Roger Goodell’s Justice League

24:38He pushed for 17 games. Let's do a deal before expiration of the contract, before we go through a lockout again. because he knew what was going to happen. They were going to get locked out. And right before the start of the preseason, when players would have started losing real money, they would have caved in because they don't want to be without the ability to play football or the money that comes from it. So yeah, I think that there is value because it's another full weekend of NFL action. And it's more games that the league can then take. And we see what they're doing now. They're peeling off a game here for Netflix, a game here for YouTube, sell it for$150 million there,$100 million there.

25:20And I think we're going to see more and more of that. And if you add another weekend of games to the inventory, then that's just 16 more opportunities to take those games and break them off and sell them to the highest bidder.

25:34Mike Florio:How much does Amazon pay for Thursday Night Football? 16 games, essentially. I don't know what the exact number is, but$2 billion. NBC and Sunday Night Football,$2 billion. So you get a package of 16 games. It's probably not going to be a primetime game like those two media outlets, but it's worth easily more than a billion dollars, I would think. Hey, John, I had heard from a media executive that if they expand the season before the current TV deals end, and we all assume that the league is going to pull the plug after the 2029 season. So let's say they would have gotten to 18 games for the 2027 season, which I think is highly unlikely at this point.

26:17That's three seasons where, and the way it was explained to me, given the current deals, they could have taken the new week 19 and sold it off. One game at a time, one window at a time, all of it, some of it, whatever they would have wanted to do. It's beyond the deals that are currently on the table. So you take the last week of the regular season and you sell it off in whole or in part to the highest bidder, how much more money are you going to make from that? If that's the new final week of the season, and the existing networks would have gotten screwed a little bit, but to your point from earlier in the discussion, this is the one relationship where the customer is always wrong.

26:58And the supplier, because it is so limited, they can dictate terms to whoever, whenever, however, and what's going to happen? They'll do whatever they want, and they'll sell off week 19. Again, I don't think it's going to happen, but that's an illustration of the value to the union if they would have done the inevitable 18 games two, three years early. You know, Mike, for the past 20 years or more, longer than that, whenever I write about these rights deals, every single time the rights deal is signed, people come up and anonymously say, you've got to write about how they overspent on that rights deal.

27:33Mike Florio:You've got to write about that. The NFL's most recent rights deal,$110 billion they got. Just an astronomical amount of money seemed like the total overspend. What was it? Two years in the NBA ends up getting what they got. It almost looks like the NFL didn't get enough. Almost looks. It totally looks like the NFL didn't get enough. And when they broke the bank with$110 billion, that was just a matter of a couple of years where that looked like from an overspend to, wow, the networks aren't paying nearly enough. And John, this is where I think it gets very interesting. Jerry Jones talks about this in the Netflix series about the Fox deal that they did and that Fox was willing to grossly overspend and treat it as a loss leader.

28:20And back in the days of true linear TV with three channels and maybe a cable package, there was value in having the ability when you come back from break to put up the listings of, you know, after your local news or accept on the West Coast and it's murder, she wrote, you know, you're promoting your package, you're promoting your shows. That value isn't there anymore, but they're still paying more than what you would think the numbers justify. And the fact that the NFL is willing to jump into bed with ESPN and take that 10 % stake, it tells you that any, even the NFL doesn't think it's a bad business move.

29:00to pay what's being paid. And it creates an awkward situation because how hard is the NFL going to put its thumb on its scale when it's basically taking 10 % of the money out of its own pocket? It's going to be strange, to say the least, when it's time for the NFL to negotiate with ESPN when the NFL owns 10 % of ESPN and then negotiate with other networks where the NFL doesn't own anything except for CBS, where there is that ownership interest of an undefined amount. It makes you wonder whether that loss leader concept really was ever a thing. And these deals, yeah, the numbers are big because it's good for the networks, especially in this day and age where nothing draws a live audience together like professional sports, specifically professional football.

29:47Mike Florio:I want to bring up another topic, my favorite topic. I think I've brought this up every time you've joined the pod. Roger Goodell's successor. successor uh who's going to replace roger goodell i know he's he like let's just say that this is his last contract and he's gone uh and and uh a couple of years this is the first time that you've been on the varsity since brian roll up uh the previous sort of number i think we can call him the number two at the nfl left to become the uh uh president of down at the pga tour the de facto commissioner down to the PGA Tour. That move by Rolap, do you think it sets him up as a more viable replacement to Goodell when Goodell eventually leaves because he's now running his own sport or almost like a tryout?

30:40Mike Florio:Or what's your sense of the people that are behind Roger now in terms of him being replaced? Anytime this topic comes up, I remember the time that Roger did an extension late last decade. And Joe Lockhart, the former White House press secretary, who was the NFL's head of PR for a year or two, and it was great. They did a conference call every week, open season, ask whatever questions you want. I love the transparency. He was a little too transparent because he came out and said, this is Roger's final contract. And Roger followed it up with, oh no, it's not. And before long, Joe was gone. That was Joe's final contract.

31:21Yeah. Look, here's what I believe. And now that Brian Rolap no longer works for the NFL, I assume the chances of him calling NBC to complain about me are diminished, but probably not zero. And he could be back as the commissioner.

31:37Mike Florio:Well, the NBC, by the way, they have a PGA Tour rights deal. So I would put it over 50-50. But still, just go. Just go. Here's my general take on it. This is what I've gathered from watching and talking to people and monitoring over the years. Anytime, and I've noticed this, let's say post-lockout 2011 CBA. Anytime there's somebody in the league office who starts to generate buzz as potential commissioner, once that happens, you're not there a whole lot longer after that. whether it's Marianne Turk, the Laiwiki brother that didn't get indicted, whichever one that was, Todd or Tim, Dean Blandino, Chris Halpern.

32:24There have been names where it's like they're starting to get that kind of a gleam. Ooh, could be a commissioner. Oh, wait, where'd they go? And there's a Game of Thrones aspect to all of this. And I always thought that the people who survived long term weren't viewed as potential threats to the throne so that the king can stay as long as he wants. And I'm not criticizing. I'm I'm I'm I'm real. Like, you know, it's a cutthroat world. And for Roger Goodell to be in position where he's been there, what, 19 years now, and he's got a grip on that job. He can stay as long as he wants. I think Rolap, see, I thought like Troy Vincent, Brian Rolap, name the names of the executives, Jeff Pash, like none of them really were commissioner material.

33:15That's what I had thought. I think Rolap was, but I think Goodell knew because of Rolap's age and Goodell's age and Goodell's staying, he never really had to worry about Rolap because if Goodell pushes it out long enough, Rolap's gonna be viewed as too long in the tooth to take the job. And I think that's the problem now. He's into his 50s. Are they going to hire a commissioner? Let's say Roger stays five years. Are they going to hire a commissioner who's 57, 58 years old? Who's going to be there, what, 10 years? Or are they going to want, they've had, you know, we talk all the time about how the Steelers have had three coaches since 1969.

33:51The NFL has had three commissioners since 1960. Pete Rozelle, Paul Tagliabue, Roger Goodell. They're going to want to hire another person who will be the commissioner, ideally, for 20 years or more. So to answer your question, I think that Roger Goodell will probably be there long enough that Rollap won't be a candidate when the time comes to replace him.

34:16Mike Florio:Is there anybody? So that would suggest somebody in their 30s right now. Is there anybody that's sort of at the NFL now that is set up to do this? I don't believe so. And look, Jim Irsay made this comment a couple of years ago, and I think he's absolutely right because I had heard the same thing. And I think that I mentioned the general idea in the nonfiction book I did a few years ago, Playmakers, about what the future of the commissioner job may look like. Given the growth of the NFL's business and the NFL is into all sorts of different things, at some point, the commissioner is going to be someone from the CEO world.

34:56and then there will be another person who's the football czar who in the past would have been the commissioner. And I don't know whose name ends up on the football under those circumstances. Maybe they put both, I don't know. But I think that the owners are gonna realize at some point the idea of a homegrown career league office employee who navigates the structure and puts him or herself in position to be the commissioner. that just doesn't work given the many different businesses the NFL is in, the challenges of a multi-billion dollar business that is hitting all the goals that Roger Goodell set.

35:36Remember, it sounded ridiculous when he said$25 billion in revenue per year by 2027. They got a pretty good chance of hitting it. And I think the bigger it gets, the harder it's going to be to continue the current model. And I think that's going to be one of the challenges moving forward. It's not just succession plan, it's succession model. It's what do we do with the commissioner job post Roger Goodell?

35:58Mike Florio:$25 billion. That sounded so ridiculous at the time that I kept writing that number because I was like, ah, this will be fun. It looked like they're going to hit it. Hey, you mentioned Playmakers. Let me take one more break and I want to talk about your new book that's out, Big Shield.

36:21Mike Florio:So you released another new book. What is this for you? Number five? You know, I'm starting to lose count and I've got six others ready to go. Not like ready to go to print, but ready to go to the final stages of let's clean it up and let's get it ready to go. It's something I tripped into during the pandemic as a way to balance out the daily lather, rinse, repeat of covering the NFL. Because everything I write today, John, and you live this as a news person, like you send out the best possible newsletter you've ever sent out in your life on Monday night. Stories will be told in posterity about the quality of this newsletter you've sent out.

36:57And you know what your reward is? Do another one.

36:59Mike Florio:Do another one. It's a blank page on Thursday. Exactly. And anything that I write today at PFT, by tomorrow, nobody cares. Anything I write tomorrow for PFT, by the next day, nobody cares. Now, some stuff will resonate a few days into the future, but I wanted something with a little more shelf life. And so that's what I started doing. and this one to finally answer your question, Father of Mine, Son of Mine, On Our Way Home, and Big Shield. Those are the four novels that are available now at Amazon for only 99 cents for the e-book, which really is stupid of me, but I'm trying to get people to read and I'd give it away if I could.

37:35I'm, you know, knock on, I think, yeah, this is Goodwood. I mean, football's been good to me. I really don't care about the money. And I know when people say they don't care about the money, they care about the money. I really don't. And look around at what e-books cost. 99 cents really is basically giving it away.

37:49Mike Florio:Here's what Big Shield is about. It's third string quarterback. I'm not going to give away the whole plot. Don't worry. No, that's just the premise. That's the premise. Third string quarterback. Keep going. You're good. He gets involved with the mob. He was dead the whole time. You just gave away the ending. He gets involved with the mob playing in Vegas. Importantly, he's not playing for the Las Vegas Raiders, and he's not part of the National Football League, this is the write-up that was on Amazon. A cautionary tale. There are so many cautionary tales out there, Mike. But it was, it is a, to me, it really is about the rise of gambling.

38:30Mike Florio:I think anybody that listens to this podcast knows I'm an Orioles fan. And there's been a story going around. One of our pitchers had a terrible game and his wife was getting hate texts, hate DMs off of Instagram. And there's a new, like you're just seeing gambling take hold in a lot of ways. Why did you write this story? Are you worried about that? Yes. Yeah. And look, we've probably talked about this before, and it was The Impetus for Father of Mine, which is based upon the crew that ran Wheeling, West Virginia in the 70s, out in the open, unabashed, blatant mob activity in Wheeling. My dad was a bookie connected to that crew.

39:13I was around it. I saw a lot of things. I learned a lot of things after the fact, and I'm glad I didn't know when I was 10 years old. But one thing that he always preached to me when it comes to gambling, and I've never gambled, except for a few bucks here or there, but I get no enjoyment out of it. And I'm talking years ago when it was clearly illegal, but the spot sheets used to go around and you knew the place where you could go to get the spot sheet. You put down$3, and if you hit three games, you get 10 bucks, whatever it is. But you can't win. You can't win. You're never going to win over the long haul.

39:45You think you will and you won't. You might win for a little bit and then the wheels are going to come off. You can't win. And I have no desire to do it. But my concern has been from the moment the Supreme Court opened the floodgates for legalized gambling in whichever states want to have it. And I think the number's 35 now. It's always going up. My concern has been that the NFL isn't properly concerned about what could happen. And the one big area that is untapped or unexplored, I guess would be the best way to put it, inside information. Because there is so much inside information. In the stock world, they'd call it material non-public information.

40:22There is so much stuff out there that can move markets, that can give gamblers an edge. So there's an incentive to try to get it. What are your methods of trying to get it? Who has it? Whether it's who's truly injured, what's the game plan? I had a coach tell me one time, you know, for these teams that script 15 plays to start the game, if they put them on the whiteboard in the coach's meeting room, who sees that? Does the person who comes in to empty the wastebasket, do they see that? What do they do? Do they take a picture of that? What are we doing to secure it? And then you sprinkle in the Jontae Porter stuff with the prop bets and the very easy way, because I know it's going to be very hard to rig the outcome of a game, especially in the football realm.

41:07You need the quarterback and or the coach to rig the final score of a game. But if you're talking about a running backs, rushing yard over under, right? First drive. Oh, oh, oh, oh man, my knee. I'm done. I'm done. Exactly what John T. Porter did. Pull yourself out of the game. So there's so much there.

41:29Mike Florio:Or in your book, you had something like as simple as a prop bet. Is this going to be a pass or a run? That's the premise because I've envisioned a not too distant future where There's 20 regular season games in this fictional league that is not the NFL. And there's real-time transmission of what's happening at the stadium and what you see on your smart TV. Everything's streaming. You've got multiple different camera angles you can pick. You can see whatever you want to see. And this backup quarterback, Carson Jeffrey, he's got a knack for getting in the shot. And when it's a run, he grabs his face mask and lets go.

42:04When it's a pass, he puts his hand on his face mask and he leaves it there. And it's that simple. It's that low tech. And I know that I know the league's concerned about that. I know at least that much they're concerned about signals from the sidelines to people in the stands who are doing the real time micro betting on their phones. But if it's a world where it is instantaneous and the technology is out there, it just needs to be fully and widely implemented. And that's the kind of problem that can arise. That's the premise. This third string quarterback with the Las Vegas franchise of a fictional professional football league gets mixed up with a mobster and then things happen and his life becomes complicated and decisions have to be made and the tension increases and it ultimately culminates in the climax like any other story that hopefully is entertaining and compelling.

42:50But that's where it all comes from. And I am aware now of a glitch in the book. And I always worry because no matter how many times you read something, you're concerned, you're going to miss, like, you know, I found in the last read of this, there was a comma that was supposed to be a period, that kind of thing. But I do have two references to the NFL. So I'm awaiting the cease and desist letter.

43:14Mike Florio:Give them up. What are the references? No, I just, I'd mentioned the NFL twice. Oh, instead of the fictional league. The mobster character is trying to figure out whether or not this quarterback he's dealing with is a dumbass. And he said, how many dumbasses play quarterback in the NFL? Well, this dumbass forgot to remove NFL or never just, it never went off when I read it one of the 20 times I did. Even by the way, even as you were saying it there, it went right past me that you said the NFL, because of course it's just a vernacular. Have you seen the Billy Joel documentary? Yeah, of course. the story he tells about the Catholic church giving him a hard time with only the good die young and banning it at Catholic universities the letter he sent back could you please do that with all my songs like I'm hoping like hey NFL are you just going to take this you get this guy out here who works for one of your broadcast partners and he's writing this story that's clearly about the NFL but he says it isn't oh and he slipped twice and used NFL in his book are you just going to take that or are you going to take him on I need to be careful what I wish for well I'm trying to figure out how you find the time to write novels because that is my, I take my hat off to you because that is for somebody that says writes as much as you write on a daily basis to find the time, presumably in your leisure time to, to write a book.

44:33Mike Florio:That's a, that, that takes a lot of grit to get, let me peel back the curtain a little bit because I'm afraid that eventually people are going to be like saying, Oh, you're using chat GPT to do this. I'm going to be looking for the EM dashes. Absolutely. Here's how it works. 25 years next November. That's when PFT launched, or that'll be the 25 year anniversary. I screwed that up. November 1, 2026 is the 25 year anniversary of the website. I've done at least 25 million words covering the NFL day in and day out. I've tried to do the math and it's mind boggling, but it's every day. It's thousands of words a day.

45:11if you can just do, and for anybody out there who's aspiring to write a book, if you can just do 1 ,000 words a night, and for me, I can write 1 ,000 words in an hour. I did it last night. If you can write 1 ,000 words a day, every day, and if you're consistent about it, that's 365 ,000 fresh words a year. That's four books, right? Mine are about 90 ,000. Big Shield is 90 ,000 words long. I've got some that are shorter, but 90 ,000 is the max that I want to do. But you can write four books a year if you can just find the discipline and the focus to write 1 ,000 words a day. And for me, it's easy because I write all the time.

45:51I never have writer's block. I sit down and I go. And I literally can do 1 ,000 words in an hour. So it's really not as daunting as it sounds. The challenge is finding that discipline to do it and rhythm and every day and find that hour every day. And so it's really not nearly as impressive as it sounds. I guess that's my point.

46:11Mike Florio:Mike, F. and Florio, good luck with Big Shield. It released about a week ago, right? Yeah, and it's doing really well. I mean, I did not know what to expect. It's like the number one football book in the e-book category on Amazon. It's the number one new release in sports fiction. The Pardon My Take podcast appearance worked well because the award-winning listeners will do whatever those guys tell them to do. It really is kind of scary, but it's good. It worked for me. But I just want people to buy it and read it and enjoy it. I remember being in school and hating reading books. I hated it. I didn't want to do it.

46:46They want me to do it. I don't want to do it. So as an adult, it took me a long time to realize, hey, you find yourself a good book and this can be enjoyable. So hopefully people will give it a try and enjoy it and look for my other books after they finished it. Because, you know, when you read a good book, that's the first thing I think. What else has this person written? I want to go find it.

47:04Mike Florio:Well, it's great having you on. Perfect NFL preview to get us ready for the season. And we'll have you back soon, I hope. Open invitation anytime. And John, I will send you a hard copy of Big Shield whenever Bezos sends me my box of them. I'm still waiting. But as soon as they show up, you're getting it. Thanks, man. Thank you, John.

47:28Mike Florio:I am fascinated by Florio's answer to my open-ended question at the beginning about what off-field story he's most invested in. He brought up Rasheed Rice. Rice, of course, is a wide receiver for the Kansas City Chiefs who pleaded guilty to a third-degree felony earlier this summer for his role in a high-speed crash last year. That's when he lost control of his Lamborghini as he is going close to 120 miles per hour on a Dallas highway. The NFL has a hearing at the end of September to decide how long Rice should be suspended, which means that he's likely to start the season, then sit through a suspension.

48:11Mike Florio:Florio's point is, why wasn't this taken care of by week one? The NFL's in-house justice system is imperfect, and this is a perfect example of that. So I want to thank Mike Florio for taking the time to join today's pod. More importantly, though, I want to thank you for listening to The Varsity, an Odyssey podcast in partnership with Puck. I also want to thank the team at Puck, Gabi Grossman, Ben Landy, John Kelly, and the team at Odyssey, Bob Tabador, Patrick Antonetti. If you like this podcast, make sure to sign up for my newsletter, also called The Varsity. Head over to puck.news and use the code word TheVarsity, all one word, for a 20 % discount.

48:53Mike Florio:And I will see you on Sunday.