Is Roger Goodell Competent to Reform the NFL\'s Policies?

NFL and Decision Making

The National Football League (NFL), probably the most popular and richest sports league in America, has been in the news a lot lately. The issues involving the NFL have not been about football per se -- and about what teams are dominant early in the season -- but rather about wrongdoing by football players and incompetence and poor decision-making by the commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodell. This paper reviews the domestic violence issues that have made headlines over the past few weeks and months, and the wrongheaded attempt at leadership the public has witnessed from the commissioner.

A History of Lenience by the NFL

It was April, 2007, and in the previous season more than 50 NFL players had been arrested for various crimes, so Commissioner Roger Goodell got tough on these players by instituting a "newly stringent personal conduct policy" (Pennington, et al., 2014). Goodell insisted that he could handle the wave of criminal activity by players himself, and that was installing himself as "…the judge and jury presiding over every case" (Pennington, p. 1). Goodell was quoted saying, "It is my job -- not law enforcement's job -- to protect the National Football League," however the offenses the commissioner was ruling over were drug use or driving while intoxicated, Pennington explains. Moreover, eyebrows were raised because Goodell was taking all these matters onto his own shoulders and not forming a committee to mete out punishment, or even bringing in other respected leaders to help him.

Goodell's major blind spot was domestic violence, and according to The New York Times, players often were punished more for marijuana use or drunken driving arrests than they were for domestic violence. An example that Pennington offers is quite dramatic: a Packer linebacker, Erik Walden, was arrested for assaulting his live-in girlfriend. After the police reduced the charge to "disorderly conduct" (and dismissed that charge), then handed Walden 50 hours of community service, Goodell gave Walden a one-game suspension. Meanwhile, eight weeks earlier Bengal receiver Jerome Simpson was busted with two and a half pounds of marijuana, and Goodell suspended Simpson for three games.

Therein is one of the major inconsistencies in terms of judgment by Goodell. A player is given a one game suspension for brutally attacking a woman, but a player getting arrested for marijuana is suspended for three games. Hence, the impression was that the NFL "…had treated domestic violence as a back-burner concern," and players charged with drunken driving and drug offenses were given tough suspensions (Pennington, p. 2).

The Ray Rice Case -- and Others

In February, 2014, Baltimore star running back Ray Rice was arrested for domestic violence -- against his finance -- and Goodell meted out a two-game suspension, even though the police report indicated that Rice had rendered his finance unconscious with a blow to the head. When the media learned that a player had been given a three game suspension for a drug violation, a "…firestorm of criticism" was launched against Goodell for just handing a two-game suspension to the high-profile running back Rice (Pennington, p. 2). Goodell, who had shown knee-jerk responses to the Rice issue, suddenly changed his policy to give first-time offenders in domestic violence cases six game suspensions.

Subsequent to that new policy, a graphic video was released in August 2014 by the website TMZ that showed the criminal brutality and viciousness of Rice's attack on his finance. It showed that Rice had dragged his finance out of an elevator while she was flat on her face. This video played over and over on television and enraged millions of people, so Goodell had no choice but to suspend Rice indefinitely. The credibility of the commissioner took a huge hit when he couldn't explain why the NFL had not been able to obtain that video.

Brandon Marshall, a star with the Broncos, attacked his girlfriend, was arrested, and Goodell gave him three games' suspension but later reduced it to a single game (Pennington, p. 3). There are many more instances -- far more than there is room for in this paper -- showing Goodell's wishy-washy position on domestic violence.

What the NFL Should Do

First of all, the decision-making process should not be handled alone by any commissioner. By being judge and jury, Goodell "…has taken fairness out of the equation" when punishing NFL players (Boitnott, 2014). He knows he failed, and has acknowledged as much by saying, in a recent press conference, "I didn't get it right…we have to do better" (Carter, 2014). What Goodell said that makes the most sense is that he would change the NFL's personal conduct policy (he didn't elaborate) and he would insist that all players and all NFL staff would need to "undergo training and education" about domestic violence (Carter, p. 2). He was clearly on the defensive during the press conference, and he also said he would create a committee to work with him on a new policy vis-a-vis domestic violence cases.