5 things that made NFL fans hate Roger Goodell 

Roger Goodell is one of the most unpopular commissioners in professional sports. There have been a whole host of contributing factors that have led to his lowly standing among NFL fans.

Of course, it must be pointed out that he is the only commissioner who has ever worked in the NFL with social media as an active force, and this will always lower anyone’s popularity.

His decisions can be scrutinized instantly by anyone. Although if you make a run of consistently awful decisions, then you can’t really blame anyone but yourself.

NFL fans widely agree that Goodell doesn’t have the interest of the game as his primary focus. He is there to deliver on things for the owners, and that is an incredibly unpopular role.

Goodell makes billionaires richer, Regular NFL fans, who’ve had to watch ticket prices rise, will never be happy with that.

Even if his annual ‘booing’ at the NFL Draft has become somewhat of a pantomime exercise, Roger Goodell remains incredibly unpopular with fans, but…

What has made fans hate Roger Goodell the most?

5. The ‘No More’ campaign

After bungling the Ray Rice case and suspending the running back for just two games initially, Roger Goodell was, once again, at the center of the NFL’s relationship with domestic violence cases.

It is unfortunate that the NFL has one of the highest numbers of domestic incidents involving its players. As the heat rained down on Goodell for the Rice case, he implemented the ‘No More’ campaign.

Initially, fans were behind it, with it involving players in very emotionally charged commercials and pleas, although something rather discomforting then emerged.

As part of the campaign, the NFL sold ‘No More’ merchandise including mugs and shirts with the slogan printed on them.

Fans expected the proceeds would be paid to Domestic Violence charities… but no. Roger Goodell’s campaign was not designed to raise money for the cause, but merely raise awareness of it.

Fans were furious and felt duped that the NFL was virtually making money off domestic violence.

4. 2011 players' lockout

Every few years, North American sports are hit with chaos when the collective bargaining agreement is due to expire.

Players always want more changes that will make their lives easier, while owners want to stop as much money leaving their pockets as possible.

Ahead of the 2011 season, there was a complete breakdown in negotiations between the NFL and players. Goodell chaired meetings with owners and key players of the time, including Peyton Manning, but a resolution looked unlikely.

Roger Goodell was accused of lying by NFL players over broken promises. Meanwhile, he tried to turn fans against the players by claiming the lockout was ‘for them.'

He added to this point by suggesting he would take a salary of just $1 for the entire season if no agreement was found, but this was the hollowest of gestures.

It emerged that Goodell did little to assist the players in negotiations, allowing certain owners to speak incredibly disrespectfully toward Manning and others.

After putting huge pressure on the players and attempting to turn fans against them, a deal was signed which was wholly unbeneficial to the players. It was one geared to benefit the owners, and fans were furious.

3. His stance on national anthem protests

“Like many of our fans, we believe that everyone should stand for the national anthem. We want to honor our flag and our country, and our fans expect that of us.”

These were Roger Goodell's words when the controversy surrounding kneeling during the national anthem emerged.

One of the most deceitful ways the commissioner has been able to get his way on things throughout his tenure is by putting himself on the level with fans.

He claims to be doing things in the interest of the fans and took great pains to mention that whenever he could.

Of course, there were many NFL fans who wanted the anthem to be respected, but equally as many stood behind the protest movement.

You can’t pit fans against each other and then claim to have their best interests at heart.

2. Deflategate response

In fairness, whichever way the NFL commissioner would have handled this issue, he would have been criticized. But what a bungled job he made of it.

Nobody really knows for sure if the New England Patriots had anything to do with the deflated football issue in the AFC Championship game against the Indianapolis Colts in 2015.

The overriding consensus is that they probably didn’t, and the game wasn’t even close enough for it to have made a difference anyway.

Punishing the Patriots and Brady quickly and cleanly would have been fine, but Goodell turned it into a bizarre witch hunt, which even the most ardent anti-Patriots fans admit was unnecessary.

As soon as Tom Brady appeared to not cooperate with the NFL’s investigation, Goodell went after him and was going to suspend him come hell or high water.

He also took draft picks away from New England. After appeals and overturned bans, he was eventually able to suspend Brady for four games in the 2016 season after going through the U.S. Court of Appeals.

It was a sad episode, and fans were sick of hearing about it, especially when concussion concerns were being ignored at that time. What made things worse for Goodell was how, at the end of the 2016 season, he had to hand the Vince Lombardi trophy over to Tom Brady.

1. His $64 million salary

The New York Times reported that Roger Goodell made $128 million in the two-year period which covered 2019 to 2021, which would leave his annual salary at $64 million.

Upon hearing this, fans were outraged. The COVID-19 pandemic had hit the sport hard, and revenues were down, yet Roger Goodell was still able to take home such a vast salary.

Fans should have been suspicious when even Jerry Jones had previously suggested the commissioner was making too much money.

Unfortunately, for NFL fans, the news of Roger Goodell’s salary wasn’t a massive surprise. His entire tenure has been marked by his affirmation that he would do everything to ‘defend the shield’, when, in reality, his focus has been on making more money for the owners.

His work to ensure NFL owners became richer has earned him a lot of friends in boardrooms.

With this salary, it became clear to NFL fans that Roger Goodell was merely a shield himself for the 32 owners, and this left them exasperated that he wasn’t working in the best interests of either the fans or the game, as he had so often been at pains to point out.

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