Perhaps NFL commissioner Roger Goodell imagines his own legacy as one of a great businessman. He had a product the country was addicted to and managed to extract more cash ($100 billion in media deals over the next decade) out of content-starved networks than others might have in his position. He made the NFL a great deal of money and, for this, should be commended.
That could serve as a useful distraction for the fact that, as a disciplinarian, Goodell, either as the direct overseer of high-profile punishments or as a person of final authority over a disciplinary process, has wholly failed. Whatever flicker of a moral compass existed in this league before his takeover has long been extinguished. And if he fails to act on an appeal for the completely inadequate six-game suspension of Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson, he will codify his unenviable legacy.
News of a six-game Deshaun Watson suspension is stunning. It is a third of the length of the yearlong suspension handed down to Falcons receiver Calvin Ridley. Ridley gambled $1,500 on football games via a platform the league profits from and promotes relentlessly. It is less than linebacker Mychal Kendricks received for insider trading. Watson was described as sexually harassing or sexually assaulting more than two dozen women—women who now carry pepper spray to work, women who now fear that anything they wear will be somehow mistaken as a sexual invitation to a powerful client three times their size.
Gary Vasquez/USA TODAY Sports (Goodell); Ken Blaze/USA TODAY Sports (Watson)
One has to wonder what the space in Goodell’s own mind feels like. Sure he wasn’t the one overseeing the disciplinary hearings for Watson. That job belonged to retired Delaware federal court Judge Sue L. Robinson, who was appointed as the league’s disciplinary officer earlier this year by the NFL and the players union. It was Robinson who recommended the Browns’ quarterback’s six-game suspension. The NFLPA, in a statement Sunday night, said it will “stand by” Robinson's ruling while urging the NFL to do the same.
But Robinson’s ruling, which cites “nonviolent sexual conduct” in Watson’s behavior, ignores one of the most obvious facts of the saga. We are so far behind the eight ball as a society in recognizing the mental torture that survivors of any kind of sexual harassment or assault are put through. Who are we to define violence, when someone’s life may be totally upended as a result? Robinson thought Watson’s actions were sketchy enough to prevent him from ever getting a massage outside of the team facility again (good luck policing that), though obviously not enough to keep him off the field longer than DeAndre Hopkins, who will also miss six games for trace amounts of performance-enhancing substances.
The interesting thing about retaining a salary of $63.9 million per year is that it does not shield Goodell from the reality that not appealing would forever make him the person who had a chance to make this right and balked. It does not stop us from reminding him of all the chances he had to do a larger societal good and that he failed.
Goodell has now, multiple times, been confronted with opportunities to stand up for women. The league prefers pomp and circumstance, of course, parading around in pink, for example, to raise breast cancer awareness, to severely punishing a player (Ray Rice) seen on video knocking out his fiancé, or a player (Kareem Hunt) kicking a woman outside a hotel room, or a player (Greg Hardy) strangling his fiancé. Most people are not suggesting these players should have received a lifetime ban from the NFL. In fact, studies have shown that the looming weight of a lifetime ban would hamper the willingness of survivors to come forward. But couldn’t any of those players have been suspended longer than a promising wide receiver such as Josh Gordon, who received three indefinite suspensions and a yearlong suspension from the NFL for substance abuse?
If Goodell doesn’t appeal, he’ll side with a legion of Twitter bots that have convinced themselves that a nonindictment from a grand jury is the same thing as an exoneration, which is a convenient tale to tell yourself. It helps drown out the idea that a man had such a troubled relationship with dozens of massage therapists that his own franchise suggested he carry around nondisclosure agreements. Plus, bringing a small- to medium-sized towel with him to massages instead of using a regular one that would be supplied to him might suggest what a network of civil suits say he is.
If Goodell doesn’t appeal, he’ll give rise to a faction of the league’s fan base, which is emboldened to continue calling the massage therapists—and really anyone fighting for the fair and equal treatment of women—horrible, unfathomable names on social media. Hopefully for Goodell, that fraction of the fan base is larger than the 21% of women who recently described themselves as avid fans of the NFL.
Before the Watson hearing, someone (perhaps in the NFL) leaked that the league wanted a yearlong suspension with an indefinite kicker, covering any and all new information that may surface. What we initially thought was a show of appropriate strength, a signal of a Goodell ready to wrestle with his past perception as a weak disciplinarian, may turn out to be mere window dressing. Maybe the league wanted us to think it was going to bring the hammer down. Then, it wanted to fall behind a process that would provide its desired result: A flashy new quarterback playing games in a new location. More attention. More eyes. More wagering.
Football used to be a neutral battlefield. Under Goodell, though, the sport has shifted into the kind of privileged, slap-on-the-wrist culture that is pervasive among citizens who can afford a super attorney and a good media-spin artist. Instead, punish those who have slipped up with drugs or gambling. But the guy who reportedly has serially sexually harassed and sexually assaulted women under the guise of supporting Black-owned businesses and threatened their careers if they spoke out? There’s nothing we can do about that? How grossly familiar does that sound?
The saddest part of all of this is the NFL will win no matter what Goodell decides. We won’t stop watching. We will, initially, probably watch more intently. The disgusted among us will tune in for the broadcasting car crash, as untrained commenters try to fold Watson’s reported off-field misdeeds into some kind of redemptive on-field narrative. Maybe some will seek a little schadenfreude. The ambivalent among us will watch because, hey, he's a good quarterback playing in a new place, and that’s always interesting so long as we cover our ears and box out any issues of morality.
But Goodell is another matter altogether. Obviously, money buys a lot. But does it buy off that little piece of your heart that wonders whether you could have done more? Whether you should have done more?
