New England are into another Super Bowl and the NFL commissioner is still in power despite numerous debacles. So much for scandalsIt has now been two years since the start of Deflategate, an ordeal that should have ruined the New England Patriots and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. Instead, the only key figure who is worse-off than before is the man who started the fiasco. On Saturday, a day before the Patriots went to yet another Super Bowl, the Indianapolis Colts fired their general manager Ryan Grigson. The move was celebrated by Patriots fans, who knew Grigson had told the NFL that New England were underinflating footballs during their rout of the Colts in the 2015 AFC championship game. Upon hearing of...
Television ratings are down in America’s most popular league. And poor play, cable cutters and player protests have all been blamedAs the owner of the New Jersey Generals in the short-lived United States Football League, Donald Trump took on the NFL and lost. More than 30 years later, the mogul may have extracted an accidental revenge on the world’s most lucrative sports league via his presidential election campaign.Through week four, the NFL’s television ratings were down by 11%. In an internal memo dated 6 October and obtained by several media outlets, two league executives floated an explanation. Related: The NFL needs help when even its marquee games stink Related: Roger Goodell on NFL TV ratings slump: 'We don't think we've...
Goodell made it through 2014 with his job and it seems like no one has the energy to try to take him down again even though he’s become worse at his jobEveryone has worked at a job with a colleague who is completely incompetent yet still remains employed. Maybe he knows someone in power, maybe his continued employment is simply an oversight by those in charge, maybe it’s just that no one has the heart to fire him. But day after day, week after week, he’s still there, messing up everything he touches and doing it with zero consequences. After a while, his substandard performance becomes part of the culture of the company, one of the annoying things that just...