Scandals are nothing new to the NFL; in fact, they are somewhat common for a league that has proven to be just as controversial as any other. Unfortunately, some scandals carry much worse implications than others.
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According to Pablo Torre’s bombshell report, which includes everything from suppressed narratives to outright collusion, the league, along with its owners, hasn’t changed a bit. Conspiring to avoid having to pay out massive, guaranteed contracts to quarterbacks and veteran players, the NFL Management Council, according to an independent arbitrator, “…encouraged 32 member Clubs of the NFL to reduce guarantees in future contracts with players at the March 2022 annual meeting.”
This year, the Cleveland Browns issued an unprecedented amount of guaranteed money in an unprecedented contract, and the league was determined to make sure that nothing like that would ever happen again.
“Roger Goodell, in repeated emails with Jeff Pash, his general counsel, had this exact conversation… It’s a big conference room. Into this walk the 32 owners and the representatives. At the front of the room are the head and the executives in charge of the NFL MC, and there’s a slideshow presentation. And in the slides, there is written off, to the side for the presenters to see, the results of these emails that Roger Goodell had written, in which they wanted to spare no ambiguity as to the fact that this would be a problem if anybody else did this,” the report reads.
The clubs, however, did not engage in collusive conduct, the report found.
In the eyes of Torre, the attempt to undermine the entirety of the league’s player base is “symptomatic of the control and cohesion” that exists amongst the NFL’s upper brass. When asked by Sirius XM’s Dan Patrick about whether teams actually colluded or if they were merely encouraged to, he said:
“That is the key distinction that the arbitrator drew, is that the NFL encouraged them to do it, here are the documents, here are the emails, but they didn’t have admissions on the record… Spoiler alert, they did not sign another Deshaun Watson-style contract. There were never guarantees like that again, but the arbitrator couldn’t prove that that was because the NFL had encouraged them.”
Quarterbacks such as Lamar Jackson, Kyler Murray, and Russell Wilson all have seen losses in either total contract earnings, contract guarantees, or both, throughout the past three years, and it’s all a direct result of the league’s willingness to undermine the efforts that have been made to improve player pay.
Simply put, some of the best football talents in the league today are being underpaid simply because it’s convenient for the NFL and its owners.
Millions of dollars have been lost, and until there are any serious ramifications for this bad-faith act, money will continue to trickle out of the hands of players and right back into the pockets of billionaire figures who are more concerned about their team’s production than well-being.
For a league that has dealt with everything from substance abuse issues to gambling problems, this is a particularly bad look, one that won’t go away any time soon.
