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Uneasy Lies the Puppet's Head That Wears the Crown

 The Commissioner's State of the NFL press conference is hardly the most enjoyable, but is perhaps the quintessential event of Super Bowl Hype Week. Like every other feature of the week, from Radio Row to product plug parties, it's designed not to make news, but to offer a nonsense-based news substitute, Beyond News if you will.

I have attended such conferences held by three different commissioners and they all fell into a pattern so rote as to be hypnotic. First the commish tells the several hundred reporters in attendance that the state of the NFL is so great it's beyond his poor powers of description. We had a very exciting season (almost always true). We made even more money (always always true). He ends with a shout out to the two teams that'll play next Sunday and a citation of various individual stars. Tom Brady is likely to be mentioned at length this year.

Then come the questions. Somebody asks about concussions and gets a long spiel about player safety, some of it quite true. Somebody asks if the NFL is considering a franchise in London/Mexico City/Mumbai/Mars and receives a bland porridge of praise for the football fans in those locales. Follow-up questions don't happen. Pointed questions don't happen all that often either. Pete Rozelle taught his successors well. A dull answer turneth away news. A half hour of crushing boredom has reporters thinking they should've spent the morning working on that Bengals' punter profile instead. The event wraps up and the commish moves on to a splendid lunch with CEOs, Senators and similar bigwigs.

No such luck for Roger Goodell this week. He will be asked to stand and deliver SOMETHING his questioners can report as actual news on the lawsuit Brian Flores filed last week charging a pattern of racial discrimination in the hiring of black head coaches. The usual scattershot of questions on different topics that served as the commissioner's, uh, shield, from awkward moments will be gone. 

All Goodell has as a defense is the truth. He already admitted yesterday that the NFL's record on hiring black head coaches is unsatisfactory. This week, he can repeat that, while trying to avoid its subsequent truth. "I'm only the commissioner. What can I do about it?"

Nothing, that's what. The hiring of personnel by the 32 NFL franchises is a matter where the commissioner has no power beyond that of suggestion. If one, two or more of the willful shady billionaires and fourth generation legacy types who own teams want to hire some 38-year old white coordinator because he reminds said owners of the coaches at their prep schools, 5-12 records of the future be damned, all Goodell can do is shrug. 

Sadly for Flores, that's probably all the federal courts can do as well, Proving a pattern of racial discrimination in hiring is easy, seeing as how Goodell confessed to it. Proving that pattern damaged Brian Flores the individual to the tune of x large amount of money is far harder.

This brings up the most interesting aspect of the suit filed by Flores. Its most serious charges don''t really relate to the underlying complaint at all. If Dolphins owner Stephen Ross offered Flores a $100,000 a game bonus for losing games in 2019, and if Ross tried to involve Flores in tampering with not-quite-yet free agent quarterback Tom Brady the following winter, that has nothing to do with racial discrimination whatsoever. It does however, have a great deal of relevance to the league's own rules, rules allegedly enforced by one R. Goodell.

One has to assume Flores has some evidence more concrete than his own memory to back up these charges. Otherwise, he's an idiot and his lawyer an even bigger one. In any event, these are charges Goodell cannot avoid addressing or rather, cannot avoid pretending to address.

The tampering charge is almost NFL routine. Ross will offer some nonsense excuse for meeting Brady and the Dolphins will be docked a seventh-round draft choice or given a token fine. Note: the franchise pays the penalty, not Ross himself.

The "bribing my coach to throw games" charge is an escalation by Flores that poses much potential danger for Goodell as well as Ross. If it can be substantiated under oath in court, then the owner himself will be subject to penalty, just as it was Antonio Brown, not the Buccaneers, who was penalized for using a fake vaccination card.

If Ross did offer Flores bonuses for losing, well, that's somewhat closer to the heart of "the integrity of the game" than say, deflating football. It's hard to see how the NFL could have any response but to force Ross to sell the Dolphins.

Except of course we all know, and Goodell knows best of all, this will never happen. Ross could break down on the witness stand confessing like the killer in a Perry Mason episode and the NFL's response will be "an in-house investigation." As with the investigation into the sexual harassment culture of the Washington franchise, it will remain secret unless Ross agrees to allow its release.

Players get sanctioned by the NFL. Franchises get sanctioned. But owners as individuals? Doesn't happen. The league moved behind the scenes to get Victor Kiam out of owning the Pats in the early '90s, but that was not for being a public embarrassment. It was for the one mortal ownership sin -- lack of capital. If Goodell was to move to throw Ross or any other owner out of the league, he'd be moving simultaneously to the ranks of the unemployed. 

None of these dire if entertaining scenarios will come to pass. Money is best at making problems go away, and the NFL has enough money to make any problem go away. Brian Flores will never coach in the NFL again. On the other hand, he may well wind up with a settlement that'll set him up for life, maybe even set up his family unto the fourth generation.

Come Goodell's press conference, and the prop bet to take is that he'll use the old "can't comment on pending litigation" dodge when asked ANYTHING about Flores' charges. He'll emerge unscathed from the even, aside from looking foolish. There's a decade of evidence that doesn't bother Goodell one bit.

I doubt the questions will even spoil the commissioner's appetite for lunch.

posted by Michael Gee @ 11:17 AM