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| Ka-ching! - NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell |
As ESPN's Adam Shefter reported earlier this evening, his yearly base salary will probably be somewhere in the $5 to $8 million range - nice work if you can get it, right?
But Goodell's new package, negotiated by the six-member NFL compensation committee, means the bulk of the "$40 million per year" figure being bandied about the press will actually come in the form of bonuses triggered by meeting specific financial and revenue goals.
Sure, fans and sportswriters alike may debate the merits of some of the decisions he's made on a range of rocky issues including the League's handling of player-involved domestic abuse situations, and policy and compensation related to concussion-related injuries of current and former players.
But given Goodell's overall performance as NFL commissioner, particularly the League's steadily growing revenues (Forbes estimated NFL revenues topped $13 billion in 2016) based in part on his efforts to develop new revenue streams, he's demonstrated pretty steady leadership.
The NFL is by far the most valuable sports league on the planet, and frankly speaking he's a pretty cool character and very shrewd - I used to work as a low-level copywriter in the NFL's old Ad Design Department in New York and I sat across a desk from him and talked with him in private in his office back when he was the NFL's VP of business development.
(My good friend Jimmy, who I mentioned in the opening of my blog back on September 10th as Hurricane Irma bore down on Florida, went to high school with Goodell and knows him well.)
It's a pretty good bet that Goodell is going to be clocking a lot of that bonus money over the course of the next few seasons, and the overwhelming majority of NFL owners are clearly pleased with the job he's doing.
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| Jacksonville Jaguars' members kneel in protest |
Speaking of which, did you see the video of Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren trying to read one of the last-minute handwritten "edits" to the nearly 500-page tax bill that Republican Senators had the gall to drop late Friday night an hour before the senate was scheduled to vote on it?
Disgraceful. A low-point for America.
But to get back to the NFL, while the sideline protests during the national anthem before NFL games continue, in many ways its faded from the mainstream media focus to a degree.
That's due in part to network game broadcasts not devoting live camera coverage to the peaceful protests - remember, outside of special occasions like the Super Bowl, normal network game day NFL broadcasts don't really cover the national anthem.
On average, it takes about one minute and forty seconds for someone to sing the national anthem, players are only kneeling silently with arms locked during the song, so if you're watching a game it's more likely that you're seeing a commercial on your television screen when the national anthem is being sung on the field.
In addition, over the course of the fall a number of events have simply pushed the sideline protests out of the American media spotlight to a degree.
The devastating hurricanes that struck Houston, Puerto Rico and parts of Florida, the mass shooting in Las Vegas back in October, the ever-growing and escalating chaos of the Trump administration and the ongoing fallout from the special counsel investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 elections, and Congress' efforts to pass some kind of meaningful legislation before the end of the year, have all had more of a cultural impact in terms of the "spotlight" of mainstream media coverage.
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| Philadelphia Eagles safety Malcom Jenkins and other members of the Players Coalition last week |
Interestingly, the news of Goodell's new contract extension seemed to make much more of a media splash than the news last Thursday that a group of approximately 40 current players (led by Malcom Jenkins and Anquan Bolden) and the NFL had reached an agreement for the League to contribute $89 million over seven years to support national and local organizations focused on issues such as police-community relations, criminal justice reform and educational reforms.
As Jim Trotter and Jason Reid reported for ESPN last Thursday, the funds, which NFL owners agreed to, are slated to be geared towards charitable and non-profit organizations that can directly impact some of the root causes related to the epic of unjustified use of deadly force and excessive physical violence against people of color by some members of law enforcement in this country.
According to ESPN, a quarter of the funds will go to the United Negro College Fund, and a quarter will go to Dream Corps, the non-profit founded by Van Jones in 2014 that seeks to promote bipartisan support to reduce America's prison population by 50% over ten years, boost opportunities for people of color in America's tech sector, and build an inclusive green economy.
Fifty percent of the NFL's slated funds will go to the Players Coalition, who collectively decided to hire The Hopewell Fund, a non-profit that assists individuals and organizations with directing charitable funds to causes they support, to oversee how the money is distributed to various organizations and charities.
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| Beyonce Knowles presents Colin Kaepernick with the 2017 SI Muhammad Ali Legacy Award |
At Tuesday night's Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year Awards Show, Beyonce Knowles brought some added media attention to the issue by coming onstage to present ex-San Francisco 49er's quarterback Colin Kaepernick with the Muhammad Ali Legacy Award.
An issue she's spoken out on before.
She was criticized by some police unions for her Super Bowl halftime performance in February of 2016 as well as her video "Formation" - which some members of law enforcement and conservative talking heads viewed as "anti-police" and linked with the imagery of the Black Lives Matter movement
As NBC reported earlier this morning, the award she presented to Kaepernick last night honors Ali's dedication to social change by recognizing the "athlete who uses their platform to further change."
Fans and observers can debate the merits of Kaepernick's decision to start the national anthem protest back in 2016.
But there's no question that it has changed American society by bringing the issue of unjustified systematic police brutality against people of color back into the media spotlight.
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| Co-founder Alicia Garza with other members of Black Lives Matter |
When in reality, BLM was started by organizers Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opel Tometi in response to the 2013 acquittal of the violent racist psychopath George Zimmerman.
That was after a Florida jury let him walk after he'd followed, stalked and then attacked and killed 17-year-old unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin who was walking home from a store to his father's house with a bag of Skittles and a drink.
But while the NFL's decision to dedicate $89 million over seven years to issues that impact the African-American community is significant and meaningful, it's not magic fairy dust that's going to address the entrenched systematic racism that lies at the heart of unjustified use of force against people of color in America by some members of law enforcement in conjunction with a dysfunctional court system in which racial bias remains deeply embedded.
As The Nation and other media outlets have reported, the NFL's financial agreement has also divided some NFL players who see the money as a "payment" by the owners to get players to stop kneeling and sitting during the playing of the national anthem before games.
The agreement doesn't say anything about the money being tied to an agreement that the sideline protests end; Roger Goodell has made clear players have a right to express themselves.
But it remains to be seen whether the $89 million will lead to other players deciding to stand for the national anthem once again - after all, NFL owners are made up of multi-millionaires and billionaires who didn't get where they are by giving away their money for nothing.
And if they pledge to give away $89 million over seven years, they expect something for it - whether that means NFL players to decide to play ball is another question.
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