The Author Series: How the NFL Became a Juggernaut with Ken Belson

The National Football League isn't just a sports league - it's an economic and cultural empire. NFL games dominate television ratings, team valuations are skyrocketing, and the league's global expansion shows no sign of slowing down. Commissioner Roger Goodell rules as Regent, while team owners reign as the Princes and Princesses of this powerhouse kingdom.

How did the NFL become the envy of the sports world? How did it monetize its product so effectively, and wield such bare-knuckled ruthlessness in dealing with politicians, the media, and even its own partners? Those questions are explored in Every Day is Sunday: How Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell Turned the NFL into a Cultural & Economic Juggernaut, the new book by veteran journalist Ken Belson.

In this episode of the Sports Business Podcast with Prof. C, Ken shares behind-the-scenes stories, insider insights, and lessons from covering the league's most powerful figures, and what the NFL's future might hold.

Host and Executive Producer: Mark Conrad Producer: Victoria Ilano Additional Production: Jeffrey Haynes Artwork: Pamela V. White Marketing: Michelle Miller Music: ”MarcusWay/Energetic Pop Punk/Tribe of Noise”

Episode Transcript

(00:07):
Hello and
welcome to the Sports Business Podcastwith Prof.
C, the podcast that exploresthe world of professional,
collegiate, amateur, and Olympic sports.
I'm Mark Conrad, or Prof.
C, from FordhamUniversity's Gabelli School of Business,
whereI serve as Professor of Law and Ethics

(00:30):
and the Director of the Sports BusinessInitiative.
The National Football Leagueis an economic and cultural powerhouse
whose business has gone from strengthto strength.
NFL games consistentlydraw huge television audiences.
The league is pushing to gainnew international markets.

(00:51):
Its team values are soaring.
Commissioner Roger Goodell is the regentand the owners
are the princesand princesses of this kingdom.
How did the NFL becomethe envy of the sports world?
How did the league monetize its productso successfully?
How was it able to exercisebare-knuckled ruthlessness

(01:13):
in dealing with government,politicians, and media executives?
How did it become part of our culture?
The answers are
found in a new book titledEvery Day is Sunday:
How Jerry Jones,Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell
Turned the NFL into a Cultural &Economic Juggernaut.

(01:36):
The author is Ken Belson.
Ken writes about the business of sportsfor the New York Times
and joins us for this editionof the Business
of Sports with Prof. C.
Ken started his careerat the New York Times
as a reporter in Tokyoin the business section.
He also worked in the metro section

(01:58):
and in 2009,joined the sports section of the Times.
In 2023, he rejoined the business sectionafter the Times acquired the Athletic
and moved its sportscoverage to that journal.
One disclosure,Ken and I have known each other for
about a decade and Ken has quoted me insome of his stories.

(02:19):
Ken,welcome to the Sports Business Podcast.
Thanks for havingme on, Mark. Appreciate it.
It's my pleasure.
So let's start.
Your book focuses on two owners,Jerry Jones of the Dallas
Cowboys and RobertKraft of the New England Patriots.
There are many other notable owners,so why did you focus on those two?

(02:41):
Well, one is it's a writing device.
You have to limit the number of peopleyou keep in focus and then relegate
some other people to the backgroundor occasional characters.
That's just to keep it simple.
As you can see from the title,you can only fit so many names on there.
That's the first answer.
The second answer is Jonesand Kraft have been

(03:02):
the most successful ownerssince they came into the league.
Jerry in 1989, Robert in 1994.
Their teams currently,maybe not right now, but have been over
last two decades, the number oneand number two most valuable franchises.
Jerry won three Super Bowls.
Robert has won six and has beento three other or four others.

(03:24):
So they have been mainstaysof both the NFC and the AFC.
And then their influencewithin the league,
I'm not talking about their teams,but their influence on various committees,
the media rights negotiations,the contract talks with the unions,
sponsorships, international,even gambling,

(03:45):
both of them have had stakes in outfitsthat later became gambling companies.
So they've been so involvedin every aspect
of the league or building the leagueover the last 30 plus years.
It's hard to find two other ownerswho stand out that way.
And then the third thing is,I don't want to short circuit myself here
because we'll talka little more about this.

(04:06):
They actually have, although Jerry camefrom Arkansas and Robert came from Boston,
had very similar trajectories as businesspeople before they got to the NFL.
So for all those reasons,it made sense to choose those two.
And you compare them in the book.
You've covered them, spent time
with them, as they aretwo very different personalities

(04:27):
with arguably different approachesto business,
who somehow teamed upto produce this formidable duo,
helping expandthe media and marketing of the league.
In a sentence or two, how would youdescribe their personalities?
Well, to people who have been around theNFL, it's old hat, they know about them.
But Jerry is this hard driving,

(04:48):
lives large.
He's such a character.
He speaks in non sequiturs.
His sentencesoften even don't make sense at all,
especiallywhen I go back to the transcripts.
And yet, he's a dreamer.
He's constantly coming up with ideas.
He's constantly lobbying other ownersto bring them on board.

(05:08):
His vision for the NFL is 2X
anybody else's vision among the owners.
Robert on the other hand is a little bitmore reserved, a bit more of a diplomat.
He may not get creditfor having generated the ideas,
but he certainly gets creditfor synthesizing them.
There might be threeor four opinions in a room and Robert's

(05:30):
usually the guy who can corraleverybody around a central idea.
So one...in Jerry might
come up with the ideasand Robert is very good at executing.
And you also
focus, of course, on NFL CommissionerRoger Goodell and discuss
the transition from former CommissionerPaul Tagliabue.

(05:52):
Tagliabue was an attorneywho litigated cases for the league.
Goodell, on the other hand,
is not an attorney,but he took the league to a new level.
What do you thinkare some of Goodell's achievements?
Well, Roger's an interesting figure.
He's been at the leaguehis entire professional life.
It's now going on 45 years.

(06:12):
He knows every one of the ownersindividually.
Frankly,some of these owners, he's contemporaries.
They were young executive sons of ownerswho became owners themselves.
So Roger, as I point out in the book,is not so much a CEO
or what we think of as a commissioner, buthe's more like a Senate majority leader.

(06:33):
He's somebody who figures out,he reads the room very well,
let's put it that way, and finds againa middle ground.
He understandsmore than most commissioners
that he is employed by those owners.
And it's really, he may have his own ideason where the NFL should go,
but he generally reserves judgmentuntil he hears from the owners
and triesto figure out what they really want.

(06:53):
And of course, with 32 owners, 32successful people,
you know,have sometimes 32 different ideas.
But Roger’s very good at reading the roomand I'd say that's his mainstream
Is ruthlessnessthe middle name of the NFL?
And if so, are thereany examples from the book
that describeshow it can steamroll its opponents?

(07:14):
Yeah, it's a question.
mean, certainly the popular image of
the League is ruthlessness.
It's gotten bigger and bigger and bigger.
It's tripled in revenue under RogerGoodell's leadership since 2006.
And frankly, will only get bigger
because their share of the mediapie has grown so much.

(07:35):
And so in that way, yes, they're ruthless.
Leagues, not just the NFL,but other leagues, baseball, basketball,
have gotten criticized for putting moreand more of their games on paid television
services like streaming accounts,
Amazon, Peacock, and so forth.
And in that way,they're seen popularly as greedy.

(07:56):
And Roger,let's face it, he's very good at leverage.
And there's an anecdote in the bookwith negotiations with NBC
back in the day, and Dick Ebersole,you know, essentially calls Roger an SOB.
He knowshow far he can push these networks
because he knowsthe networks need the NFL.
And one of the lawyerswho worked for the NFL

(08:19):
for quite a long time,Frank Hawkins, said that.
he said, Roger understandsleverage better than anybody he knows.
He knows his opponentand he knows what he has
and he knows what or how far he can push.
So I'd say on the media frontin particular, that's been his strength.
You may know from watching CNBC andelsewhere he shows up now at

(08:42):
the the summits the media summits
He's as much a media leader as Bob IgerYou know Brian Roberts.
He mixes and mingles with themand they need him frankly
because the NFL is the hottest producton television.
You know, it's so many of the toptelevision events, NFL games,
you clearly see that utter dependencybetween the NFL

(09:04):
and broadcasters, particularly traditionalover the air broadcasters,
you know,who have been really having their power
reduced over the yearsbecause of new media.
We're speaking with Ken Belson,the business and sports writer
for the New York Times,who is the author of Every Day is Sunday:
How Jerry Jones,Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell

(09:27):
Turned the NFL into a Cultural &Economic Juggernaut.
Your book delves into the teamrelocations of the 1980s and 90s
when a number of franchisessuch as the Raiders, the Rams,
the Browns, the Colts, and the Cardinalsmoved to different cities.
And in doing so,the teams extracted financial support

(09:48):
for state-of-the-art facilitiesfrom local officials.
One that comes to mindwas the move by the Rams from St.
Louis back to Los Angeles, leaving St.
Louiswith a stadium that it built for a team,
but turned out to be a venuewithout a tenant.
Could you tell us what happened?
In that
particular instance, that's interestingbecause Stan Cronke,

(10:10):
the owner of the Rams leftto build his own stadium in Los Angeles.
He actually got very little public supportto build in Inglewood, California.
But Stan Cronke is also the secondor perhaps now the third wealthiest owner.
He owned the land in LA
and obviously even spending $5 billionfor a new stadium there.
The value of his team has exploded because

(10:33):
let's face it, LA is a much biggerand more lucrative market than St.
Louis.
But what St.
Louis had done and what Stan Cronkewas trying to get out of
was they built, back in the early 90s,they built a stadium on spec,
which is absurd when you think about it,
that a city or a county in their casewould put together
hundreds of millions of dollarsjust to build a building without a tenant.

(10:56):
And that's because the Arizona Cardinals,who used to be the St.
Louis Cardinals, had left in 1988and the city was desperate
to get another team.
So what better way to get a better team?
Build a stadium and tell an owner, hereit is.
Come on, move in.
You don't have to worryabout construction, financing, whatever.
It's there for you to move right in.
They were not the only city to do this.

(11:17):
Baltimore did it.
And they got the Cleveland Brownsto move to town.
But it was a pretty extreme example.
There's also in baseball, the
where the
Tampa Bay Rays play,that building was built on spec
and actually sat empty for several yearswithout a baseball tenant.
And of course, they ultimately got one.
So they're not alone in that Saint Louis,but they built it.

(11:39):
Specifically, they bring a team backthat turns were pretty darn generous.
And the Rams,you know, benefited from all of that.
And they won their Super Bowlthere, the greatest show on turf.
So it paid off.
If you're Saint Louis in theAnd of course they ultimately got one.
So they’re not alone in that St.
Louis, but they built it specificallyto bring a team back.
The terms were pretty darn generousand the Rams benefited from all of that.
And they won their Super Bowlthere, the greatest show on turf.
It paid off if you’re... St.
Louis in the sense that they gota team back and the team won.
But, you know,the building started to get old.
Let's face it, 1995 to about

(12:00):
2013, 2014, it's almost 20 yearsin stadium terms these days.
You know, you got to put a lot more moneyin it to make it quote unquote modern.
And so the Rams started lobbying for waysto leave basically.
And they had various opt outsin their contract
that the city and county,you know, had a hard time defending.

(12:21):
And so Stan took advantage of it.
He did buy the Hollywood,the old Hollywood racetrack
in Los Angeles, and that was the landhe ultimately built his stadium on.
So I think it's a good examplein the sense that St.
Louis went to extreme measuresto get a team and then ended up
losing a team because it was very hardto keep them after that.

(12:42):
And the lease term is fascinatingbecause it said
that after a certain period of time,if the stadium was not quote,
state of the art, unquote,the team could reach the lease early.
Because I
think it was originally a 30 year leaseor that's usually how long they are.
But it was after 15 or 20 years,they could say, well,
if the stadium is not up to date,we can leave early.

(13:05):
And an arbitrator said it was not upto date based on the newest stadiums
because there was a spate of stadiumconstruction around the early 2000s,
and yes it was an older stadiumand they used that to leave.
Although to be fair St.
Louis sued the teamand the NFL and did get
a reasonable settlementout of that determination.

(13:27):
Yeah. Yeah.
It's important to understandthat over the eighties or in the eighties,
starting in particular with Al Davisgoing from Oakland to Los Angeles, the
the league has had significant issuesbeing accused of, of antitrust violations
by trying to prevent teamsfrom exercising their right to move.
And so that led to a lot of chaos.
And, know, Paul Tagliabue,who's interviewed in the book,

(13:51):
you know, notedthat when teams started moving
and then the league tried to prevent them,and Al Davis turned around and sued
and said,you can't prevent me from moving.
It's my team. I can do what I want.
It allowed other teams to move too.
Bob Ursay moved the Colts to Indianapolis
because the league was powerlesswhile the lawsuit was going on.

(14:14):
Because if they tried to stop the Colts,they would prove Al Davis correct,
and then they would lose that case.
So they were in a real bind.
And so you do see handful of moveskind of snowball in a short period of time
because lawsuits are in the middle of it.
But you know, look, the league doesn'twant these things in general.
It's very disruptive.
You alienate fans.

(14:36):
They're expensive.
Obviously the legal costs.
And it just it's a badlook to be abandoning a market.
But you know, in a decade later,
is the NFL happythey’re in Los Angeles over St.
Louis?
I'd say, yeah, they are.
And I would say also there'ssometimes a split in ownership.
The owner, the older owners, the roomiesand the mares come to mind.

(14:59):
you know,they've been in their markets for,
since they were started as franchises,they tend not to like this.
They, they tend to see,
you know, sort of more traditional view
that were there,make the best of it, work with fans.
but the newer owners,they see valuations going up.
And by the way, when the Rams went fromsay the 30th most valuable
franchise to the second,everybody else's boats rose with them.

(15:23):
So the owners in that sense,to go back to earlier question, the owners
do seem very ruthlesswhen it comes to things like relocation.
And moving on
then onto more social issues now,the NFL was criticized in 2016 and 17 when
Colin Kaepernick took the knee to protest
racism during the Black Lives Matter era.

(15:46):
And of course, this incurred the wrath ofPresident Trump during his first term.
The book describes how the NFL ownerswere divided on how to respond.
Could you describe some of the backroomtension among the owners?
Yeah, there's a, there's a whole chapter,based on a recording I got of the owners
discussing with the playershow to, address the issue.

(16:10):
This is October 2017, just weeksafter the president attacked the league,
encourage the
owners to fire any players who protestedand so on.
was, it was really kind ofexistential crisis for the league because
although there's been issueslike steroids and concussions,
those are sort of football.
Those are inwardlooking issues about the league itself.

(16:32):
This is something where,sorry for the pun, but the league
itself became a social football.
Where where now the rest of Americawas looking at what the NFL was doing
in a very different way.And so they were really struggling.
And you can you can hear it on that tapeand in, in their comments.
And so you basically had about, 11 owners.

(16:53):
Jen, they were mostly the,
there was two blocks,basically pretty conservative owners.
Bob McNair of the Texansto pick up the bills on one side.
And you had some,pretty liberal or progressive owners,
Jeffrey Lurie being the most,
prominent example of the Eagles.
Steve Ross, who's,put together in his to, to fight racism.

(17:17):
And then Robert Kraft was somewhere inthe middle between the two sets of them.
And then on the other side, you hadyou had a dozen players.
It's very rare for the playersto speak in groups to owners
like this outside of labor negotiations,and you can feel the tension in the room.
There was a significant group,Malcolm Jenkins and Quinn Bolden,
who were part ofwhat's known as the Players Coalition.

(17:39):
And they were trying to come upwith a solution which included
money for grassroots funding.
But there were other players,like Eric Reid,
who stood up at the meetingand basically said, Where's Kaepernick?
I mean, he's the guy that got all thisrolling and he can't get a job now.
So, you know,it was a very, very tense meeting.

(17:59):
Roger Goodell only started the meetingand basically
sat backand let both sides come to an agreement.
And ultimately they did.
They formed a group called itsor a, a program called Inspire Change.
But it was a very, very tense moment.
And, there were some interesting asidesthere.
There was one ownerwho basically, trash the president.

(18:22):
They were other owners, like Bob McNair,who said, you know, to the players,
why don't you just tell your compadres,tell your friends to just stop kneeling
as if these players had any control over,you know, 2000 other players.
So it was there were somereally goofy moments there.
Steve
Ross of the Dolphins even said,you know, what we really need is a march

(18:43):
on Washington, similarto the march on Selma, Alabama, in 1965.
That one didn't go over particularly well.
Just a little bit too offbeat.
Now, you detail the meetingand the recording, was secretly done.
How did you come aboutor how did the recording come to you?

(19:04):
Probably from a source.
And what do you think the reaction was onall the parties when you reported on it?
So it's certain thingsI can't tell you, like who my source was,
but I you know, this was, early 2018.
The season had ended.
Kaepernickwas now out of the league for a full year.
And I was askedto, you know, continue to follow up.

(19:28):
I was told about the tape it took.
Oh, it took quite a few weeks,
at least more than a
month, to, to listen to it.
I was not given it initially.
You know, and then there wereall sorts of terms and so forth.
And then even when I had possession of itand started to listen to it in full,

(19:48):
you know, they were,you know, I had to tread carefully on
when I could publish it.
So, so yeah, that was that was that.
As for the reaction to it,
you know, as a reporter, there's no
there's no better story you can write than
when you have the audio,because there's no way to deny it.
I, I knew all these owners.

(20:08):
I knew their voices,
you know, I didn't know all the players,so I didn't include every single player.
I knew what Goodell sounded likeDemaurice Smith.
So I had it.
You know, I had I had them saying it.
And so the morning the story appeared,I wrote to the think.
There were eight ownerswho were cited in the story.
I wrote to each of the eight owners,and I said, I have this tape.

(20:29):
We're writing a story about it.
Your owner, you or your owneris, quoted as saying this,
you know, there's there was really no roomfor them to say.
I never said thatbecause I had the recording.
And so, several of the people wrote backand said, thank you for letting me know.
It's better to know in advance.
And this was, say, an hourin advance of publication.

(20:51):
A couple of people wrote back saying,could you just leave out the quote?
And they said, I said, no,I won't, I won't.
There was the owner.
It's not fairto the PR person in this case, but,
the PR person said, you know,
you and I know he sounds like this,but it just doesn't sound right.
I said, look, he said it.
I know you have to ask me,but we're going to run this quote.

(21:15):
And and the person said, no,I appreciate it.
I just had to ask and try.
But it's
it was the most unvarnishedyou'll ever hear them in a group.
Because they did not expectto be recorded.
It was a secret recording.
And so there was nobody.
It was funny because at the beginning,
Roger Goodell even says to the room,let's have this off the record.

(21:37):
It's just betterif we talk amongst ourselves.
So he even knewit would be a sensitive meeting.
But somebody in the room taped it.
And how did the NFL movefrom that controversy?
So, I note this several times in the book,
but the NFL is very good at marketing.
And in cases like thisand this was not the only example, but

(21:59):
in cases like this,they tend to, try and move forward.
They acknowledge the issue, in some cases,like domestic violence,
bullying.
And then they quickly try and figure outhow can we turn this into something else.
How can we address it?
By, giving money to a nonprofit center?

(22:20):
Oh, as they did in the case of,the domestic violence
and put togetherpublic service, campaigns, commercials.
I remember Eli Manning being on one
after the Ray rice issue,and that's what they did here.
There was already a programthat was bubbling up about,
that would allow playersto give money to grassroots groups,

(22:41):
you know, doing work,addressing bail reform and,
police brutality and thingsthat the players were interested in.
And so the league came out with a programthat was sort of more formal,
and it called, Inspire Change,which, in which the owners
would match, money that the playersput into, various charitable efforts.

(23:03):
And that's the way they move forward.
And then, as you see, in fact,I think it's usually in October,
the players can wearmessages on their cleats.
You know, it's expanded over time,certainly after George
Floyd, in 2020, there's language at the,ends of the end zones.
And racism, all sorts of things like thatcome together.

(23:23):
So there's a lot of messagingthat they allow the players,
to do around the causesthat they care about.
The cleats, players can design their owncleats for a variety of causes.
So, yeah, that's how they done.
They essentially, the cynics will say
they co-opted the players, but,it did give the players more of a voice.
And it certainly put more money into,the causes they believed in.

(23:47):
Now we're in the second Trumpadministration.
And how do you think the league is goingto deal with the potential headwinds
or the actual headwindscoming from the white House
as, the president iscertainly very interested in sports
and has made a number of commentsand executive orders dealing with sports.
So what do you thinkthe league has planned in dealing

(24:09):
with potential issues coming up right nowor in the future?
Well,I think a. Little bit unlike the first
term, the first term was was different
in the sensethat the owners were more out front.
Yeah, they supported him, I believe.
Seven.
It could be eight, owners gave, $1 millionor more to his inaugural,

(24:33):
fundraising effort,around his inauguration in 2017.
This time, the ownersare much more reluctant to talk about him.
Having said that, the NFL's already madeoutreach to, the president.
He was at the Super Bowl, for instance.
And when they announced that,
the draft was going to be in Washington

(24:53):
in 2027, they did it in the Oval Office.
So I think by trying to include himin more,
NFL activities,I think that's their way of trying
to make sure that they're,have a good relationship with him,
in a way that maybe, was less obvious backin, the first term.
But, you know, who knows?
It could be something during a footballseason that catches the president's

(25:16):
eye, that leads to, you know, abunch of tweets or something else.
It's it's it's a little it's a little hardto predict sometimes,
but I think the NFL to put a bow on this,
I think the NFL is tryingto be more proactive right now.
Do you think that they're walkingon eggshells with this?
I think everybody is.
I think every league, every company,

(25:39):
the economy, you know, name the topic.
The president seems to shoot from the hipsometimes.
And, you know, companies have to tryand get out ahead of it and anticipate it.
But at the end of the day, he'sthe president.
He can issue an executive order.
There's a lot of thingshe can do to disrupt things.
Having said that, he loves sports.
I mean, he was at the US openfinal, the other day.

(26:02):
He was at Yankee Stadium on Thursdaynight here in New York on 911.
So, you know, it'sit's it's a comfort area for him.
And as much as the NFLcan make him feel welcome,
I think that probably will insulatethem to a certain degree.
In the
book,you quote an NFL staffer as saying, quote,
Roger Goodell does not viewthe other leagues as competition.

(26:26):
He wants to be mentioned with Disneyand the Vatican,
these massive institutions, unquote.
Do you think this is hyperboleor do you think that the NFL has become
a cultural, quasi religionentertainment center under his leadership?
This is one of my favorite quotesin the book.

(26:47):
I think itit puts the league in perspective,
and it puts Roger in perspectivein a way that,
you know,the average fan doesn't quite see.
And this is a business book.
So, so keep in mind,I'm looking at it through that lens.
You know, the, the average fan would lookat Adam Silver of the NBA and Rob Manfred
and, and Roger Goodell as commissioners,but that's a silo.

(27:11):
And that's or a sports bubble.
But Roger GoodellI think, and the owners know
they have something,that's much bigger than that.
As we alluded to, more than 70 of the top,
most watched programs were football gameslast year.
The Super Bowl is the essentiallya national holiday.
They're expanding overseas.

(27:32):
They're the most gambled on sport by far.
College football included.
So, you know, the
the interest level is headand shoulders above all the other leagues.
Not fan by fan or market by market,but in aggregate and so, Roger
Goodell isn't necessarily seeing himselfas just another sports league.

(27:53):
And by Disney, I think he that quoteis signaling that he sees the NFL
as a media company that happens to producea product known as football.
And the Vatican,I thought was really clever.
And it kind of alluded to the idea
that footballor the NFL has become an institution.
You know, I noted in the,in the chapter on Super Bowls
that, Super BowlSunday is the worst day to get married.

(28:15):
You'll never get anybodyto come to your wedding.
You know, they're it's the most,the most food
consumed on a single dayoutside of Thanksgiving.
You know, there's it,you know, and that happened organically.
The NFL didn't try to do that.
It's just a very captivating product.
It's probably because of the halftimeshow.
It's often the only football gamemany Americans will watch.

(28:37):
You know,outside of the actual football fans.
So and then of course, international,my wife was in Japan last year
during the Superbowl,
and she got one of the game passesfor $0.99, and she watched the Super Bowl
because Taylor Swift was going to bethere.
Was this two years ago already.
You know, so the stories just are waybeyond the NFL at a certain point.

(28:58):
And then you have to get back
and remind yourself, or you're right,there's a football game being played.
There's no other sport that does that.
We continue our conversationwith Ken Belson, business and sports
writer for The New York Times,who's the author of every Day is Sunday
how Jerry Jones,Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell
Turn the NFL into a Culturaland Economic juggernaut.

(29:21):
On the issue of the halftime show,
you do mention in the bookthat the reason it's started is because
in the early years, the halftime showwas more of a marching band,
more of a, college sportsish kind of situation.
And the NFL noted the ratings went down
during that portion of the broadcast.

(29:42):
So the idea was to make the entertainmentsegment more of a part of the, event.
And certainly it has worked,I think, beyond anybody's expectations.
Yeah.There's an interesting story of that. Yes.
The first bunch of years
they were marching bands, Gramblingand and, all sorts of college bands.
And then in the, in the 80s, you mayremember, we're old enough to remember up

(30:04):
with the people, this sort of youthcelebration, lots of singers on the field.
And that was a pet project of Don Weis,who ran that Super Bowl, for many years.
But in 1992,
Fox, which was a relatively new networkat that time,
ran Counter-programming,against the halftime show.

(30:26):
And many fans changed the channelto watch, I don't believe it was in Living
Color or The Simpsons,but they ran some, some comedy show.
And so for a half a half an hour,people tuned out.
And that scared the living daylightsout of the NFL owners.
And they realized they were meeting, youknow, prime real estate in the TV world.
Because rememberthese ads embedded in all of this

(30:48):
and the price of those adsis based on viewership.
And if if the Coca-Cola'sand the pizza companies of the world know
that people were changing the channel,the ad prices are going to rise as fast.
So the following yearthey had to make a big splash.
And that's when they got Michael Jacksonand that was in Pasadena.
And it was also the first time they theyhad a naming sponsor, to help pay for it.

(31:11):
I believe it was Doritos.
PepsiCo, was the sponsor which helped payfor the Michael Jackson Act to come out.
And he really hit a home run.
And so really, starting in 1993,the level of talent
rose exponentially, exponentially.
They went for the biggest popstars, biggest rock stars.
And of course, we see this now
within every genre that they bring out,whether it's rap music or country music.

(31:35):
And then of course, they had thethe wardrobe malfunction, but,
in Jacksonville and and that ledor maybe it was Houston, excuse me.
And then it, it led to a real reappraisalof who was running it
because the NFL was outsourcingsome of this.
And, so starting in the year after that,the Janet Jackson Super Bowl,

(31:57):
they started to get more predictable,you know, mainstream acts, Paul McCartney,
Bruce Springsteen, who,you know, sort of the, the baby boomer,
groups, and then they,they had much more editorial control
over the content at that point.
Right. MTV did that one under contract.
For those of you young enough,like my students may not remember this,

(32:17):
but for those of you above a certain age,you probably do remember,
the so-called wardrobe malfunctionas it was
put, when, there was,
about half a second of,
frontal nudityat the very end of that show.
And I saw it, my wife saw it.
And it was just for half a second

(32:38):
we said something happened thereand then went right to a commercial.
But the half a second was enough to causea kind of national outrage. And,
Tagliabue was
brought to Congress and had to testify.
And I guess the NFL realizedthat they better not do this again.
You also state in the bookthat Goodell quote

(32:58):
is not paidjust to make money for the owners.
He's also paid to deflectcriticism and solve problems.
And one of those problems involve playerswho are engaged in transgressions
and his use of a broadand personal conduct policy
made for rocky relations between,
the owners and, with the public.

(33:20):
So you discuss the events in the bookand Goodell's dilemma.
How do you describe how Goodellnavigated through this?
Well, it's interesting he,you know, in the years leading up
to Goodell becoming commissioner in 2006,
Paul Tagliabuereally had kind of a hands off,
approach to this issue of player,

(33:41):
off field problems,not necessarily on field.
On field is adjudicated.
There's a table of fines and suspensionsthat you get for certain activities,
whether it's taunting or, knockinga quarterback over or spitting on a player
or something like that.
That's, that's pretty well established.
And, and, and that is in the CBAand the, in the labor deal,

(34:01):
it's often spelled out.
But the off field stuff, driving drunk,getting in a bar fight,
those kinds of things,the number of those high profile cases,
had started to rise to the pointwhere the NFL, it was starting
to affect the NFL's, public perceptionor the image of the NFL.
And so when Roger Goodell came in in 2006,he he really kind of said, I'm

(34:23):
the new sheriff in town, and I'm goingto really police this, more aggressively.
And so he used this
personal conduct policy, I guess you wouldsay, expanded his use of it,
to really come down hard on certainplayers.
Adam Pacman Jones wastwo of the most notorious early example,
you know, and so,but there were many others.

(34:44):
And so it quickly, the players quicklyfelt like victims in this,
that the commissioner was, was doing thisarbitrarily, that there was no system
to it, unlike, say, steroids,getting caught taking steroids
or fighting on the field.
There's there's an established criteriafirst offense, second offense
and so forth.

(35:04):
This was very muchleft up to the commissioner.
And so, there was pushback, but,they were between labor deals.
And so there really wasn't muchthey could do except complain.
It came up in the 2011, labor deal,but unfortunately,
or maybe not, unfortunately.
But Roger Goodell was burnedseveral times, by overstepping,

(35:27):
you know, his authority.
And one of them was in the famous bountygate, in New Orleans, where some players
were found to have been, rewardedfor hurting opposing teams.
Players on opposing teams.
And so, the problem with the,with the personal conduct policy was it
not wasn't just that RogerGoodell had sort of unlimited authority

(35:49):
to penalize players,but he also heard the appeals,
which, you know, is sort of ridiculous,set up,
that no matter if you appeal, he'sgoing to hear it a second time.
And so,
there was a ruling where Roger
Goodell said, okay, I'll have Paulreboot come in and look at as he
brings his old boss back in and his bossactually let the players off the hook.

(36:11):
He said the players shouldn'tbe penalized for this.
The coaches who ordered it should be.
And so it was, a win for the players,a loss for the coaches.
But it was a bit embarrassing to Goodell.
And so over time, he has step back.
I should say tiptoed back,and given away some of his authority.
But by and large,

(36:32):
he still, has ultimate authorityover, the personal conduct policy.
And in many cases,he did when he did win an appeals.
And the courts, it'sa kind of a de facto arbitration system.
And you can try to go to courtto vacate an arbitration ruling, which,
for those of you on the lawside, is really, really tough to do.
And he won a lot.

(36:53):
You know, he won in the Deflategate case.
And just as a bit of a story on that case,I went on air, on
a certain television network predictingthe NFL would lose that case in the court.
Well,I have not predicted anything since, so,
they didn't because they saidthis is the provision that was agreed to.
It's kind of strange,but basically, at the time,

(37:16):
the commissioner was the judge,jury and appeals court.
And that's right, Mark.
And because they have a collective
bargaining agreement,the judges will often say, look,
if the players don't make it, thennegotiate next time and, and figure out
a way to win back more poweror dilute the commissioner's power.
And they and that'swhere the courts generally land the.

(37:36):
But Goodell has lost in other cases.
He lost in the Ray rice case
because Ray rice had been suspendedfor two games initially for,
punching his fiancée.
And then after the second video of himdoing this came out,
Roger Goodell, suspended him indefinitely.
And that was double jeopardy.
And so or double indemnity.

(37:58):
And so, Ray rice appealed this andand Judge Barbara
Jones agreed that you can'tpenalize the guy two times for the same.
Yeah. For action.
So there have been caseswhere Goodell has lost,
but by and large, yes,the courts have upheld his right to,
to have this policy because it'sin a collectively bargaining agreement.
Right.

(38:18):
And, one of the most movingsection of the book was your chapter
outlining the NFL's approachto player injuries
and the class action lawsuitbetween former players and the league,
regarding neurological damage, from,
playing football.
And you did interview, former playersand their families as part of the story.

(38:43):
How difficult was itto see some of the former players
who may have been stars are very wellknown, you know, but whose mental
and physical conditions deterioratedafter years of playing in the NFL?
It's tough.
I'll say that.
The reason I'mI ended up covering the NFL.
I was a general sports business writer.

(39:03):
I was covering baseball and all sortsof other topics and leagues and events.
But I started writing about the litigationthat you reference
to became class action litigation.
I had a storyI want to say was at the end of 2011,
on the growing number of cases
that were being filed around the countryin state and federal court,
by former playerswho were very frustrated that the league

(39:25):
was leaving them out and ignoring them.
So that's really when it started.
And that's where my editor said, you know,this is going to be a bigger story.
Why don't you just cover the NFL?
So it was around around 2012, 2013that that started.
So I've been on this issuefor a while now.
It's more than a dozen years,13 years, 14 years.

(39:46):
And unfortunately the storiesstart to sound the same.
Sadly, the players, you know,
you know, finish their careers.
They sometimes go on to second careers,raise families and eventually
you have this, the the neurologicaland cognitive problems start to encroach.
Families don't know how to deal with it.

(40:08):
They're left on their own.
There's no early diagnosisfor losing your keys or forgetting
where you're driving or having outrageor those kinds of things.
So, so it's really hard on the familiesin particular,
as much of this as the players.
They don't really know what's going on.
It's a hard thing to, to sort of diagnoseif you break your leg
or you have need a hip replacement,it's obvious.

(40:29):
But when it has, when the brain'sinvolved, it's very different.
And it's hard to know
how much of this is just agingand how much of this is being accelerated.
And so when you meet a 45 year old playerwho's got the cognitive
skills of a 65 year old,you start to wonder.
But it's hard to seewhen you're living it. Right.
And so,

(40:49):
that's been the most heart wrenching partis, is the players and their particularly
their families, howthey've had to kind of pick up and hey,
you know, usually the players were thewith the breadwinners where the,
the rock of the familyand now the roles were reversed.
And I've said, unfortunately,
you know, sad in many living
rooms with, with familieswho've just cried,

(41:11):
junior say, how's family?
Demaryius Thomas, his family.
There are many players, unfortunately,who died and were later found with CTE.
It's a really hard thing to watch.
Yeah.
And I just want to clarify one thingthat the NFL and its settlement, did not
contest the causal element, the connectionbetween playing and the injury.

(41:33):
So hence that's why,
we noted thatthere was that connection list
because it was admittedas part of that settlement.
Had it been litigated,that would have potentially been defense.
How do you knowit came from playing in the NFL?
Yeah, this this causal relationship,
is one of the reasons whyI think the plaintiffs lawyers encourage

(41:54):
the players to settle,because if you had to go to court and say,
I got this concussion on this day in 1980and this led to blah, blah, blah,
it's almost impossible to do that.
I mean, diagnosed concussions
were really diagnosedthe same way medical records are gone.
And so the, lawyer said, look,if the NFL is not going to say

(42:15):
what caused this, and you can just say,I have ALS or
I have Parkinson's or and then don't worryabout how it happened.
Well, that's that'sas much of a sort of tacit acknowledgment,
without you having to go throughthe rigmarole of trying to prove it.
And, so in that way,it was groundbreaking as a settlement.
Yeah, indeed.
Although, flawed in certain ways,as you noted in the book,

(42:40):
in one portion, you compare the owners
meetings to a high school cafeteria.
How do you explain how billionaire ownerscan act like high school kids?
Well, that was an allusion to two
sort of the pettinessof where they sit and
and this sort of crazy systemthey had, they don't have it anymore.

(43:01):
But for many years theythere were no assigned seats.
But like every classroom you've ever beenin, kids tend to sit in the same seats
every time,
and they sort of naturally end up
in this row or in the backor in the front or something like that.
And that's kind of how it went,except the owners being,
you know, controlling and wantingto sit in certain places with certain
other owners, would send their underlingsdown to the meeting rooms at 5 a.m.

(43:26):
to squat, basically to to put paperand bags all over where because this is
where Al Davis likes to sit andand gosh darn it, he better get that seat.
And sure enough, there were little clicks.
They were, you know, alixpartners for theChargers and Al Davis were good friends.
They always used to sit together.
In fact, to this day,the Chargers and Raiders
kind of hang out together,even though that the principals are now,

(43:49):
the sons are now in charge of both
teams, the Rooneys in the marriage,so forth.
Robert Kraft, still sits in the veryfirst row, right in front of the dais.
Jerry Jonesfor many years sat with Dan Snyder.
So there are these little pocketsaround the room of,
owners that were friendly with each otherfor various reasons.

(44:09):
Some of them dated back to the AFL days.
The Broncos and the Chiefs, for instance.
New owners came in.
There's a funny anecdote in there
from Shad
Khan of the Jaguars,and he told me that he said that,
Wayne Weaver, who sold the team to him,really gave him no advice,
on how to be an owner, except,

(44:31):
after he was approvedat a meeting in Dallas in 2011,
they came out of the meeting room,and Wayne Weaver said only one thing.
Keep the seat.
And as it turns out,the Jaguars sat across from Robert Kraft
in the very front of the room, and JerryJones sat a couple of seats down.
To to the left.

(44:51):
And and and he never explainedwhy, except Chad's only thought was,
you know, the Jaguarsare not the most prominent team.
They don't carrya lot of weight in the league.
They're in a small market.
But the the proximity to Jerryand Robert was really important.
That'll add stature and you'll learn a lotfrom them by being near them.
And so in a way, WayneWeaver made a very good suggestion.

(45:13):
And, and Chad took it to heart.
And he has become friendly with both Jerryand Robert and watched how they worked.
And you write about
the relations between Goodell and the nowformer players union executive director
Demaurice Smith, and notethat they were frosty,
which differed from the prior relationsbetween Commissioner Tagliabue

(45:36):
and the then union head, Gene Upshaw.
Why do you think the interactionsbetween Goodell and Smith
were more adversarialthan the predecessors?
There's a couple reasons.
You know, by the timeTagliabue became commissioner in 1989,
he had been around the league for 20 years
as their counsel,

(45:58):
their outside counsel.
And so he was very familiarwith all the key players,
before he even became commissioner,including Gene Upshaw.
So there was some history there.
Gene Upshaw was a very differentunion leader.
He was a former player, and a well
respected, both player and union leader.
And he was very sure of himself.

(46:20):
And if you wanted anythingdone, you had to start with Gene.
It's a very different dynamicwhen when Demaurice Smith comes in.
Gene Upshaw died of pancreatic cancerin 2008, quite suddenly.
There's a search.
A dmorris takes over in March of, 2009.
And so he's now thrust in this.
First of all, it would have

(46:40):
been hard in a normal situation,but now he's taking over for a legend.
The guy who'd been there for 25 years,a Hall of Fame player.
You know, it would have been hardunder any circumstance.
But now Demaurice Smith, who has noexperience in the sport, pro sports world,
comes in and has to both fill his shoesand fill his shoes at a time
when the ownerswant to opt out of their labor agreement.

(47:02):
So they're heading into battle.
So it was a real trial by fire?
Demaurice.
Smith had to basically prove his muscle.
He didn't have the reputation Gene had.
He didn't have the relationships.
So he kind of had to go in with gunsblazing to show the players
his own constituents that, hey, I'mgoing to come out here and fight for you.
I don't have a track record,but I'm your guy.

(47:24):
At the same time, signal to GoodellI'm not a pushover.
And so that created, you know, for betteror for worse, he created a dynamic
where he had to be more adversarialwhen he might have been otherwise.
I don't know, he was a prosecutor.
So maybe that's part of his instinctis to is to push that envelope.
But yeah,it's set up a very different dynamic.

(47:45):
And then they're,they're very different people.
I mean, there's a little scenein the book,
about, somebody describing, meetingsbetween the two of them, you know,
the person said, when Roger has a meetingwith Demaurice Smith,
you know, he's going to be briefed, he'sgoing to study up.
And if it's at 10:00,he'll be ready at 955.
Demaurice Smith it could be 955.

(48:07):
It could be ten could be 1015.
And he might deliberatelyeven wing it a little bit,
to try and get Goodell off off kilter.
When I asked George Atallah, who,work for,
for de you know, I said, well,what was that all about?
And he said, well, look,I think Deth felt like the real power in
the room was the owners,and Goodell was just a functionary.

(48:30):
So why should I pay deference to Goodellwhen I really have to
do battle with Jerry Richardson,Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft?
And so it was a very different approach.
I'd say, you know, in some ways it worked.
In some ways it didn't.
Well,
in the book,actually, you focus on, of course, Goodell
and Jerry Jones and Kraft,but they're other owners as well.

(48:52):
And I would ask very bluntly,which owner do you think was
the hardest asked in the NFL?
Well, it depends on, on which,
which what you mean by thator in what avenue?
I would say Jerry Richardson, the lateJerry Richardson of the Carolina Panthers
was considered a real traditionalist,hard ass in other ways.

(49:14):
He was in charge of the stadium committee
and did a lot of workto, lobby governments
to provide hundreds of millions of dollarsin subsidies to the owners.
When it came to the labor negotiations,particularly in 2011,
he was consideredone of the most hardline owners,
in the room, there's athere's a scene, recounted there,

(49:38):
at a meeting
at the Super Bowlin Dallas in February 2011,
before the deadline for the contract talksran out and before the lockout started,
where Jerry Richardson was, was presentingto the players and, and the other owners
and actually said to Peyton Manning,you know, if you need help with that,
reading that spreadsheets,you know, you let me know.

(49:59):
And it was a very derogatory was perceivedto be a very derogatory comment.
And it pissed the players off.
And he was the one who rallied the ownersto take a hard line during that period,
you know, feelingthat the previous labor deal was,
was too generous to the players.
So he wanted to call all that money back.
I'd say he's one of them.
Mike Brown is a very other,very different figure.

(50:22):
Very traditional, probably the least,
sort of entrepreneurial of all the owners.
If there's ever a vote that's 31 to 1,
you know, the one is typically Mike Brown.
He voted against, allowing privateequity funds to invest in NFL teams.
Just to give you a mindset, for himand his father,

(50:44):
Paul Brown,the famous coach, it's all about football.
Between the linesand everything else is a distraction.
It's also why the Bengals areone of the least valued teams I say least.
But, you know,still well into the billions.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I'd say
both of those, on different waysare, are pretty hard asked, as you said.
Okay. Who are the most colorful.

(51:05):
While Jerry's top of the list.
It he he might not have beenalways that way.
Because there were many call for a loanmove back in the day.
Al Davis was always a great quote.
Art model, Leonard Tose, of the Eagles,
who was a was botha drinker and a gambler,
used to bring a reclining chair

(51:26):
to NFL meetings like a barcalounger.
You know, there were some real charactersback in the day.
Carol Rosenblum.
But, you know, those
days are gone,and and there are many more,
people who come into the leaguehaving made their fortunes, particularly
in the finance area where, they tendto be very conservative with the media.
When I say conservative,I mean reluctant to speak in the media.

(51:49):
But Jerry is still out there.
You know, he learned very early on.
There's a great anecdote in there.
Jared Bell of the USA today at USA today,the columnist,
he worked for the Cowboys, beforeand after Jerry took over.
And Jerry asked him, he said, you know,
the team is one and 15 or 3 and 13,whatever they were that year.
How is it that the general manager getsthe benefit of the doubt in the newspaper?

(52:13):
And Jared said, well,he's always available, like people
can call him at home is,you know, ask him any question you want.
They will always answer it.
He said.
That buys goodwill with with reporters.
And so Jerry understood that, oh,
if I'm just available, I'llget the benefit of the doubt or at least
it'll help me build a relationshipwith with the media.
And so Jerry took then ran with it.

(52:36):
And he also has, he's just fun.
I mean, he he cracks jokes.
You know, he he does it with a smile.
He's got very, thick skin.
He gets criticizedbecause he's a general manager.
He gets criticized because he an owner,
he gets right back upand he'll talk to people.
So, yeah, he by for by,
you know, leaps and bounds.

(52:56):
He's the most colorful owner.
We continue our conversationwith Ken Belson,
business and sports writerfor the New York Times and the author
of Every Day is Sunday how Jerry Jones,Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell
Turned the NFL into a culturaland Economic juggernaut.
You know, and sticking with Jerry Jonesthat here was an owner

(53:20):
that was quite influential at one timeand ultimately morphed to a non-entity.
How did that happen?
He owned the Carolina Panthers.
But how did he become personanon grata in the NFL?
Yeah, the, when I started writingthe book, Jerry Richardson had died.
This was in early 23, 2023.

(53:40):
And I actually wrote Jerry's obituaryfor the New York Times.
And so I was intriguedabout how this powerful owner,
this had this
large presence, the only, well,the only the second former player
to become an owner,the first being George Harris.
You know,how did he just sort of disappear?
And there was, of course, this incidentand the end of as very powerful Sports

(54:03):
Illustrated story in 2017, alleging,
that he used racist languageand that he was condescending
and maybe even too aggressive with women,
and that,he basically was going to sell his team,
and he basically said,I don't want to stick around for this.
And he sold his team in a relatively shortperiod of the deal, close to

(54:23):
about five months later. Six months later.
And so and then he was forgotten.
I mean, the guy who put a lot on the line,it was the only owner in the league
who did not put his team's logoat the 50 yard line.
If you look at NFL stadiums, mostlyit's it'll say Giants or Jets or whatever.
His was always the NFL shields.

(54:44):
His idea was,you know, we're all part of a league.
He was on league first owner.
But he was a hard ass as youthe language used.
And yet he was gone.
He was sort of forgotten.
Now, Covidmay have had something to do with that.
So I was intrigued by that.
I went to his memorial serviceto see how many owners showed up
and basically Carl Tagliabue was there.

(55:06):
Jeff Pash, the general counsel,
and there were only three ownersthat I could count.
And I thought, boy, for all the workhe put in on behalf of the owners
and just on behalf of his own team,only three of them managed to make it.
I thoughtthat was kind of a sad indictment.
Now, some of them may have reached out to,
Jerry individually or gone to

(55:26):
a different service or spoken to his wife,you know, at other times.
But it was it was very telling how quicklyhe was kind of forgotten.
After all the work you put him.
And speaking of interesting owners,
he do devote a portion of a chapter to DanSnyder, who was the former owner of the

(55:47):
then Washington Redskins,now the Washington Commanders.
Would you say thathe was one of the worst,
if not the worst, owneryou covered, like in a general scope?
And if so, what does it say about his $800million investment
resulting in a $6 billion sale price?
Despite the lack of success of a team?

(56:10):
Yeah, Dan Snyder was a it's complicated,to say the least.
Certainly when Icame along, he had already owned the club
for 12, 13 years and had already
whatever antipathy he had with the other,reporters
was was well-established,particularly the the Washington media.
You know, he got very combative.

(56:32):
He stopped talking to the media,winning the comments
he would make were sort of off the chartssometimes.
So, I had very little interactionbecause he basically
he would ignore the mediaand run the other direction.
And he hadpeople, would speak for him, in the media.
So he was a he was a hard guy to, read.
But because, he,unlike Jerry, had very thin skin.

(56:57):
He would take offense at, storiesabout him.
But by the time I came along in 2013,the big issue was,
was the name of the team
which some Native American groups,really opposed, considered racist.
And he doubled down on it.
You know, he said, not leave.
And they fought it in court,various courts.
He lost some decisions.

(57:18):
And then one finally, but, yeah.
So he was he just really sawno middle ground, with him.
It was a very absolute relationship.
And he was just so, abrasive to,
people inside and outside the building,that he really lost a lot of friends.
And, you know, if you speak to the owners,they don't want to say anything publicly

(57:40):
because they all have to livewith each other,
but quietly, people really just wanted himgone.
And even Jerry Jones,who was probably his biggest
ally or strongest ally, you know,
even he would sort of hint that, you know,6 billion is a nice round number.
Maybe you want to take this one.
And, you know, he was draggingthe whole league down by that point.

(58:02):
You know, initiallyhe was just an outspoken owner.
He was the first owner, so faras I could tell, to charge opposing teams
for parking their team bussesat the stadium on game days.
And he's also the first ownerto charge, fans
to attend, pre-seasonor training camp workouts.
It should be noted that the other ownersquickly started

(58:23):
following Snyder,but it took it took Snyder.
Snyder was the first to do that.
And so, you know,he alienated the fans, the team stunned.
The stadium was falling apart.
It was clear the politicians in Washingtonwere not going to allow him
to move back to the district.
There were so many strikes against himthat by the end,
the owners just really were tryingto push him out the door.

(58:45):
And speaking of valuations
and team sales,the league has liberalized its rules
regarding the use of private equity moneyto fund purchases of NFL teams.
And why did the league change its rules?
And what effect do you think that money is
having on team sales?

(59:07):
Yeah, it's it's it's a good question.
Well, I mean, the NFL was reallyone of the last me.
It was it's not the last major leagueto allow private equity money in, but,
due to their success, at,raising more media money,
sponsorships and so forth,the value of these teams now has exploded.
And the, population of ownerswho can afford teams has really shrunk.

(59:32):
And so,
you know, they're a victimof their own success if you want to
look at it that way.
So they decided, well, let's bring in,
what's allow private equityto invest as silent investors.
They cannot play any rolein controlling the team.
And so owners have quickly realized,wow, I can get
I can take money off the table, right.
If I if my team's worth 6 billion,I can get 600 million.

(59:54):
So 10%,I could use that to build a stadium.
I could use that to buy out my sister.
I could use that to, you know,set up a trust for my kids, buy some land.
You could do 100.
Yeah, lots of thingswith that amount of money.
And so they quickly realizedit gives them a lot of flexibility.
And I suspect over timethat that percentage from 10%

(01:00:15):
will be raised, higher.
The other leagues, baseball, for example,has 30%.
So, now, as to what it does to the league,I think it, you know,
I understand the economics of it,but I think it it dilutes the ownership.
I think there's there's a lot to be saidabout,

(01:00:35):
owners who are losing touchwith what fans want.
They're, they're more and more insulatedfrom fans themselves.
I would say some of the older owners,the Rooneys,
again, being a good example,are much more down to earth.
They don't have a huge amount of wealthoutside the team.
They, they if you meet our Rooney,he just looks like a guy.

(01:00:55):
He would be at a ball game, you know, hehe doesn't carry himself like,
a wealthy owner,with lots of leather luggage or whatever.
But, you know,you introduce private equity,
and now you're a little more, diluted,
or one more arm's length away from the waythe average fan sees the world.
And, I think that could be.

(01:01:16):
That can be kind of damaging.
It's it's it's a bit intangible,but I think it's out there.
Yeah.
And given the
valuations we've been seeing on teamsin sports generally,
it's almost nowhere to go but up.
Well it seems that way.
I mean there's some you knowthere's always a question of whether

(01:01:37):
the NFL gets greedy
and you know they're doing advanceright now where everything is going
towards streaming and streaming is Amazon,Netflix.
You know, very, very Google and YouTube.
You know, these are very wealthy companiesthat have far more money
than the traditional broadcasterslike Fox and NBC and CBS.

(01:01:58):
And so the NFL has to be careful.
You know, you don't, you know, one of itsmagic bullets, if you want to call it
that, is that most of their gamesare still on over-the-air television,
you know, channeltwo in New York, CBS, channel five or Fox,
so most fans can watch most games.
They're not exclusively on streamingservices, but that's where the money is.

(01:02:20):
And so, the NFL's going to have to tryand figure out how many more
or how to shift from sort of 90%over the air, 10% streaming and and change
that balance without pissing off fanswho are their lifeblood.
And yet there will be media rightsnegotiations at the end of the decade.
And, given that you have
the power of Netflix, the power of YouTubeas the leading streamers,

(01:02:44):
do you think that's going to forcebroadcasters to pay even more
and incur more lossesto continue NFL rights?
I think they don't have a choice.
You know, CBS learned this in, in, 1993
when Fox, outbid them for the NFC, gamepackage.
And CBS had no football for four years.

(01:03:05):
And this was CBS, the same CBS that hadbeen showing NFL games since 1956.
And suddenlyall the promotional power of an NFL game,
which it's you remember back in the day,would lead into 60 minutes and Murder,
She Wrote and all these showswhich got free advertising in the NFL
broadcast suddenly evaporated.

(01:03:25):
And and the ratingsfor all those other programs plummeted.
And so and if the CBS folks realize, ohmy God, we need to get back into football.
And by the way, this is where Jerry'sgenius was, if you want to call it.
That was when he came into the league.
You know, art model was single.
Art Modell was the broadcast committee,and it was a pretty crazy deal.

(01:03:47):
They had three windows.
They had the AFC package, the NFC package,and Monday night Football,
and they had essentiallythree broadcasters ABC, NBC and CBS.
And Jerry said,why don't we get more bidders?
We'll drive up the price.
And that's where Fox came in.
So now they had four bidders for threepackages, and it led to,
you know, an escalation in the value.

(01:04:08):
And by the way,this is made in their every other league.
Saw this.
Wait a second.
We need to run more of an auction,an NBA side, MLB, so on.
So all the other leagues, you know,realized how quickly the media rights
were going to accelerate and, and tookadvantage of what the NFL had done.
You know, so not only, CBS
lost the NFL for four years,they lost affiliates because of that.

(01:04:32):
On the broadcast side,major city affiliates
switched networks because of it.
So they were replaced by weaker stations.
So this turned out to bea horrible decision, by CBS to bean count.
And yet in the long term just lost so muchand arguably never really recovered.
Yeah. Yeah, we can really say so.

(01:04:55):
Indeed.
So now, you know, Jerry Jones and RobertKraft are not youngsters.
They're both in their 80s and other longterm owners recently past Virginia
McCaskey of the ChicagoBears, Pat Bowlen of the Broncos.
Once Jones and Kraftpassed from the scene, who do you think
will be the dominant ownerscomprising the new generation?

(01:05:17):
If you will, of NFL owners?
Well, I'd start with their their children.
Jonathan Kraft has been with Robert Kraftfrom the time
they entered the league in 1994.
He's already very well established.
He's a very different personalitythan Robert,
certainlywhen it comes to speaking to the media.
But he's very smart.
And he's very wellrespected inside the NFL for Jerry Jones.

(01:05:40):
All three of his kids have been active.
Jerry Jr, Steven and Charlotte.
I assume Steven, as the oldestson, will be the actual control owner.
They're all very different than their dad.
They've been very possessiveof their dad's, legacy.
They allgo about business slightly differently.

(01:06:01):
I don't think they havethe luster of their dad.
I don't know anybody who would.
So I say those two sets of children, will,
you know, John Mara is, in his 70s.
He'll still be influential.He and Art Rooney.
So they've got a while to go.
Car cons, I think, is a namepeople will see.
Of course, the Chiefs were kind of
on top of the football worldthe last six, seven years.

(01:06:24):
He's in his mid 50s.
He's on important committees.
The finance committee,
he was leading the special committeethat allowed for a private equity.
He's, he's no drama.
Some would say he's kind of bland.
But, you know,sometimes the NFL on certain issues,
likes to have no drama and no histrionics.

(01:06:45):
He doesn'the doesn't, spout off in the media.
You don't really see him out in publicon the red carpet, those kind of things.
So car hunter named ShadKhan as well, on certain committees,
the equity committee, and Greg
Penner, a relatively new owner,with the Denver Broncos and Jimmy Haslam,
of the Cleveland Brownshave both been very active.

(01:07:07):
And then, one last nameI'll throw out there is Josh Harris,
who, you know, is a co-founder of Apollo,that the giant private equity group.
And he bought the commandersand they've had very good success in a
very short period of time.
I think nobody misses Dan Snyder,
for many reasons.
And one of which is Joshis doing a very good job.
He's likely to get a stadium, backin Washington, DC,

(01:07:31):
and they're going to get the draftand maybe even a Super Bowl someday.
And on the international front,of course, more and more
games are being played internationally.
Do you see the day that the NFLwould award a franchise to a non-U.S.
city?
I don't see it.
People talk about it all the time.
One owner, I think it was Carr was saying,you know, until we see

(01:07:54):
supersonic travel, where it's three hours
to get from London to New Yorkinstead of five or 6 or 7.
We're really not going to see a teamplaying over there.
There's so many extra hurdles,
you know, logistically,
for instance, just even in season,if you're linebacker
gets hurt on Sunday in Londonand you need to go find a linebacker,

(01:08:17):
where do you try them out?
You know, in a in in Americayou just have you call a seven free
free agent, linebackers are hanging outin Texas or Arizona and have them fly to,
you know, Chicago to do a workout, twohours, two hour flight, three hour flight,
and then either go home that nightor you put them up for a night in London.

(01:08:38):
You got to get a passport.
Many players don't even own passports,so you'd have to have a second facility
in the States.
And that's Tuesday for a workout.
And then you got to get them thereby Sunday to play the game.
I mean, there'sso many logistical hurdles.
They're legal hurdles.
Players may not want to live overseas.
Their families may not want to liveoverseas.
They will then
get a situation where the mom or the wifeand the kids want to stay at home.

(01:09:00):
There's the schools. Well,that's a whole other issue.
Tax issues.
So it's very complicated.
And, you know,it's been dangled out there.
I just don't see it.
The other a final point I'll make,
which has been made to meby several owners, is that,
if it's a new franchise, well,then you're diluting the other 32 shares.
So the value, the entry point for that new

(01:09:23):
franchise is going to have to make upfor the dilution of the other owners.
So, you're talking about billionsof dollars
and expansion fees,and that limits who can own a team
if it's an existing franchise, namethe team.
I say the Jets, for argument'ssake, move to London
while the other teams ina division Dolphins, bills.

(01:09:45):
You know, Patriots aregoing to have to fly to London every year.
So that's guaranteed they're going to playa game in London, assuming it's London.
And then you do the math. Where elsethey're going to have a team.
So you're going to want it to have a teamin London and somewhere else in Europe.
So there's some natural rivalry also,you know, to have one team.
So really it's so complicatedI think so far out,

(01:10:06):
the NFL now just wants to,create a media package first.
That's really what they want.
They're at,what, eight international games now?
They're about to get up to 16,before they ever think about a franchise.
And a final question, when do you thinkRoger Goodell will retire?
And who do you think could replace him?

(01:10:28):
You know, it's
people have suspected that he was goingto retire when he hit 65.
He's already there now.
I think he doesn't really aspireto be to do much else.
He's not going to sit at home.
His daughters are grown up.
You know, he loves doing what he does.
He still has a lot of energy.
He has complained to people, whoI spoke to, sort of moaning and saying,

(01:10:51):
yeah, it's getting tiring, but,these people who know him well say.
And that's all an act.
There's no place he'd rather be.
He's good at it.He's at the top of his game.
And doeshe want to be a corporate board advisor?
I mean, I just don't thinkit provides the same stimulus as to who.
And he has a
contract which will expireand I suspect will be,

(01:11:12):
renewed.
The short answer is
the owners are not going to seekto replace him until he's ready to go.
He's been bringing themin, bringing in so much money to them
that they, you know, would never killthe golden goose, so to speak.
As to replacing him, it's probablygoing to be somebody from the media world,
not from the sports world.
Roger is kind of one of one.
He spent his entire lifeat one organization.

(01:11:35):
You're not going to find anybodylike that.
There'ssome very talented people at the NFL,
whether they have the juiceto play outside the NFL.
I don't know,but it doesn't appear to be the case.
There may be somebody I'm not aware of.
Brian rule outthe former head of media was considered
to be one of those people,but he left, for the PGA.
So, Yeah, that's the

(01:11:56):
there are talented people there,whether they're commissioner material.
I kind of doubt it.
On that note,
have to come to the end of our time.
On behalf of Fordham University,the Gabelli School of Business,
and the Sports Business Initiative,I want to extend my thanks to
Ken Belson of the New York Timesand the author of Every Day is Sunday:

(01:12:18):
How Jerry Jones,Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell
Turned the NFL into a Culturaland Economic Juggernaut.
The book has just been publishedby Grand Central Publishers,
It is available onlineand in bookstores.
It is a fascinating and importantread for fans of football,
the NFL, sports and national culture.

(01:12:41):
I also want to thank my producer, VictoriaIlano, for her great work in preparing
and editing this episode.And finally, many thanks to all of you for listening.
For the Sports Business Podcastat Fordham's Gabelli School of Business,
I'm Mark Conrad or Prof. C.
Have a great day.