February 6, 2024

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It’s Day 2 here of Super Bowl week in Las Vegas—still the calm before the storm (though it did rain heavily yesterday morning). The throngs of fans and revelers typically don’t start descending until Thursday or Friday, and walking the indoor maze between the Luxor and Mandalay Bay I didn’t see anyone wearing a football jersey, let alone the threads of the 49ers or Chiefs. That will change soon. In this morning’s newsletter, I review NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s annual press conference. (I guess I should be flattered—or perhaps not—that I wasn’t one of the reporters excluded from the event.) And I’ll preview tomorrow’s NFLPA event, where we’ll get our first close look at the union’s circumspect new executive director, Lloyd Howell.

— Dan Kaplan [[link removed]]

In His Annual Address, Roger Goodell Worked His Home-field Advantage [[link removed]]

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Maybe it was the locker room setting. Maybe it was the smaller crowd and the exclusion of certain journalists [[link removed]]. Whatever the cause, on Monday NFL commissioner Roger Goodell produced one of the more relaxed Super Bowl press conferences I can recall of his tenure. He had fun with questions about Taylor Swift and had a good laugh about the harebrained conspiracy theory that the Super Bowl is rigged for the Chiefs to ensure a Swift endorsement of Joe Biden. (I think I have that right.)

Distinctly missing from his vocabulary yesterday was a phrase that in the past he used routinely: “I disagree with the premise of your question”—as in, WTF are you talking about? Asked how much money was too much for the NFL, in the context of the league’s putting a playoff game exclusively on Peacock, Goodell ignored the jibe and expounded on the need to meet younger viewers where they are.

“Well, this is developing platforms, just to be clear, this is building a platform that a lot of consumers are on, a lot of our fans are moving in that direction,” said Goodell, dressed casually in black pants and a blue sports jacket. Typically, for Super Bowl press conferences he wears a suit and stands on a stage before a cavernous ballroom; this time there were maybe 150 people in attendance in the Las Vegas Raiders’ locker room.

One questioner described the league’s past efforts to market the game to women as largely cosmetic—all pink shirts and so on. It’s a charge that once was true, though far less so in recent years. The questioner went on to ask Goodell how the NFL would retain female fans brought to the game this year by Swift. And Goodell responded by talking about his 22-year-old twin daughters and their meeting Swift in 2009, injecting a human element into his response.

This is not to say that Goodell broke his old habit of dodging questions. At one point he was queried about how the NFL’s current embrace of gambling meshes with something he said in 2012: “If gambling is permitted freely on sporting events, normal incidents of the game such as bad snaps, dropped passes, turnovers, penalties, and play calling inevitably will fuel speculation, distrust, and accusations of point-shaving or game-fixing.”

Goodell’s response: “That’s exactly what I was talking about before, protecting the integrity of the game,” he said before going on to detail the NFL’s gambling education initiatives. But that doesn’t really answer the question—and it doesn’t explain why the NFL embraced sports gambling after the 2018 Supreme Court decision overturning bans. The league did not have to sign deals with casinos and sportsbooks, nor did it have to hold a Super Bowl in Las Vegas, and so forth. It’s all defensible, but Goodell fell back on his mantra about how protecting the integrity of the game is paramount—all without answering why, if that integrity was threatened by gambling in 2012, it is not today. (He did disclose new info, though: Roughly 13 players and 25 employees on both the club and league level, he said, have been disciplined, either through suspension or termination.)

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports Talking Points

Goodell’s press conference opened with a six-minute moderated interview with CBS Sports’ Tracy Wolfson in which she asked the commissioner about officiating, Swift, gambling, and TV ratings. (Goodell strongly defended officiating; and ratings are sky high because, well, Americans love football.)

The question and answer portion of the gathering went another 40-plus minutes, with Goodell being asked whether more playoff games would ever go exclusively to streaming. He said the Super Bowl, specifically, would not do so in his lifetime, and he pointed out that the league sees 90% of its games broadcast on TV. … But—a theme—he didn’t answer whether more games or playoff contests will end up exclusively on streaming platforms.

“Our fans are on these platforms; our fans want to access them,” he said. “The technology’s extraordinary. You can do things on some of these platforms that you can’t do on the linear platform. So for us, it’s part of the future. I don’t know where it goes from here, but we’re going to continue to reach our fans where they are, with the best possible production, best possible technology.”

Goodell (above, with USA Today writer Jarrett Bell) also made some news, disclosing that the 2024 Brazil game would be held on Sept. 6, the Friday right after the season opener, with the Eagles playing host.

Despite restricting media access to this year’s event—moving the conference up from Wednesday to Monday, seemingly late, and not inviting certain media members, some of whom are perceived to have contentious relationships with the league—Goodell was not questioned on the logistics of it all. He was, however, asked about the details of a 2022 deposition, exclusively reported by Front Office Sports [[link removed]], in which he said the league needed to challenge the media’s concussion coverage. Answering Monday’s question, Goodell said, “We want reporting that is going to be accurate. It’s based on facts. And to fully understand what we’re doing in the space.”

And in a press conference that went swimmingly for him, no one asked him for specifics about that allegedly poor reporting.

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Time to Meet De Smith’s Replacement

Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports

On Wednesday the media will ask questions for the first time of new NFLPA executive director Lloyd Howell, who has all but been kept under lock and key since he was introduced in a press conference last June as the fourth person to hold that title since the 1970 merger.

Howell, who retired as the CFO at defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton in 2022, after more than three decades, wrote on the union website [[link removed]] in August: “I am not the type to telegraph all of our strategies and tactics publicly.”

Tomorrow will be a chance for the media to quiz him on what those objectives are—hint: he has come out in favor of grass over artificial turf—and to share what he has learned to date about the NFL and its owners.

Howell replaces DeMaurice Smith (above), who began his 14-year tenure amid intense labor unrest and so actively and quickly got his message out to the media. Smith would hold in-person media get-togethers and in those early years loved to use the phrase “I dig it.” But the former litigator made clear he knew of the fight ahead and was quite direct about it. In 2011 his players had a four-and-a-half-month lockout.

Howell, for his part, has the luxury of a labor deal that runs through 2030—that and a league swimming in cash. He also inherits a union on very solid financial footing. According to the tax return filed by the NFLPA last month, and obtained by Front Office Sports, in the 12 months ending Feb. 28, 2023, the union earned $60.9 million, after reporting $92 million the year before. (The union earns money off sponsorships, licensing, players’ dues, and rent from the Washington, D.C., headquarters that it owns.) The union’s net assets as of Feb. 28 last year stood at $781 million, and the organization reported $123 million of revenue.

That all led to a big payday for Smith, who earned $7.8 million in the year ending Feb. 28, 2023, according to the tax return. (A note in that return said $3.2 million of that came from a deferred compensation plan.) Smith earned $3.8 million the year before, according to that year’s tax return.

There were two other seven-figure earners at the union that year: general counsel Tom DePaso, who earned $1.034 million, and COO Tuaranna Smith, who earned $1.023 million.

Hall of Famers for Sale—Sort Of

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

This year’s Hall of Fame class, which will be unveiled Thursday night during the NFL Honors show, for the first time has a built-in money-making opportunity tied to it, before the weekend is even over. On Location Experiences, the official Super Bowl hospitality provider, which the NFL owns a piece of, is selling access to the newest Hall of Famers at hospitality events shortly after the new entrants are announced, including at Allegiant Stadium on Super Bowl Sunday.

Because this has not been done before, the move begged the question for me: How does On Location, owned by UFC parent Endeavor, know whether the newbie HOFers even want to do this, or what kind of fee they might want?

Scott Jernigan, On Location’s EVP and chief commercial officer, told me that asking the players to participate falls to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, which the hospitality agency also has an official relationship with. Of course, it’s possible that a new Hall of Famer says No thanks, Jernigan says.

Up to five modern-era players are voted in each year. (Last year’s class included, among others, Tampa Bay Buccaneers safety Ronde Barber, above left.) There is also a coach/contributor category, and a seniors’ grouping as well. So even if one—or a few—decline, there should be enough to meet the promises in the hospitality packages that On Location is selling.

FRONT OFFICE SPORTS TODAY They Said What?

“I personally think they have got to figure out a way to stay in Oakland and make their dream come true.”

—Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman on whether or not the Oakland A’s should move to Las Vegas. To hear more from Goodman on the A’s, the Super Bowl, and everything Vegas, check out the latest episode of Front Office Sports Today.

🎧 Listen and subscribe on Apple [[link removed]], Google [[link removed]], and Spotify [[link removed]].

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