![]() ![]() Upon Tagliabue’s retirement, Goodell was considered the natural favorite to replace him. ![]() Goodell, while COO, played a significant role in helping the NFL expand to Jacksonville and Charlotte and put franchises back in Cleveland and Houston. “Roger spearheaded all those developments for the league office,” Ellis said, “to get as many teams to focus on a need for a new stadium as possible.” Fancy amenities, premium spaces and personal seating licenses were too lucrative to ignore. The push was on for new stadiums, even under threat of relocation. He worked under Goodell as vice president of club administration and stadium management in the 1990s, when the league realized stadium luxuries were an untapped revenue river. Goodell eventually sat among Tagliabue’s most trusted advisers as the league’s executive vice president and chief operating officer.Įllis saw the relentlessness up close. Policy called him Pete Rozelle’s gopher, but Goodell did whatever it took to advance. If nearly half its owners had their way back in 2006, Goodell would not have been in charge.Īn unpaid NFL intern in 1982, he climbed the ladder with ambition and energy. “It - and everything attached to it - has turned into a juggernaut, and nobody has worked harder to make that happen.” “The league has grown so dramatically over his tenure in every way. “Roger has taken this league to an incredible level,” said former Denver Broncos CEO Joe Ellis, who served as the club’s ownership proxy after Pat Bowlen was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Brady didn’t retire until three months ago, with career football earnings around $333 million. Tom Brady already had played six seasons and won three Super Bowls when Goodell replaced Paul Tagliabue as commissioner. Not even the greatest player of all-time has earned more NFL cash. Securities and Exchange Commission filings show the average CEO at an S&P 500 company made $18.3 million in 2021. The New York Times reported he received $63.9 million in 2019 and again in 2020. Goodell averaged about $35 million a year from 2011 to 2015. He made $212.5 million through 2015, when the NFL surrendered its tax-exempt status and no longer was required to divulge its top executive salaries. He reportedly will sign a contract extension - believed to be his last - to keep him in office until spring 2027, when he would be 68.īy then, the NFL might have paid him half a billion dollars. The scales of Goodell’s legacy cannot be calibrated until he leaves his post. ‘The Beast’ 2023 NFL Draft guide: Dane Brugler’s scouting reports, player rankings At least 11 new stadiums will have been built. More games are played on different days through different media platforms. Releasing the schedule used to be a press release now it’s a two-hour primetime event. The NFL now is year-round television show. The current deal doesn’t expire until 2030. The NFL has enjoyed relative labor peace, with Goodell overseeing back-to-back, 10-year collective bargaining agreements. The Washington Commanders are on the verge of selling for at least $6 billion. The smallest-market club that can be bought, the Buffalo Bills, sold in 2014 for a record-breaking $1.4 billion. When Goodell took over in 2006, NFL revenues were about $6 billion, with the average Forbes valuation of each franchise $897 million. “The NFL has had the good fortune, whether it be astuteness and good judgment of ownership or just plain luck, of somehow having the right person in the commissioner’s chair at the right time for the league to advance,” former San Francisco 49ers and Cleveland Browns president Carmen Policy said. Yet in interviews with more than a dozen people who have worked with and under him, negotiated alongside and against him, held similar office as him and studied him, a majority claimed anyone could have orchestrated comparable success as Goodell but conceded a more robust NFL is difficult to fathom. Goodell long has refused to ponder his place in history while he’s still on the job. Barring an unconquerable scandal, a circumstance Goodell has yet to encounter, he will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The rookies in attendance will bear hug him on stage. The players union considers him an adversary, a tyrant. He’s depicted as brilliant and as a buffoon. Goodell will glow and might playfully goad the crowd to yawp louder because this is what he has become: the smooth striding contradiction of a publicly unpopular executive to whom owners will have given more money than they’ve paid the greatest players in football history.
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