Greeson: Goodell's good and bad in full view


              FILE - In this Thursday, April 30, 2015 file photo, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell speaks during the first round of the 2015 NFL Football Draft in Chicago.  NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said Thursday night, May 14, 2015 he will personally hear the suspension appeal of Super Bowl MVP Tom Brady, who challenged the league's punishment for his role in using deflated footballs during the AFC championship game .(AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File)
FILE - In this Thursday, April 30, 2015 file photo, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell speaks during the first round of the 2015 NFL Football Draft in Chicago. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said Thursday night, May 14, 2015 he will personally hear the suspension appeal of Super Bowl MVP Tom Brady, who challenged the league's punishment for his role in using deflated footballs during the AFC championship game .(AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File)

Roger Goodell is the most powerful executive in sports.

He makes around $40 million a year and has been at the wheel as the NFL has soared into the most powerful organization in pop culture.

Super Bowl Sunday is close to becoming a national holiday, and it already is an international event. The NFL had 19 of the top 20 most-watched shows last fall and had the highest rated show on five networks: ESPN, CBS, NBC, Fox and the NFL Network.

His core of his legacy, though, met a crossroads this week with headlines that highlight the amazing financial success the NFL has enjoyed under Goodell and the off-the-field confusion and malaise it has suffered in the same period.

On the good side, the money has never been greater. Earlier this week the Green Bay Packers, as a publicly traded company, were forced to release their financials. They are the only NFL franchise that has to release those numbers, but the most interesting line item here was what the league disperses to NFL teams.

The Packers received $226.4 million from the league's broadcast deals with five networks. All told, it was more than $7 billion among the 32 teams, and that total is up from around $3 billion just five years ago.

According to this website dedicated to the NFL salary cap, each league team's base salary cap is $143.28 million. So, just on TV money alone, NFL teams can cover all player salary expenses with a nice round $83 million left over for incidentals.

The next round of CBA negotiations between league players and management will be quite contentious over those numbers.

The current deal runs through 2020, and on the same fiscal trajectory in terms of players' salaries and broadcast rights, let's follow along.

In 2010, the league split $3 billion among the 32 teams, and because of labor negotiations there was no salary cap. For comparison sake, we'll average the 2009 total of $123 million and the 2011 total of $120 million and set that total at $121.5 million.

In 2015, the league is splitting $7.2 billion among the 32 teams and the base salary cap is at $143.28 million.

The distribution numbers have increased 140 percent for the teams, and the total coin for the players has increased roughly 18 percent.

On that same trajectory, the salary cap would be pegged around $170 million (although it likely would be closer to $200 million), and on the same growth path, TV money would be around $17 billion or more than half a billion dollars per team. Yes, the timing of TV renegotiations plays a big part of that trajectory. Most of the league's TV contracts run through the 2022 season, but at least one comes up much sooner, and how the NFL decides to work its deal with DirectTV could make or break that company.

Sweet Buckets of Green Backs, the NFL is an ATM, and Goodell deserves credit for that.

And he deserves blame for the debacle that has become the handling of discplinary issues.

Goodell's weakness has been an indecisiveness and apparent weakness when dealing with high-profile off-the-field matters.

Be it the serious social issue such as domestic violence with players Ray Rice or Adrian Peterson or the potentially integrity-damaging DefelateGate, it seems every incident gets made worse after the fact.

Take Goodell's foot-dragging with the DeflateGate ruling on Tom Brady. Brady was suspended for four games for his alleged role in the much ballyhooed affair in which the Patriots had under-inflated footballs. The options are not universally appealing for Goodell, but the longer it drags the more the longer the spotlight shines.

Here's what Goodell has in front of him for DeflateGate:

Option one: Keep the suspension at four games, which would appease some high-powered owners who according to reports want to make the Patriots pay a price for this. It would mean Brady would sue the league in federal court, which no one in this scenario wants. And in the court of public appeal, how well would Brady's four-game suspension play since it would be the same as what Greg Hardy officially got for his domestic violence troubles?

Option two: Drop it down to two games and negotiate with Brady not to sue. That will anger some of the owners who believe Goodell and Patriots owner Bob Kraft spend a little too much time together. It also may not be enough for the players' association, which has said it wants Brady to be exonerated. Plus the union would love a chance to sue in court and test the legal definition and limits of Goodell being the giver of punishment and then the appeal court on whether his first decision was just.

Option three: Drop it to bagel, and let the entire world bellyache from on high about Goodell's relationship with New England. Goodell couldn't care less about what the public thinks, but the owners are swirling and this option could very well cost Roger his job.

And the fact that a guy who has more than doubled the league's TV revenue in five years could be in trouble seems surreal.

Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com and follow him on Twitter at @jgreesontfp.

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