Life or death crisis on football field puts spotlight on NFL’s priorities

For more than 16 years, Roger Goodell has been one of the most powerful figures in sport. As commissioner of the US National Football League, he has presided over the expansion of the world’s most valuable professional sports league.

But his tenure has been marked by controversies from player protests to legal settlements over concussions.

On Monday, Goodell and the league were thrust into a new crisis after Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest on the field, causing the suspension of a nationally televised primetime game with ramifications for the postseason games leading up to the Super Bowl next month.

The incident raised fresh concerns about the safety of an inherently violent sport and presented the NFL with a quandary over how to continue its season, a media operation worth well over $100bn.

It also points to a tension in the role of league commissioner. Is Goodell’s job to safeguard the game or serve the interests of team owners, a who’s who of American billionaires including Stan Kroenke, Rob Walton, Stephen Ross and Jerry Jones?

As of Friday, the league was working to finalise a revised scheme for its knockout games later this month. Meanwhile, Hamlin’s condition was improving at a Cincinnati hospital. He was able to breathe on his own for the first time since the incident and FaceTiming with his team.

The player’s life or death drama broadcast live on television prompted president Joe Biden to ponder whether American football had become too dangerous.

“I don’t know how you avoid it,” he said. “Working like hell on the helmets and the concussion protocols, that all makes a lot of sense. But it is dangerous, you’ve got to just acknowledge it.”

As a second-year player, Hamlin has not reached the three-season contract threshold that would make him eligible for NFL benefits, including a pension, disability coverage and post-career health insurance, according to current terms between the league and the NFLPA players’ union.

“My question to you, the NFL, is when do salaries become guaranteed if you know these young men are going out there and they could die on that football field?” asked Garrett Bush, co-host of the Ultimate Cleveland Sports Show and a former collegiate football player. He directed the blame at both the league and its billionaire owners.

“We worship these owners, they do anything they want to. And as long as the product is good, we salute it. I like the NFL, just like the rest of y’all, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna sit up here and pat Roger Goodell on the back for running this organisation the way he does.”

The NFL and the NFLPA declined to comment.

Since 2006, Goodell has expanded the financial returns of the league. Media rights for the NFL have ballooned from more than $12bn over six seasons at the time Goodell took the helm, to current contracts worth $110bn through 11 seasons and a newly agreed supplementary deal for Google’s YouTube to carry subscription all-access programming for more than $14bn.

At the same time, franchise valuations have massively increased. The sale last year of the Denver Broncos for $4.6bn to Walmart heir Rob Walton is a record price for any team in any sport.

But Goodell’s tenure has coincided with the emergence of damning research on the detrimental long-term effects of concussions on players. This resulted in a settlement worth as much as $1bn to 22,000 former NFL athletes.

In 2020, Goodell conceded that the league was wrong for not embracing player protests, led by Colin Kaepernick who four years earlier had begun kneeling during the national anthem to bring attention to racial injustice.

More recently, the NFL has come under fire for alleged racial discrimination in its hiring practices. Goodell testified before the US Congress last year that he did not personally have the authority to remove Washington Commanders owner Dan Snyder, who has faced multiple inquiries and fines related to workplace misconduct in the team’s front office.

“Many people may not realise that serving as the commissioner of a professional sports league is a very difficult and taxing job,” said Rick Burton, a professor of sport management at Syracuse University and a former commissioner of Australia’s National Basketball League.

“They know in starting [the role] they will never please the cloud of witnesses, their owners, players, referees, broadcast partners, fans, journalists and casual observers all the time. That said, based on every financial indicator, Roger has done a spectacular job,” he added.

Victoria Jackson, a sports historian at Arizona State University, said some of the challenges faced by Goodell have not been unique. Workplace misconduct, harassment and discrimination have “been an issue across all sports, from the National Women’s Soccer League to the WNBA to the NBA to the NFL. We could rate this comparatively, or we could hold the NFL to a higher standard,” she said.

Still, the matter of Hamlin’s injury and discussions around player safety and compensation come when the NFL is facing potential challenges to its talent pipeline. The US collegiate sports industry, from where the vast majority of NFL players are drafted, is changing as players are now eligible to receive pay.

The league and players’ association are “walking that fine line”, according to Jackson, of confronting just how dangerous the sport of American football can be. Admitting the potentially life-threatening dangers of the sport risks discouraging young athletes from taking up the game. Jackson, a parent herself, said “my son will not be playing football”.