coins and half a thing of health care.

You sat in the middle. It wasn't your fault, this lockout. We understand that. The owners could fund the referees' pensions with the change collected from stadium cupholders following a Sunday slate of games. They didn't want to, mainly because few people in the world have ever deigned to tell them "no," and it took a game-changing screwup just to bring them to the table

Yet while crises like this are not your fault, it is your job to fix them. It is your job to "protect the Shield," as you famously said, and so far during your tenure the owners have used that Shield as a doormat. In the process, the game became more dangerous, the overmatched and intimidated scab referees sparked outrage, and the fans lost trust — if not yet interest — in the NFL. The "product" (again, your words) faced grave danger, and it will again if you don't get tough.

If the referee lockout taught you anything, it's that you must start to push back against the owners, and do it publicly when necessary. The pulpit of the commissioner's office is your most powerful tool, and without using it you don't stand a chance. At no time was that more apparent than the deafening silence emanating from 345 Park Ave. in the wake of Monday night's stunning incompetence. You're the commissioner of the NFL, the CEO of a multibillion-dollar enterprise and the commander in chief of the world's most popular war game. Act like it.

We're not expecting you to side with the players on every point, or even stray far from the league's money-over-everything approach. But we expect leadership. It took three weeks of gridiron-bound chaos to push this deal through. Next time — and there will be a next time — it's up to you to strong-arm everyone to the negotiating table. The players still want assurances that the work they do won't destroy them in 20 years. Find a way to protect their heads, before every season starts with a moment of silence for the latest round of players to kill themselves. The fans just want to watch the game they love. Deliver the quality they deserve at a price that doesn't disqualify three-quarters of the country or sink their cities into debt.

You cannot control the owners, and you cannot control the players or referees. This much is true. But this much is also true: the job of a commissioner is to persuade and cajole and coax everyone into a healthy coexistence that furthers the game of football. Doing so is not easy, and you might not be well-liked by the end (what commissioner ever is?), but it's what you signed up for. And on multiple occasions now, you've failed. The Shield, and your legacy, have suffered. If not financially, than in the public's eye.

Now is the time. Stand up, find your voice, and start doing what is right for the NFL, and only the NFL. It's time to lead.

Adam Cancryn is an editor and co-founder of Began in '96.

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By Adam Cancryn 


The NFL players received rare backing from fans during the league's months-long lockout. But one greedy ploy perpetrated by four individuals threatened to stamp out all of that support.


Work stoppages, and their ensuing negotiations, are tricky things. They are a kind of antithesis of the sports the owners and athletes and lawyers are wrangling over: secretive and confusing, full of complicated concepts and undefined goals and the sense of never knowing what the score is, much less how to go about finding out.


Faced with those variables, the solution for most fans is to simplify. A strike or a lockout is a battle between the rich people in the spotlight and the rich people in the shadows over the finances of a leisure activity. It’s absurd, and the anger that wells up in those fans is unsurprising. Also unsurprising is that that anger is almost always directed at the players. They are wealthy, famous and powerful, simply because they can throw a ball harder, jump higher or run faster than the rest of us. And now they want more money, power and fame, the thinking goes.


Pretty quickly, the narrative shifts from Players v. Owners to Players v. Fans, Goliath v. the Philistines that just want to see him fight, not sit at home while his attorneys negotiate the purse for his match against David. Meanwhile, the owners use that leverage to cut a larger slice of the pie for themselves, one supplemented by higher hot dog prices and more luxury suites.


That has not happened this time around. In the court of public opinion, the NFL players have enjoyed rare support. Whether through effective PR or just a better general understanding of the issues, the players have captured fans’ support and thrust the owners into the spotlight.


Yet right on the verge of an agreement and a return to the game they love, four players tried hard to annihilate that hard-won goodwill.


Like all things lockout related, the situation is murky. Either Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, Logan Mankins and Vincent Jackson decided to hold the new contract hostage, or their agents did it for them. But semantics, at this point, don’t matter, not in the court of public opinion.


The bottom line is that four individuals, two of whom have profited immensely by selling fans sports drinks and sneakers and everything in between, tried to hold up an agreement that returns professional football to fans’ lives. They tried to hold up an agreement that employs thousands of people, most of whom have no source of income without their job as a fringe player, coach’s assistant or ticket agent.


And for what, another $10 million on top of the $11.3 million Vincent Jackson will play for this season? Another $10 million for the two most visible and popular players in the game, Peyton Manning and Drew Brees? Another $10 million for Logan Mankins, the face of the unselfish, self-sacrificial “Patriots Way?”


In all likelihood, the NFL lockout will end today and if not, in the near future. Football will return in time for a full season, the fans will fill the seats and the players and owners will continue to split the league’s $9 billion in revenues.


But this last episode, this epilogue tacked onto the long and arduous process, will not be forgotten. The next time the NFL players wonder why they’re made out as the villains, they need only to look back at four players’ greedy, last-ditch maneuver.


The players engineered a masterful drive this summer, pinning the owners yards from their own end zone as a nation full of fans cheered them on. Yet in one egotistical and tone-deaf play, they nearly threw it all away.

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