Report: Roger Goodell is Telling People the 2023 NFL Draft Will Be His Last. Yeah, Right.

Richard Schultz. Getty Images.

As it's been often said, the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing people he's not a despicable, duplicitous, conniving, feckless empty suit, reviled by all of decent society:

And apparently as part of this conniving plot, Der Kommissar is putting it out there that he may be gone soon. In an effort to garner support, I suppose. To remind us that it could be worse. In that "The Ginger Satan you know is better than the one you don't know" kind of way. 

Source - Appearing Thursday on ESPN, Goodell offered vague and arguably ominous remarks regarding his contractual status.

“The good news is I love the job and I love what I’m doing,” Goodell said, via Sports Business Daily. “We have talked about an extension and we’ll work towards that. If that’s possible, then great. If not, I’ve been really fortunate to be in this job. I’ve loved every day of it. I would love every day that I’m in it, but I don’t really think about the tenure. I think about the progress and the important challenges we have ahead.”

Would that it were so. Would that it were possible. But we don't live in that world. Dave Portnoy doesn't have an expensive enough bottle in his champagne cellar for that utopia to exist.  Here's the money sentence in that report:

No owner seems to be opposing the effort to extend Goodell.

The last time any of this was being discussed, it was during the Covid season. At that time, word out of the NFL was that if the league could somehow manage to fit in every game, a full slate of playoffs and a Super Bowl in the midst of the world burning itself into ashes, Ginger Satan would not only keep his job, he'd be a lock for the Hall of Fame. And it happened. Games were rescheduled or moved, often at the last minute. We had Tuesday Night Football and Wednesday Afternoon Football (or vice versa) and maybe a game or two during brunch. But they all got done. Whether or not he deserves the credit, it happened on his watch. 

Since then, the league has added a game to every schedule, created another playoff game in each conference, cut deals to broadcast on Amazon Prime, YouTube, and I think that channel that plays while you're pumping gas. And the most despised owner in the league is probably going to get $8 billion for his team. And there's nothing that will get a star chamber filled with 32 of the world's most powerful billionaires to vote to keep the status quo like one of their own adding 8.0 × 10 to the 9th power dollars to his Swiss bank accounts. Even if the guy they're keeping is nothing but a useful idiot. Especially if the guy they're keeping is nothing but a useful idiot. Because a timid incompetent with no integrity can be controlled with money. You can make him protect your domestic violence-committing running back, coerce him to suspend a coach over a phony bullying scandal, and force him to take draft picks away from your sport's great Dynasty for no good reason, in order to give somebody else a chance to win. 

So let's not waste any more of our precious time giving oxygen to this non-story. We're stuck with this dishonest, thin-lipped twat for every draft for the rest of our lives.