Steel Balls

UPDATED. SEE BELOW

http://www.gq.com/sports/201502/roger-goodell-season-from-hell?currentPage=1

THE ARTICLE IS 3 PAGES. CLICK ON THE ARROW ADJACENT 1 OF 3 AT THE BOTTOM OF THE 1ST PAGE.

So large is Kraft’s sway with Goodell that one veteran NFL executive likes to call him “the assistant commissioner.”

Goodell said. “When we met with Ray Rice and his representatives, it was ambiguous about what actually happened.”

Within days, a lengthy ESPN investigation all but called him a liar. According to the report, not only did Rice tell Goodell exactly what happened inside that elevator….

…the nonstop drumbeat of bad news added up to a growing sense that Goodell and his owner bosses are tone-deaf to the issues that plague the NFL—and on the wrong side of history to a rising generation that increasingly sees football as too violent, too regressive, and too money-driven…

It’s also an open secret in league circles that some owners, especially Woody Johnson of the Jets, resent the preferential treatment Goodell is perceived to extend to his inner circle. (As the football world waits for the commissioner’s decision on whether to punish the Patriots for Deflategate, many are wondering how his relationship with Kraft will affect Goodell’s ruling.)

[The Ray Rice episode] reinforced a pattern that comes up again and again when you look at Goodell’s commissionership: When he’s reacting to PR crises and disciplining players, his judgment is poor. But when he’s negotiating on behalf of his owner bosses, Goodell almost never loses.

Tagliabue sees Goodell’s laser focus on profit and his combative stance toward players as key parts of the problem. “If they see you making decisions only in economic terms, they start to understand that and question what you’re all about,” he said. “There’s a huge intangible value in peace. There’s a huge intangible value in having allies.” As for his relationship with his protégé, Tagliabue says, “We haven’t talked much since I left. It’s been his decision. Bountygate didn’t help.”

Epilogue: The author has written an addendum to the original article.

http://www.gq.com/blogs/the-feed/2015/01/robert-kraft-roger-goodell.html

While reporting the piece, I heard many stories of Kraft receiving preferential treatment. One executive noted how Goodell seemed to jump to answer his cell whenever Kraft called. “Sure there’s special rules,” one league source said. “It’s the unwritten secret.” At a golf tournament last year, one source told me, Kraft is said to have called NFL headquarters and requested to be interviewed on the NFL Network. Within minutes, NFL producers in the broadcast truck were told to put Kraft on television. “Nobody else would have pulled that card,” the source said.

Kraft was reluctant to talk to me while I was reporting. One person close to Kraft told me that he was tired of being Goodell’s defender in public. The truth, of course, is that Goodell works for him. However Deflategate unfolds, the commissioner will need to tread carefully. His job security has always depended on the support of the 32 owners. And Kraft, a savvy billionaire who turned a $172 million investment in the Patriots into a $2.6 billion empire, appears to want to remind the commissioner that he is nobody’s assistant.

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