To: the owners of NFL franchises
Re: the commissioner’s job
I’m available. Here’s what I will bring to the NFL commissioner role:
Game-Day Football Pressures
As to the calibration of football inflation, the weights and measures of game-day footballs will be checked and re-checked—then held until opening kickoff—by teams of physical-science majors from colleges that are not routinely represented in college bowl games, let alone on NFL rosters. For instance, for games played in stadiums located in:
- Eastern time zone: physics and geothermal-energy students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Central and Mountain time zones: astrophysics and space sciences students from Washington University in St. Louis.
- Pacific time zone: aeronautical engineering students from the California Institute of Technology.
Allegations of Misconduct, Including Violent and Abusive Behavior
Those who would seem to be victims, along with witnesses, will be interviewed in private—at times and places where they would be most comfortable and convenient for them and where they would feel unthreatened and away from unwanted attention.
In a timely fashion, I will actually view all videotape and other recordings that would provide evidence of what transpired.
Remuneration and Compensations
It is my understanding that current Commissioner Roger Goodell’s employment arrangement is a seven-year deal, a tidge north of $300 million, running from 2012 to 2019.
The NFL’s compensation committee can ease him out, having overpaid him grandly when they bumped his annual salary up from roughly $10 million to $44 million.
I propose to work for 1/200 of the current commissioner’s annual salary. As to expenses, a weekly allowance at Whole Foods would work, along with a Metro North monthly commuter pass, and an upgrade of my Internet service and a new smartphone data plan. I have no need for a long-term contract. No need to lock in the NFL commissioner beyond the 2015-2016 season.
It would seem wholly appropriate to allocate the salary savings to the welfare and medical care of past players who are suffering neurological and physiological debilitations.
Draft Nights and Presentation Ceremonies
Current NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.
I will have a much lower profile than your current commissioner—not just because my height, on a low-gravity day, is 5’ 6 ½”.
It has always appeared unseemly for Roger Goodell to pose with each of the newly drafted players, moments after their selection is announced. After all, Goodell had nothing to do with their collegiate records, or their feats of strength, speed and agility at the NFL combine.
Instead, under my reign at the draft-night podium, the NFL team cap and jersey will be presented to the respective draftees by youngsters who have been flown in, for the weekend, from the children’s hospitals located in proximity to the respective NFL teams’ home stadiums.
Super Bowl Awards Ceremonies
On the stage erected for the presentation of the MVP and Super Bowl trophies, I will delegate those honors to military veterans escorted by children for whom travels and accommodations have been arranged by the Make-a-Wish Foundation.
New playbook:
I hope I will never utter an unduly offensive line, take a cheap shot, make an unwarranted blindside hit, fumble an investigation, pile on, file an illegal motion, conduct an illegal procedure, or make an embarrassing and untenable defensive holding.
Turf:
As to the NFL’s tax exempt status, I appreciate that the league is on artificial turf.
As to current Commissioner Goodell, it is “more probable than not” that his sense of self-importance is overinflated.
Editor’s note: For more of the author’s “Walter Mitty moments,” see another of his articles, “Declarations of Independence—he’s self-identifying as …“
