When Roger Goodell became NFL commissioner 20 years ago, he inherited a thriving domestic product and grew it into a global empire. But somehow the most important years of his long tenure may still lie ahead.
The NFL is about to begin a series of negotiations on how the league and the world will use it. Goodell’s hand remains at the helm for all. His Newly signed extension In the year Until March 2031 – which would be 72 years old – not coincidentally, it coincides with the end of the current collective agreement. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is 74 years old and has no plans to retire, so age alone doesn’t settle the question. But it’s reasonable to believe this could be Goodell’s last contract.
What the game will look like at that time – who will be rewarded and what will make the development better or bigger – will be his answer to everything that came before him.
Labor negotiations, the struggle for expansion, and the still-being-written international program will define the next four years. After all, when Goodell took office, a media rights spiral was put in place that grew more profitable than anything the league had imagined and more complicated than anything its fans had been promised. There may come a point in the next few years when Goodell looks at the paying people and tells them the league they want isn’t what they really need. That moment, if it comes, will tell us more about his legacy than anything that has come before it.
The two decades of commissionership have been an ongoing exercise in giving the 32 owners more — more revenue, more games, everything that makes the NFL the dominant force in American sports. This is not a criticism so much as a description of the work. He did exceptionally well.
The league is more valuable than ever. Even its lowest-rated broadcasts are the best of almost everything else on television. Measured solely by the possessions he’s hired Goodell to produce, he’s fared beyond any reasonable expectation. The final years of his tenure are now raising the question of whether the delivery was the whole job.
Roger Goodell has signed a contract extension
Jonathan Jones
Earlier this year, Goodell was asked during his last Yale University speaker series. His answer? The game. That’s a bigger responsibility than making 32 owners rich. It includes the players who make the NFL watch and the fans who pay to do so. The next few years will test whether he is willing to protect his interests if he disappoints those who employ him.
Owners want an 18th game a year, 16 international dates, and most teams eventually travel across the ocean to play them. This week it was the Los Angeles Rams and the San Francisco 49ers, an in-state rivalry that has shifted to Melbourne, Australia, as the revenue seems to be negotiable. Goodell himself has said he has no doubt the league will eventually place franchises outside the United States. If correct, the league’s international games have gone from experimental to fundamental.
These are not modest aspirations. Those are the goals of an ownership department that sees everything it asks for in a schedule and stops asking if there is a cost.
The media rights deal adds another layer of pressure. The NFL can exit most major deals after the 2029 season, while ESPN’s window opens after 2030. The league is already under investigation by the Department of Justice for anti-competitive practices around bundle and subscription costs — a pursuit that many have not gone unnoticed. By all accounts, watching professional football is becoming more and more expensive.
Owners have the polling numbers to argue that the public is with them. A Quinnipiac survey last fall found that 60 percent of fans would favor an 18th game if the preseason game were eliminated. That’s the figure that ends before they start conversations in proprietary collections.
What is not resolved is the question that is waiting on the other side of the table.
Union executive Jesse Tretter openly opposes the 18th game, and the math behind the argument is simple enough. Cutting a preseason game doesn’t do much for a rookie who spends August afternoons on the field. Adding a regular season game requires another afternoon of true punishment. Sending him to play overseas adds more travel and recovery coverage that doesn’t appear on broadcast schedules. It is not a draft for the men who create more football. It’s many Mondays where a body that can only be young once answers what it asks on Sunday.
Can Roger Goodell reconcile the interests of the owners with the needs of the players? (Emily Chin/Getty Images)
A second stay week, applicable travel protocols and restructured pre-planning will help. But they solve the problem only on paper. The big question is whether Goodell will spend some of the money entrusted to ownership over two decades to get protections commensurate with what the players are being asked to provide.
Goodell said during the same Yale discussion that while the short-term costs are real, his policy is to do the right thing in the long run. This principle will be tested more in the next four years than in the previous 20 years. Doing well in the long run in the league may require less ownership interest in the short term. More football is not automatically better football. Baseball and basketball have spent years grappling with their seasons growing beyond the point that the public — and the players — could support them.
The cost of doing this honestly is not subtle. Lifetime health coverage, overemployment, free agency that gives men something back when they’re asked to give up their majors, and revenue contracts that treat expansion as a mutual investment are not radical ideas. The difference between a commissioner who promotes the game and one who actually protects it is the smallest of demanding moments, not coincidentally.
Total NFL franchise values today approach $300 billion. Goodell is responsible for this and deserves credit. It also means that he is the only one with the juice in the room to tell the people who run the league what the people are asking for. The revenue records speak for themselves. What they can’t say is that Goodell will leave the league — whether it’s stronger for everyone he can track or bigger for everyone who stands to gain from it.
After the money is gone, it often arrives. So are the players’ medical bills.
