A toast to Roger Goodell, the best commissioner in sports history

I have hated Roger Goodell for more than 2/3rds of his tenure. As a Tom Brady fan, a Saints fan, and (perhaps most importantly), a fan of multiple uniform combinations, Goodell has seemingly lived for the sole purpose of tormenting and frustrating me.

His nonsensical rule of "one helmet per player each year" prevented me seeing Tom Brady in Creamsicle orange. His thirst to grow the NFL in the L.A. market caused heartbreak, financial loss, and the opportunity to see a Drew Brees / Tom Brady Superbowl matchup. His shitlib politics and overregulation of Covid prevented me from attending multiple games in the 2020 / 2021 seasons as an unvaccinated Pureblood. I despise his politically correct and shitlib edicts as much as I despised his treatment of my favourite teams and players.


Oh, the things we missed...

Yet despite these years of legitimate gripes which resulted in my actual hatred of the man for the majority of his tenure, I have grown to become the most unlikely of things in 2024... an unabashed Roger Goodell fan. He has more than doubled our NFL viewing windows, he's presided over the legalization of gambling on our beloved NFL, he's worked to foster and grow the remarkable "Red Zone" channel, and he's finally backed off on the helmet rule, meaning that uniform aficionados like me have eye candy regularly.

So as we whip out our credit cards this Friday night and re-download the Peacock app before the absolutely scintillating Eagles / Packers tilt, only to find that we forgot to cancel Peacock last winter and have been being charged $5.99 to $8.99 per month for the past 10 months (no bother, I'd pay five times that for tonight's game alone), let us give thanks to Roger Goodell, the greatest commissioner in American sports history.