Throughout his 10 plus years as commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodell has sparked many controversies. However, one big question when you hear the name “Goodell” always pops up into fans minds, should he be fired. You can find the answer to that question by listening to the boos he gets every year when he walks out from behind the New York curtains on draft day. Living In New York, I have witnessed it first-hand. I am a die-hard fan of the Buffalo Bills, a team that only makes the national media if a drunk fan lights himself on fire. Not having the national media surrounding my team allowed me to form a non-bias opinion on the commissioner. I actually didn’t have a problem with him up until he proposed that the Bills should move to Toronto because there “isn’t a big enough market in Buffalo for an NFL team like the Bills.” Are you kidding me Goodell? You want to move a team who is the pride and joy of one of the most blue collar cities in America to Canada just to make your wallet fatter? After those statements,  I, along with my fellow Buffalonian’s, hated him as much as every other NFL fan does already. In fact so many people hate Goodell’s guts that if you were to put a Bills fan like me and a patriots fan in the same room and asked them both if they believe Goodell should be fired, you would witness the first ever friendship between the two rival fans. 

The fuel for this hatred all starts with Goodells role within the league. Goodell is the commissioner of the NFL which means he is in charge of all the rules and regulations that happen within the league. This means Goodell controls rule changes, how many votes are needed in order to pass those rule changes and most importantly, player suspensions. The big reason why Goodell gets all this scrutiny is the way he handles player misconduct both on and off the field. For example, In an interview between CBS sports analyst Ryan Wilson and former Giants player Tiki Barber, Tiki states that he wanted to back Goodell because he seems like a great guy, however when Tiki ran into some trouble and had to meet with Goodell, he said “Roger doesn’t want you to disagree with him, in fact he doesn’t even allow you to, the only thing he wants is for you to listen to him and agree.” In my eyes that sounds like Tiki just ran into trouble with North Korea and had to meet with Kim Jong Un. 

Furthermore, in order to prove my case for the firing of Goodell is the fact that the NFL prides itself on being a “democratic private business” when in reality, the commissioner sounds and acts more like a dictator than a president. These Dictatorship like actions didn’t just stop there, in fact it is shown in just about every player misconduct incident he handles. Another one of Goodell’s notorious tricks is to just simply sweep all the bad publicity under the rug in order to keep the NFL’s name clean and shiny. Take the Ray Rice case for example. Ray Rice was found beating his wife in an elevator and then dragging her unconscious body out by her hair. Goodell acted up this as quickly as possible by investigating the situation. However it did not take long for Goodell to suspend Ray Rice for a discimal two games. It was so quick in fact that a few days after Rice was suspended, a video of the act was found and was put on every news and sports channel across the country. According to Juliet Maucer from the New York Times, Goodell tried to extend the Suspension of Ray Rice after the video emerged. This shows that Goodell tried to make this process fly by because had they done a proper investigation, Goodell would have seen the tape and had hard evidence to ban rice from the NFL, but Goodell had to keep his name and the business he works for clean so he tried to make the whole situation go by in a flash. Not bad enough for you? How about the Josh Brown case. Josh Brown, Former punter for the New York Giants, allegedly abused his wife both verbally and physically for 2 years straight. When word got out, according to Joe Depaolo from the mediate.com, Roger didn’t even make an effort to investigate before he slapped Josh Brown with a one game suspension. In fact Joe Depaolo even states that “the NFL had easy access to a court document that had access to letters of Josh Brown admitting to the abuse. Josh Brown even came out and admitted to abusing his wife and Goodell still only hit him with a one game suspension. Let me put this into perspective for you. According to deadspin.com’s Samer Kalif, Seantrel Henderson, A offensive lineman for the Buffalo Bills who has Chrohn’s disease, tested positive for marijuana. Even though Henderson has a medical marijuana card, Roger Goodell suspended him for 6 games which he would later appeal and lose the case causing the suspension to extend to 10 games. Basically, Goodell said “hey Josh Brown beat his wife for years, he only deserves a one game suspension, but this guy smoking weed legally? Nope that’s terrible let’s give him 10”. As you can clearly see, Domestic violence is an issue within the world of football and Goodell can’t stop players from doing these horrible acts. However when Goodell suspends a player for one game for abusing his wife for two years straight then give a guy for smoking weed legally to ease the pain of a disease a ten game suspension, hes sending a message to the players that it’s better to beat your wife than to take medicine for a disease.

 What pisses me off the most about Goodell is how he responded to all this criticism. After his horrendous handling of both Ray Rice and Josh Browns Domestic Violence acts, Goodell realized hes actually bringing more bad publicity to the NFL rather than if he just took his time and got the ruling right. Goodell’s response to this was his extremely long investigation of deflategate. Goodell learned from his mistakes and decided to finally do a thorough investigation on the next big incident that happens in the NFL which just so happened to be deflategate. According to John branch’s “deflategate Timeline” From ESPN.com the investigation began On Janurary 23rd 2015. And come may 6th of 2015, the investigation comes to an end and the wells report is released stating that the Patriots cheated and that the reprocussions were coming which would later result in Tom Brady’s four game suspension. Now one might think that Goodell finally came to his senses and did a proper investigation, but this actually angered a lot of people because of how blatantly obvious it was that the Patriots cheated. For starters, the patriots have been caught cheating before so this wasn’t a first time offense, and secondly, there was clear video and picture evidence of people picking up the balls and them being severely deflated. Goodell investigated deflategate for 2 months when it should have took him about 4 or 5 days. Had Goodell spent that much time on any domestic violence case, Rice and Brown would both be banned from the NFL. Goodell’s handeling of this made people furious, not only because it took so long but also because Josh brown and Ray Rice got away easy for doing something much worse.

 Most people don’t realize this, but Deflategate actually cemented domestic abuse in second place for Major Issue’s in the NFL, the first being concussions and CTE. Unlike Domestic Violence, Goodell has made a effort to prevent Concussions from happening ever since scientists discovered that multiple concussions can lead to major health issues down the road for players. For instance, in Kevin Seifert’s article “Roger Goodell Says CTE link consistent with NFL’s Position”, stated that NFL senior vice president Jeff Miller, said at a congressional roundtable that there is "certainly" a connection between the brain disease and football. This shows that Roger Goodell actually kept something consistent because he has always known that CTE has been an issue in the league and has been trying to prevent it as much as possible. This is shown in Ken Belsons article on ESPN titled, “N.F.L. to Spend $100 Million to Address Head Trauma.” Ken proves that Goodell is currently trying to prevent as many concussions as possible by deciding tos pend 100 million dollars on new equipment to help prevent concussions and head trauma. In fact, Goodell even did something that’s unlike him, he decided to share the results of the new equipment with the public (probably because the results were good but hey at least he shared something with the public right?). Not only that, but Goodell has even helped other kids out by funneling millions of dollars into U.S.A Football so that parents can feel comfortable with their kids playing the dangerous sport. This sounded like an amazing turn of events for Goodell, Someone who is so money driven that he will do anything to make as much money as possible actually spending some of the NFL’s budget to keep the players safe. Fear not my friends, for Goodell always finds a way to be a D-bag! Ken Belson later states in the same article that the NFL was being sued by a ton of former players and the NFL kept losing these law suits. So the $100 million was basically an investment to hopefully prevent players from getting CTE and then suing the NFL for more money down the road. 

Furthermore, Goodell has also cracked down on the hits that are causing the concussions. According to Ashley Fox’s article on ESPN, "NFL Taking a Hard Line on Illegal Hits.", Roger Goodell and the NFL started the movement from fines to suspensions for massive, illegal hits. This is because the fines for these hits have warned off some, but players like Ndamukong Suh and Dashon Goldson, who are both repeat offenders, have not yet been scared off thus prompting the Goodell and the NFL to switch these fines into suspensions. Although this is more healthy for the players and will ultimately prevent them from getting CTE, this also limits the players from hitting other players however they please. This limitation is sucking the fun out of watching football. I know I speak for a lot of people when I say that I absolutely love to watch someone like Ray lewis come blitz someone like Tom Brady and just knock him into another dimension, however those hits are no more all because of Goodell’s Strict rules on hitting.

 That’s not the only thing I enjoy about football, I also love to watch people like Antonio Brown or Chad Ochocinco come dance in the endzone after they just scored a long touchdown. At least I can still see that happen right? Nope. Thanks to the Fun-squito of a commissioner Roger Goodell, celebrations are not only penalized on the field, but the players receive massive fines too. And Im not the only one who believes the commissioner is too strict on celebrations, Darren Grant from Profootballtalk.com bashes Goodell in his article titled, "Roger Goodell on Celebrations: “Players Are Role models”." Goodell believes that the players are role models and should not be dancing in the endzone because it shows bad sportsmanship, however where me and Darren agree is that Goodell needs to give us our fun back. Stopping violent hits that could ultimately cut 15 years off a players life is understandable, but handing a ten thousand plus dollar fine to someone like Antonio brown for jumping crotch first into the field goal post is just unnecessary. Not only that, but the penalties sometimes costs teams wins. For example, Mark Maske in his article, "The NFL Is Cracking down Hard on Illegal Celebrations. Players and Fans Ask, Why?" in The Washington Post, stated that the Redskins were pushed 15 yards back on the kickoff for Vernon Davis flipping the ball over the crossbar. Next play, the Eagles return the kickoff for a touchdown. In a league where there are only 16 games played, even just one loss could be the deciding factor of your team making the playoffs or not. These rules were all put into play by Goodell, not by the commissioners prior to him. 

The commissioners prior to him were actually loved by both the fans and the players. Kevin Seifert in his article on ESPN titled, "Ten Ways the NFL Has Changed under Roger Goodell." Showed me that the hate for the NFL commissioner is a new thing. Seifert even states that the players tribune had more influence on the commissioners decisions before Goodell was in power. The reason why Goodell has cut these ties is to make the NFL into a true corporation allowing Goodell to finally get what he wants, money. According to Ahiza Garcia from CNN Money, Goodell will receive $34 million just in 2017. John Tagliabue, the commissioner that was in power prior to Goodell, made just $10 million in his final year (2006). Now you might be asking yourself, “ if Tagliabue did a much better job in comparison to Roger Goodell, why is Goodell getting paid 3 times as much?” The answer is revenue. Goodell will even say that his top priority is to make the NFL as much revenue as possible and that’s exactly what he did. According to Forbes’s own Jason Belzer, the commissioner has made the NFL surpass 13 Billion dollars in revenue. Now obviously a commissioner who’s top priority is to make money shouldn’t be in power at all, so the next question is… why is Goodell still the commissioner. Ben Collins from the daily beast said it perfectly, “it will never happen as long as he keeps making the NFL money.” Ben explains that the only people who are capable of firing Goodell are the owners, and as long as Goodell keeps the TV contracts pouring in and the stadiums full, there is little to no chance the owners will vote to fire him. 
