A look at how probe of Roger Goodell, NFL could play out amid Ray Rice firestorm
On Wednesday, the NFL hired former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III to look into the league's investigation of Ray Rice.
It may be the first smart decision the NFL has made since the Rice scandal became a Roger Goodell scandal.
What the NFL needs most is for the wildness and unpredictability of this incident to slow down. Goodell, no matter how much he did or didn't botch the Rice case, never saw this coming, never believed it would be a threat to his empire or job security. The clumsy way the usually professional league office has reacted is proof of that.
Modern society loves demanding the instantaneous firing of anyone and everyone. It wants its pound of flesh – now. It is a trend whipped up by social media, especially the nuance-void, echo chamber of Twitter. That enflames the mainstream media even more, and thus everything circles on into a vortex of outrage.
Justice is demanded, even if there is no tangible harm to Goodell remaining in his job. He isn't running an advanced battlefield in the theater of war here. He isn't drunk, flying a commercial airliner. He isn't causing additional women to be abused. He's a suit who hangs out with sponsors in a luxury box.
Right now all sorts of people are screaming for Goodell to be fired, Goodell to resign, Goodell to have who knows what happen to him.
None of those voices belong to NFL owners, who have long expressed satisfaction in the way Goodell has run the league. That's in part, because revenues and franchise values have soared under his leadership – the Buffalo Bills just sold for as much as $1.4 billion, meaning the Dallas Cowboys or New England Patriots are worth, what, $3 billion, $4 billion?
It's also because he's willingly taken on the role of the face of the league, taking all the darts for the owners and letting them look mostly like good people. Anger at the league, whether it's for concussions or television times always goes right to Goodell's smiling mug. He seems to revel in the villain role.
He's paid tens of millions of dollars for the effort.
This week has been Goodell in the extreme, the public raging against an executive it views with disdain in part for his heavy-handed discipline (New Orleans Saints fans, in particular, have a beef). It's also the way he carries himself, a perfectly groomed, product of the elite, too-smart-by-half omnipotent dictator. Rooting for Goodell to get fired is like rooting for the bully of a 1980s movie to get his while the loveable weakling walks away with the girl.
Across the NFL there remains unwavering confidence that whatever went wrong on the Rice case it didn't involve Goodell seeing the infamous elevator video and either not being appropriately disgusted and/or engaging in a cover-up to protect the former Baltimore Ravens running back.
What would his motivation be, everyone is asking? Goodell has always been too tough on players. Why would he suddenly go soft on some fading talent like Rice?
And the ultimate creature of corporate climbing would never be so tone deaf to see the Rice video and not know that he needed to protect himself and his career from it by going strong. He's the son of a U.S. senator, keenly aware of how to play politics and survive.
The most likely scenario, according to people who understand both the process and Goodell, is that the investigation was weak, disinterested and ineffective, all big, troubling issues, but not a conspiracy. The league needs to do a much better job going forward on domestic violence issues, which has quickly risen as the hot-button topic. As recently as last season, it was met with mostly shrugs. Not anymore.
League officials believe that Goodell never would have doubled down this week that he didn't think anyone in the NFL ever received the video had he known someone in the NFL had received the video. He's not that bumbling. Or so they think.
Thus, bring on the thorough investigation.
Unless Goodell is fooling everyone, some oversight by someone whose FBI title gives him a measure of credibility (although, Mueller's FBI was rife with internal corruption itself) will find some underling and a poor investigative process to blame. If so, Goodell will continue on in his role, vowing better.
Time will tell on that, but that's just half the benefit here.
Presuming there isn't another media bombshell coming, the investigation buys time and silence. The league can brush off all inquiries about the scandal by saying there's an ongoing investigation that needs to be respected, so it can't comment on anything.
This could take awhile – last year an investigation into bullying in the Miami Dolphins locker room took about four months.
In the meantime, the games return and most fans get back to planning their tailgates, cursing their quarterbacks and setting fantasy lineups. The exhaustive report will be released publically at some point. It will be too long and too complicated for all but the most dedicated to actually read. It will almost assuredly include a move by the NFL to fund an anti-domestic violence campaign while donating to issue organizations. It will undoubtedly point out that the rate of domestic violence involving NFL players is actually lower than society as a whole.
It will come out right on the eve of the playoffs or some other busy, distracted news cycle and after election day to muffle grandstanding Washington politicians.
By then, the fire-everyone mob will have moved its outrage onto whatever else is next. Conclusions, no matter how damning, will play out in an advantageous environment. Twitter will swirl, but not like this week.
This is Crisis Management 101. Through the years, the NFL damn near wrote the syllabus for it.
If Goodell has nothing else to hide, if there is nothing else coming, if he is as confident in being investigated on this as he appears, then he is in no danger whatsoever.
The NFL just needs to get to Sunday, then the Sunday after that. And so on.
Time heals all wounds, goes the old saying.
Unless TMZ reloads, of course.
