Great article from Chatham on how players can no longer trust Goodell. "Scumbaggery" is my new favorite word. lol. I have pasted the whole thing as it is that good.
New scouting report for NFL leadership emerges, integrity nowhere to be found
Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose.
That famous line from of the hit NBC television series Friday Night Lights seems especially relevant these days in mixed-up, real-life football world. As NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell presses on with the slowest reading of Leadership for Dummies on record, the "protect the shield" slogan that I grew up on in this league has taken on spectacular new clarity.
There was a time when I bought into the "shield" idea, as most players I knew did. But then the league manufactured Deflategate, a self-induced, platitude-spoiling point of no return.
Nothing will ever be the same.
As a player, protecting the league that's a big part of your life seemed a very natural, familial idea to get behind. But as Goodell's power-lust smothers the NFL image, players both past & present need to wake up to this new reality in our football universe.
The people running our game aren't our friends. And they definitely aren't family. Friends and family that you can trust don't conduct themselves the way current NFL leadership does.
The NFLPA simply failed to predict the league would act with such scumbaggery. The players may have worn a revealing dress, but they didn't agree to be raped.
These people are simply the schemers across the table in a perpetual negotiation for control of this sport -- and that's okay as long as the players understand as much. Players can no longer pretend they're pulling in the same direction on the same rope as the league.
It's simply not true.
Players can end up on the wrong side of the ol' shield in an instant -- for nothing more than being accused of something that instead reveals a league office full of agenda-driven, under-educated clowns.
With clear eyes and full hearts. The shield is total bullshit.
The Goodell Scouting Report
You have to study your opponent. Every football player knows as much, although they usually reserve this frame of mind for the field. But the rules of the industry change when a commissioner misuses power to smear a player to satisfy his own ego and stave off personal embarrassment.
That guy who hugged you on draft day is a phony. It's nothing personal, it's just something you have to know -- no different than studying an opposing offense that runs a lot of misdirection and play action.
They show one thing and do the opposite. Just like Roger.
Goodell's tendencies are easy to follow and as strong as you'll ever find from a football player on tape:
1. Proclaim an ethic that guides his actions
2. Act in direct defiance of that ethic
3. Defend his actions as rules-abiding (forget about that ethic)
4. Reassert that ethic in hopes the listener is too dumb to notice
5. Lather, rinse, repeat.
He negotiates against players as the representative of the owners in labor talks. He cosigns on public misinformation campaigns and the manipulation of evidence to suit his own interests. He enlists his attorneys to edit investigation materials against a player. And he dodges media obligations he dishonestly claims he'll fulfill while mandating players do what he won't.
That's the dude you're dealing with -- his real character in brilliant HD. With clear eyes and full hearts, players and their representatives must see that the good faith negotiation days are gone.
USATSI, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell
Roger Goodell represents cheating in its purest form. No need for multi-million dollar investigations. The accuser was the offender all along. Things were never as they were sold. Einhorn is Finkle. Finkle is Einhorn.
With NFL media partners willing to keep league office lies and basic science out of the headlines, players have to have their heads on a swivel. This is today's public misinformation playing field, for better or worse.
Goodell will unblinkingly use public dishonesty as a tactic in his job. This fact should be the top bullet point in a breakdown of who the players and their union are dealing with -- no different than studying a pass rusher's favorite move. If you're going to face someone, you have to be prepared for what they're likely to do.
In Goodell's case, that means be prepared for something dishonest.
Moves of Cheater
As with many complex news events, as time passes, the public tends to settle on simplified versions of the truth -- a particularly tricky issue in Deflategate with a public so widely misinformed on the basics of the case. One of the more persistent rationalizations from the Deflategate aftermath is that this mess is what the players agreed to in the CBA.
And that makes absolutely no sense.
The players did agree to let the league's commissioner be the arbiter in player conduct issues. And the language in Article 46 around "conduct detrimental" is painfully thin. But nobody agreed to the league using their concussion attorneys to produce massive documents concealing and aborting reality to frame a player. Nobody agreed to the use of a notorious consulting firm to make the league's JV science experiment marry up with a runaway narrative they planted. Nobody agreed to let Goodell change the accusation at appeal once science inarguably proved the initial accusation as bunk.
The NFLPA simply failed to predict the league would act with such scumbaggery. The players may have worn a revealing dress, but they didn't agree to be raped.
USATSI, Goodell & NFLPA Executive Director, DeMaurice Smith
It takes a morally corruptible leader to stand before the world in a Super Bowl press conference and proclaim precisely the opposite of what he's doing. But that's exactly what Roger Goodell did.
"We want the truth...that's what I think our fans want, that's what our clubs want. And so what we want to do is make sure we find that truth."
Behind the scenes, we now know his office was actively preventing the public from knowing the truth that would shame the league -- the real PSI measurements that a high school student could plug into a formula, obliterating the foolish accusation that started it all.
This is the stark new reality for players in the NFL. With critical negotiations to come between themselves and Goodell's league, the players must step to the table with clear eyes and full hearts. Or they will fall further behind the league's foremost cheater.
http://www.footballbyfootball.com/column/roger-goodell-found-his-cheater-in-the-mirror
