What Roger Goodell should have said

Good afternoon. Thank you for coming.

There has been much discussion recently about the behavior of some of our league members as well as the way our league – and I – have handled these issues.

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I am here today only to let the public know that we take these problems seriously. Too often in the past, we have not. But we now want to do everything in our power to make sure the people involved in our game represent it properly.

Too often in the past, we have addressed these issues as if they are one-off incidents conducted by horrible people. There is some truth to that in many cases. By and large, we still believe our league is full of some of the brightest and best people in the country. But we also now realize that the way in which we conduct ourselves as a league is a large part of the issue. Rather than pointing fingers and reacting to crisis, we need to become a better league.

We need to start being harder on our players, coaches, and – most of all – owners than the media is. Increasingly, it seems as though we operate with public relations in mind more than with a genuine desire to right the wrongs in our league. We react to so-called scandals, hunkering down in crisis control mode to put out fires until the collective Sauron’s eye of journalism moves on to its next target. Then we take a deep breath, send out some press releases and hope the controversy stays dead.

We are not alone in this regard. We have simply adopted what is a common operating strategy of most modern corporations. We have done so, by and large, because it has become standard and because our owners have allowed us – even encouraged us – to behave this way. But we are not a public corporation beholden to stockholders. So we need to re-evaluate why we operate this way.

Though we collectively try to seize every last dollar in negotiations with our players’ unions, we don’t squeeze them when it comes to issues of larger societal importance. We protect them, like assets, rather than coming down hard when their conduct is unacceptable. It is a conflicting dynamic in which, on the one hand, we treat the players as disposable, interchangeable commodities who can never be larger than the league, nay, the game. But with our other hand, we mask the harm some of these individuals inflict and try to whitewash the deep-seeded, problematic behaviors that everyone knows exist in our organization.

We must stop doing this.

And while I am commissioner of this league and can only speak in that capacity, the graver threat of us operating in this manner is its effect on athletes and lower-level leagues. What disappoints me most is the impact our example sets for adolescents.

We pay huge sums of money – fortunes – to the world’s best athletes. And they deserve it. It is because of their collective greatness that fans come to the games. But these incredible salaries entice nearly every child in America to want to play in our league. So from a very early age, they become enraptured in a dream that playing professionally for us will change their life and make all their dreams come true.

They rise through the ranks of competition, and at each stop along the way they are praised for their skill. And at too many stops along the way, their talent is deemed more important than anything. Even at levels in which there is little financial incentive for the officials, coaches and stewards to let them behave poorly, they allow outrageous transgressions.

Worst of all is the leagues that actually do make money off these kids, those that go out of their way to overlook unacceptable behavior in favor of wins.

I pledge that we will now try to change that model to something more befitting, ambitious and responsible from a league that sits on a pedestal as high as ours.

It is no surprise that these leagues do this. They have followed us – the pinnacle of competition – down this path.

We are the model.

For all of this, we are sorry. I am sorry. And I pledge that we will now try to change that model to something more befitting, ambitious and responsible from a league that sits on a pedestal as high as ours. We cannot force those below us – the de facto feeder systems that develop our players – to change. But we can hope they will follow our lead and stop putting profits and glory above morality.

The business of sports has overtaken everything else we proclaim to stand for. There is no swift means to untangle all the policies and operating philosophies that got us to a place where this mindset is acceptable. So I can offer no immediate means to rectify our sins. But we are aware of the deleterious effect our worst behaviors have on the public and, worst of all, this country’s youth. So we are now going to try to turn around the battleship, and start moving in a new path.

Most of our owners are already among the wealthiest men in this country. We need to start asking ourselves, as a group, if making more money is the core goal of our league or if we strive for loftier goals. If we want to help fix problems. If we want to be an institution that is worthy of the youth of America’s admiration.

I cannot say that we will ever reach the idyllic destination of our greatest ambitions. But as long as I am in command here, we will now be moving in that direction.

In the days and weeks to come, we will begin to announce concrete steps toward achieving this goal. I will not bother to take questions now, but I will come here to address you again when there are actual actions in place to discuss.

For now, I am just here to say we are sorry – I am sorry – for our past errors. We now understand the “why” of why things must change. And it is now our number-one goal to figure out the how.

Thank you.

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