As the Commissioner begins his 13th year on the job, he’s not in luck when it comes to how folks feel about his job performance.
Peter King engaged in a sociological experiment for his new Football Morning in America column, asking the simple question of whether folks approve or disapprove of the job that Roger Goodell has done since embarking on his journey as the captain of the Shield in 2006.
Of more than 28,000 who responded, 79 percent said no.
Seventy-nine percent. That’s a banana republic re-election rate, not the result of a poll question that entails true polarity.
King also shared six comments from readers who explained their disdain for Goodell, summing it up with this observation: “I can’t imagine a scenario in which Goodell can turn around his image -- and I don’t see much of an effort by the league to try. For a league so powerful and successful, this is a conundrum that the NFL cannot make go away.”
But here’s the thing. The NFL doesn’t want it to go away. The NFL realizes that Goodell provides cover for owners who control the sport from behind a curtain while Goodell serves as (as Tom Curran on NBC Sports Boston puts it) the world’s highest-paid pin cushion. Or, as Falcons owner Arthur Blank more colorfully put it when speaking to Mark Leibovich at page 106 of the new book Big Game, “A lot of the reason Roger is paid a lot of money is that Roger takes a lot of f--king arrows for a lot of owners.”
So while Goodell may not wear their scorn as a badge of honor, it’s a lot easier to tolerate the fans’ slings and f--king arrows when realizing that the owners are paying him $40 million per year not just to make them a lot money, put also to provide them with a lot of cover. If nothing else, King’s poll shows that Goodell is doing that part of his job very f--king well.
And I wouldn’t be doing my own job very f--king well if I didn’t use this precise moment as a way to get you to check out Leibovich’s recent visit to the #PFTPM podcast, where among other things he offers up some off-the-cuff ideas for who could serve as Goodell’s successor.