ESPN.com columnist Gene Wojciechowski suggests that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell should be fired if the league and players can’t negotiate a new CBA.
Wojciechowski reaches a shocking level of stupidity as he attempts to paint Goodell as the only person who should be held responsible if the NFL and NFLPA can’t come to terms.
As a veteran journalist, Wojciechowski knows that the commissioners of every major sports league serve at the pleasure of the owners. Yet he writes that Goodell should act as “a difference-maker who rescues his employers from themselves.”
Using Wojciechowski’s logic, if Goodell has to be a difference maker, it stands to reason that NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith should also be a difference maker.
But Wojciechowski never mentions Smith, in fact, he exhibits an incredible bias towards the players in his article.
Goodell is no different than any of the current sports league commissioners. The NFL’s owners elected him to serve as commissioner and he gets his marching orders from them.
And if Goodell doesn’t tow the party line – the one the owner’s pay him to tow – then they’ll find someone who can.
Wojciechowski knows that, but his self-inflicted lapse of rational thinking somehow has Goodell conjuring up magical powers that will suddenly make him the only commissioner in the history of sports to tell the owners what to do.
To further illustrate Wojciechowski’s deliberate naivete, he writes that as the son of a politician, Goodell “was raised on the importance of compromise and consensus building.”
Are you kidding me? I guess Wojciechowski hasn’t been paying attention to the situation in Wisconsin.
Politicians in that state haven’t exactly been engaging in compromise and consensus building, unless of course death threats and fleeing from your responsibilities are considered to be the new means towards civil discourse.
Wojciechowski wants you to believe that it’s Goodell’s job to compromise with the players and negotiate a deal that benefits them. Now if Goodell wants to get fired, that’s exactly the path he should take.
It’s not Goodell’s sole responsibility to ensure the NFL avoids a lockout by negotiating a new CBA with the NFLPA. That responsibility is shared among Goodell, the league’s labor committee, Smith and the players.
Wojciechowski knows that too, he just doesn’t want you to think he knows it because his journalist ethics would never allow him to exhibit a bias towards one side of these negotiations.
Oh wait, he did exhibit a bias. I guess he tossed aside those silly ethics just this once.
Yea, right.
Roger Goodell isn’t or shouldn’t lose his job if the NFL and NFLPA can’t get a new CBA done, and anyone who thinks otherwise is drinking the Wojciechowski Kool-Aid.
Wojciechowski. Duh. Losing.
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