Throughout much of my childhood, like the multitude of other boys across the United States, almost every spare moment I had was filled with sports. Football, soccer, baseball, swimming, lacrosse - all of these and more I participated in to some degree throughout my upbringing. But it wasn't until high school that I got my first real taste of the game that has captivated Americans for decades. Freshman football was for me and many of my friends our first full contact sport, and we lapped up every second of it. Though we were by no means gods of the gridiron that first year, it didn't matter because we were hooked - and have been hooked ever since. High school, college, CFL, NFL - if football was on T.V. we were watching it. If it wasn't on T.V. , then we were playing it in the backyard. This is why it was with great regret I had to forgo my junior season, due to several concussions I had received the prior year. This meant that I had to find my football fix elsewhere, and I found it in an even deeper interest in the NFL. This addiction gave me a deeper understanding of the NFL, and subsequently the serious issues that faced the organization and its leader, Roger Goodell. One thing Goodell, in his ten years as the head of the nation's largest sports organization,has repeatedly shown is that he is more interested in maintaining the image and prestige of the NFL, than correctly disciplining and protecting its players. Under his direction, a rising problem of domestic violence has plagued the league and officials have attempted to deny or cover up the long term mental effects of a career in the NFL. It is for these reasons, which I will elaborate on in the succeeding paragraphs, that Goodell has failed as his job as commissioner.

In the early morning hours of February 15th, after spending Valentine's day with his then fiancee, Janay Palmer, Ray Rice, the Baltimore Ravens starting running back, got into an altercation with his wife-to-be in an Atlantic City casino elevator. Rice and his fiance both exchanged blows, but Rice, a 5'8" 206 lb. 3-time Pro Bowler, quickly delivered a blow that rendered his fiance unconscious, before dragging her senseless body out of the elevator. Both Rice and Palmer were arrested and charged with with simple assault, although the charges against Palmer were later dropped. All of these actions were captured on surveillance video, which was sent to the NFL by the Atlantic City Police Department. In the months following, Roger Goodell and the NFL handed down a two game suspension to Rice. But about a month later, after TMZ released the full surveillance video of the assault which anyone outside the NFL or police department had yet to see, the Ravens terminated Rice's contract within hours, and Goodell announced Rice's indefinite suspension from the league, while adamantly deny that anyone at the NFL had ever seen the full video. After extensive public backlash, which was only compounded by police officials stating they had received confirmation from league offices that they received and watched the video, Goodell then promised to make a better effort on solving the NFL's domestic violence program, donating millions to the cause of domestic violence and consulting several experts on the cause. In another case domestic violence, Greg Hardy, star defensive end for the Carolina Panthers, was arrested for assault and communicating threats in 2013 after a fight with his then girlfriend Nicole Holder. During said fight, Hardy allegedly threw Holder on a couch covered in assault rifles and as he choked her and threatened to kill her. Hardy was found guilty but the charges were later dismissed after an appeal where Holder failed to appear, which was believed to be due to the fact that Hardy settled with Holder out of court. Hardy was later suspended 10 games by the NFL for the role the crimes he committed, although a judge later shifted his suspension to only four games. Hardy went on to sign with the Dallas Cowboys, becoming an even bigger star, one which owner Jerry Jones called "a real leader" (Dubin), even after several sexist comments during interviews and altercations with coaches on the sidelines. Clearly, the NFL and its owners are willing to ignore the criminal and sexist past of a player if they can bring in more revenue for the team by helping win games.

Although it is clear that both Hardy and Rice have deeply rooted issues when it comes to their violence towards women and that Goodell did a poor job in handling Rice's case, when looked at from a wider scope that encomasses the NFL as a whole, we can see the greater issue at hand. Goodell, as the league commissioner, sees himself as a "tough as nails prosecutor and judge" (Schafer) suspending players for over a year in some cases for charges such as drug possession or even allegations of assault. But although he comes down hard on many offenders, one offense where Goodell fails to discipline appropriately is cases of domestic violence, which is the most regularly occurring serious crime the NFL sees. The data analytics website FiveThirtyEight.com looked at the statistics for domestic crimes compared to other others in the NFL, and found that domestic violence and assault accounts for a whopping 55.4% of the the national average, which is the highest category of all the crimes committed in the NFL. These numbers become even more shocking when you consider the income level of most NFL players. According to FiveThirtyEight, "relative to the income level (top 1 percent) and poverty rate (0 percent) of NFL players, the domestic violence arrest rate is downright extraordinary. According to a 2002 Bureau of Justice Statistics Report covering 1993 to 1998, the domestic victimization rate for women in households with income greater than $75,000 (3.3 per 100,000) was about 39 percent of the overall rate (8.4 per 100,000), and less than 20 percent of the overall rate for women ages 20 to 34" (Morris). Even with these factors in place, the fact that the NFL still manages to match more than half of the national average for domestic assault is troubling. It is clear that the NFL leadership needs to take steps to solve this problem, which it certainly did not do in the case of Ray Rice. Goodell, who due to his position as commissioner is key in many of these decisions, has continually not done enough to discipline players to the point where the domestic violence issue is curbed and reduced. Indeed, before the Ray Rice case, 34 of the league's 57 domestic abuse incidents since 2006 went unpunished by the league. This raises the question of whether or not the league has an obligation to discipline its players for their off the field actions. The NFL at its core is a business, and as a business with such a prominent place in society, they have an obligation to act with some standard or moral fortitude. This becomes especially true when the role NFL players play in the minds of young athletes like myself is brought into question. What worldview are we instilling on our sons and daughters if the idolize players who one weekend lead their team to  victory and they next are arrested for threatening to kill their spouse? Goodell once again has failed in this aspect, and it is for this reason that he should step down from his position, or do a better job of policing players in the immediate future. Although Goodell is not directly responsible for the actions of the NFL's players, he is directly responsible for how their transgressions are punished, and that is where he fails the organization. 

Another critical issue which Goodell and the NFL have mishandled is the long term mental health of players after and during their play in the league. For example, Junior Seau was an indomitable force on and off the field. As a linebacker of the San Diego Chargers for 13 straight seasons, Seau's passionate playing style led them to their first and only Super Bowl appearance, earned him a spot on the Pro-Bowl roster an astounding 12 times, and in 2015 was the reason for his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Seau amassed a stunning 1,524 tackles during his 20 seasons in the league, good enough for fourth all time and  making him one of the greatest defensive players to ever step foot on the field. Off the field, he became a prominent member of the San Diego community, opening a chain of restaurants in the area. In 2012, as a result of the neurological effects of multiple concussions suffered during his career, Seau committed suicide in his San Diego home at the age of 43. This future of eventual mental decline is sadly the reality that many players must face later in life. For example in a CDC study of over 3,300 ex-NFL players, the rate of death from neurological causes was found to be 3 times higher than the national average, and 4 times as high for two major subgroups of this cause of death,  ALS and dementia. Both of these are progressive neurological degenerative diseases that are incurable and will eventually result in death. But the real culprit is believed to be a different disease entirely, one that has symptoms not unlike the two previous diseases mentioned. This disease, which was responsible for the death of Junior Seau and many other players, is Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. 

CTE, a neurodegenerative disease much like Alzheimer's, was first discovered by Dr. Bennett Omalu M.D., who was studying the brain of Steelers legend Mike Webster. Webster had died suddenly after experiencing several years of cognitive decline, with symptoms such as depression, motor impairment, and memory loss. After performing an autopsy on Webster as part of his job for the Allegheny County Coroner's, Omalu self funded a study of Webster's brain tissue, and while performing several different analyses of his brain found a build up of the abnormal tau protein in Webster's brain. This build up, Omalu theorized, "was Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy ("CTE") triggered by multiple NFL concussions and represented a partial cause of death"(Rutgers). Omalu would go on to study the brains of two other players, Terry Long and Andre Waters who had also suffered concussions during their careers. Omalu once again found evidence of CTE, and in the wake of Andre Water's suicide this information received national attention for the first time. 

Although this was the first time the public heard of the connection between the NFL and CTE, this was not the first time concussions had been linked to noted mental decline. In fact this connection was actually made as far back as 1952, when a study appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine "urges players who suffered three concussions to leave football forever for their own safety" (Petchesky). The study goes on to say that it believed that there was a connection to an early death associated with an increasing amount of concussions. From this point forward, several scientific studies pointed to a link between concussions and cognitive decline later in life, but the scope was not narrowed until the past 10 years or so. This has been largely due to the NFL's persistent attempts to deflect or deny the allegations of long term health effects for their players. 

One such example of this was the NFL scheduling a Summit on Concussions in 2007, after mounting media exposure from Omalu's studies demanded a response. Daniel J. Kain, in his senior law thesis at Rutgers University summarized where the NFL's response fell short: "Scientists and players were initially hopeful that the NFL's scheduling of the Summit indicated a newfound willingness on the part of the league to revise its concussion policies and procedures. Unfortunately, the NFL's August 14, 2007 press release denying the scientific probability that "more than one or two concussions leads to permanent problems" indicates that the research of doctors Omalu and Guskiewicz fell on unresponsive NFL ears" (Rutgers). Kain goes on to theorize that this summit was largely created for PR reasons, in which he is probably correct. From 2001 to 2009, the total revenue of the NFL doubled, from 4 billion dollars to 8 billion dollars. Fearful of losing this type of continual growth in the future, the NFL could not admit to a connection between playing in the league and CTE. This becomes even more apparent the the closer the actions of the NFL are looked at. For example, according to ESPN, "In 2009 the NFL funded a University of Michigan study that showed that former players between 30-49 were 19 times more likely to have Alzheimer's and other mental disorders than men of the same age, but the league disavowed the study, saying that it did not specifically study dementia and was based on unreliable phone surveys" (Fainaru-Wade). This is just another timely example of the league refusing to acknowledge the clear connection being made to CTE, even when it comes from a study they funded themselves. Two years after the NFL denounced the UM study, a coalition of 4,500 former players sued the NFL, claiming that the league made a decisive effort to hide from them the long term health effects that stem from multiple concussions. This case came right on the tail of the suicide of former Chicago Bear Dave Duerson, who put a gun to his chest and pulled the trigger, "but not before leaving a note asking that his brain be examined by the Boston University School of Medicine" (Farrar). The university study went on to find that Duerson had been definitively suffering from the effects of CTE and the NFL went on to settle out of court with the former players to the tune of $765 million and promised to move towards making more stringent player safety rules to ensure that concussion numbers were cut down. Yet even with a public promise to improve the league's concussion awareness and treatment, the NFL still refused to acknowledge a link between football and CTE.

 Even as repeated studies published independently continued to not only identify CTE as a unique and identifiable disease, but further cement the connection between it and professional football, the NFL still clung to its own sponsored studies, which it claimed showed no connection between the NFL and and future cognitive decline.. In fact, the New York Times just recently released an article detailing the deception surrounding these studies done in the late 90's, a time period in which the concussion problem was still just a novel idea. These studies, done between 1996 and 2001, were done using false data: "more than 100 diagnosed concussions were omitted...The committee then calculated the rates of concussions using the incomplete data, making them appear less frequent than they actually were"(Schwartz). These studies were a staple of the NFL's denial of the long term health risks associated with playing at a professional level. Furthermore, this repeated denial came at the chagrin of many former players, some of which were currently dealing with the long term repercussions of a lifetime in the league. One of these such players, Will Rackley a former Baltimore Ravens guard, who retired as recently as 2014 now has to take "12 pills a day to deal with the headaches and mood swings and depression and short-term memory loss and sensitivity to light and noise and on and on" (Farrar). Rackley has twice now been denied disability payments from the NFL by two different NFL doctors, and is waiting a response from the third. These doctors claim that Rackley's symptoms are unrelated to the multiple concussions he sustained while in the league, and there they have no responsibility to treat him. For many like Rackley, the NFL's continued denial means that they have to deal with treating their symptoms on their own, and due to CTE's inability to be diagnosed during life, they are left in the dark to whether or not the symptoms they are experiencing can be linked to this disease, and eventually to an early death. But the predicament is even more serious for current NFL players, who play in a league that refuses to tell them if the day to day activities of their job may cause them to find themselves in Rackley's shoes ten years down the road. In fact, it was not until earlier this month, a full 10 years after Omalu first made the connection between CTE and the NFL and a full 20 years after the NFL conducted its own private studies on the link between mental health and concussions, that the league acknowledged that there was a connection. According to Sports Illustrated, "Jeff Miller, who the NFL's Senior Vice President for Health and Safety, said during a roundtable forum on concussions convened by the House Committee on Energy & Commerce that there was 'certainly' a link between football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy...It was the first public admission on this subject from anyone employed by the NFL" (Farrar). The fact that the NFL's first public admission of the link between CTE and football comes this many years after the signs first began to show is a clear indicator of the NFL and Roger Goodell's moral ambiguity and in some cases downright deception in the handling of the situation. During the ten plus years the NFL denied the connection, scores of players set foot on the playing field Sunday morning, and with millions watching tossed their body into the fray, blind to the future that may await them as a result of their play. And on many of those Sundays Roger Goodell stood by and watched, with the knowledge that many of the players before him could one day suffer life altering mental decline as a result of the very game they loved. Not only did Goodell do nothing to warn these players of the potential risk, but he and the NFL also actively attempted to undermine and discredit studies showing the link between CTE and an NFL career, undoubtedly contributing to the problems these players will face later in life. 

Roger Goodell is innocent until proven guilty. Though his actions as commissioner and the actions of the people working under him clearly have done more harm to the players and families that have been and are currently members of the National Football League, Goodell is by no means a criminal as many critics who have called for his resignation have stated. Instead, Goodell simply has his own agenda that does not include the safety of players and their famalies, his mishandling of both the domestic violence issues of the NFL and the concussion epidemic during his time as commissioner are clear signs that point to his shortcomings. Goodell is also certainly not the only problem - it extends down the ranks of the NFL, from owners to coaches to players, but it starts at the top - and that is where Goodell's office lies. The same issue plagued another massive sports entity not too long ago. FIFA, or the Federation Internationale de Football Association, just recently forced to resignation of president Sepp Blatter, after an adamant system of corruption that permeated almost all upper levels of the sport came to public light. Although once again, just like in the NFL the issue took root throughout much of the organization, the head was where the issues stemmed from, and this is why removing it was seen as the most viable option. Just like with Sepp Blatter and FIFA, which as an international organization is much larger than the NFL, the leadership needs to change for the culture to change. It is for this reason, and based on the evidence presented previously, the Goodell should step down, resign, or be replaced as commissioner of the National Football League as soon as possible.

