NFL Gambling Down: Make-believe Convo Between Goodell, His Aides

We take you now to Roger Goodell’s office suite, a.k.a. the Fortress of Ginger, where his cadre of aides have gathered nervously to deliver the latest dispatches from across the NFL diaspora.

“Okay, what level of hinder-ache are you bringing me today, you robo-squirrels?”

“Well, Commissioner, the Cam Newton meeting . . .”

“I know about that. I was there, remember? You got the information about the penalties we haven’t missed on him?”

“Yes. Already put it out.”

“Good. What else?”

“Okay. It seems Las Vegas . . .”

“NO! NO! NO! I’m up to my eyelids in Las Vegas. I have Sheldon Adelson on Line 1, Jerry Jones on Line 2, Stan Kroenke on Line 5, John Mara on Line 6, and Mark Davis on Lines 3,4, 7 and 9, and I don’t even know how you can get on four lines at once. I don’t want to hear Las Vegas.”

“No, Commissioner, it’s not about that.”

“Whew. Thank God. You saved me from hitting myself in the head with the ceremonial clawhammer. What about Las Vegas then? Don’t tell me game-fixing.”

“No, no game fixing.”

“Good. Something that I will like then?”

“Hard to tell, really, but it seems fewer people are betting less money on football this year.”

“Gambling’s down? GAMBLING? Here’s my face. Start hammering.”

“Well, what does it mean?”

“Let me give you a history lesson, baboons. Fifty years ago, there was a thing called the Vietnam War . . .”

“What’s a Vietnam, sir?”

“Look it up, right after you tell me what school thought you deserved a diploma. Anyway, it wasn’t a popular war, it tore the country apart, it ruined my dad’s political career, and it eventually became so bad that Walter Cronkite turned on it, and at that moment the President knew the country had decided to punish anyone associated with it.”

“Uh, sir . . . what’s a Walter Cronkite? Does he have a blog?”

“No. He’s dead, first of all, but second, he didn’t need a blog. He had television. All of television. Here, let me put it this way. You know how many people at the networks do football?”

“Hundreds.”

“Well, if you combined them all like a Transformer, you’d have Walter Cronkite. He was massive – mega-massive. More people cared about him and what he thought than Tom Brady naked, that’s how massive he was, and his voice essentially told the country what to think on a daily basis. One night on the air, he criticized our involvement in Vietnam, which was a huge deal because he was the most respected voice ever. When he turned on the war, Lyndon Johnson said, "If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the country.”

“But Commissioner, I’m Googling this and it says that the quote is almost certainly a myth.”

“You like the mailroom, do you?”

“No sir.”

“Then shut up, your boss suggested.”

“Yes sir.”

“Here’s the point. Ratings are down. Youth participation is down. The fantasy football industry cratered. We’re getting killed on concussions, we’re getting killed on domestic violence, we’re even getting killed on patriotism. People complain that the product stinks, and frankly, it is a little hard to watch. We’ve even got ties, and the customers are so angry about that that – Ties! -- I think it’s a sign that we’re losing them. Every time we stick our heads up on some issue, it’s like Whack-a-mole. People don’t trust us or like us right now, and you know what the worst thing of all is?”

“What’s that, sir?”

“People don’t like me much, and my job is to make people like the league. If I’m the face of the company, the company looks like it spent two days sparring with Conor McGregor.”

“But sir, that’s not all you do. You deal with the networks, and you handle the CBA, and those are really important jobs.”

“Yeah, but I’m also the one who the owners are going to look at if the empire starts fraying at the edges. Oh, and excellent sucking up, by the way.”

“Thank you sir.”

“Look, here’s the deal. I’ve said that our goal is to take in $25 billion annually, and that assumed that we would still be the most admired and consumed form of sports entertainment ever. Well, we’re still bigger than anything else, but it feels like we’ve hit a wall, and people are starting to turn away. We think we’re the universe, expanding in perpetuity, but what if we’re wrong?”

“Well, I was watching something on the Science Channel the other night, and some scientists . . .”

“It’s a metaphor, you meat puppet.”

“Oh. I guess I thought . . .”

“Thinking without being told what to think ahead of time is never a good idea, son. All wisdom comes from offices, and the bigger the office, the greater the wisdom. It’s the Third Law of Corporate Evolution. That’s on the Science Channel too. Anyway, here’s all the science you need to know. This was supposed to be the easiest job ever – watch the thing grow and grow and grow and make more money than sub-Saharan Africa every year for supervising it and make it seem like football and our profits are a statement of the national will. Now I wake up every day, check my phone to see who got arrested, indicted or got brain damage, and it feels like weasels are trying to claw out of my head through my eyes. That’s no way to make forty million scoots a year.”

“In fairness, sir, there is a pretty large industry of people who live just to criticize authority.”

“Again, excellent sucking up, but I report to 32 billionaires – yeah, even Mark Davis – and they listen to those same people. You get enough billionaires to read that criticism and then believe that criticism, you get billionaires turning on you, and you end up greeting at WalMart by Christmas. Well, maybe not WalMart. Kroenke’s got WalMart. Anyway, I’m just saying, if we’ve lost gamblers, we’re screwed. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but down the road, and forever. If you’re a degenerate who will bet on anything but you won’t bet on us, what are we, curling?”

“Small sample size, sir. The data is just from September.”

“Yes, but small sample size is what they said about concussion data, and I’m not waiting for that to blow up on me too. So here’s what we’re doing. You guys are going to start betting games – all of you, and all the games. We’re going to get that handle back up, and if it takes every dime you’ve got, damn it, it’s going to happen.”

“Wait. Every dime WE’VE got? We can’t expense this?”

“Thelma in Accounting says no, and Thelma in Accounting scares the hell out of me. We all have to make sacrifices. And by ‘we,’ I mean ‘you.’”

“What about you?”

“Gambling is wrong, and it brings the product’s veracity into question. I can’t be connected with it. The league can’t be seen betting on its own product.”

“But we’re moving a team to Las Vegas.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“You like your job?”

“Oh. THAT kind of different.”

“Exactly. Now go take a second out on your houses and move that college fund around. Seattle’s gone from 5½ to 7, and I see opportunity.”

“Betting Buffalo?”

“I don’t care. Just get out there and bet. We have an industry to save, and I’m that industry.”

“But sir, I make $23,500 a year, I just got married, we want to have a family . . .”

“Meeting adjourned.”
 

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