For a guy who runs the NFL, Roger Goodell doesn't seem to know very much about it.
On a recent conference call with San Diego Chargers season ticket holders, Goodell took on what he called a ""misrepresentation"" about professional football players, namely the idea that the career of the average NFL player lasts 3.5 years. According to Goodell, that number is skewed by ""a lot of players who don't make NFL rosters and it brings down the average.""
Goodell (and an accompanying press release from NFLLabor.com, a website the league runs) points to the average playing career length of a player who makes the Pro Bowl (11.7 years), that of a player selected in the first round of the draft (9.3 years) and that of a player who makes his team's opening day roster (six years).
And there's no other way of saying it: Goodell is an idiot for doing so.
To say the way we measure average career length should be based on the small percentage of NFL players who make the Pro Bowl, or the minuscule percentage of players picked in the first round of the draft, is the real misrepresentation in the labor debate. The fact is, Goodell is a puppet of the NFL owners who want to make sure players take the blame if there's no football this fall.
To do so, he's using numbers that show an aloof lack of respect for the players who destroy their bodies in exchange for a short career that helps generate billions for NFL owners.
It would be like Goodell saying it's a misrepresentation that the league minimum salary is $300,000 because the guys who go to the Pro Bowl make millions. It's a stupid comparison that falls into the same line of thinking NFL owners have tried to promote throughout the lockout controversy: That Peyton Manning is keeping you from enjoying football so he can tack on a few more zeros to the end of his paycheck.
And that third-string center with no real education, head trauma and a pittance of a salary compared to the medical bills he'll pay for the rest of his life? Well, that's just a misrepresentation.
Former Broncos tight end Nate Jackson wrote a great piece for Deadspin Tuesday, in which he talked about why the average career length is so low and what that average career is like. Jackson enjoyed a six-year career, but by the end of it he was praying for a chance to make another roster.
""I better be ready,"" Jackson wrote, recalling the mindset of players on the fringe of the professional ranks. ""So I won't be applying for another job. I won't be moving on with my life. I'll be working out and getting ready and watching the phone.""
That's why Goodell's statements are so idiotic. Even if guys reach that six-year mark, fans have to know what happens before those six years and after them and during them.
Good for the 53 guys who make an opening day roster. But does Roger Goodell think those were the only 53 guys who tried? And even if it was, in a league famous for destroying players and leaving them with pathetic retirement plans, does he think six years is all that impressive for an average career length, even for its best player?
I guess he does. That's why Roger Goodell and the NFL owners deserve your scorn if there isn't a season this year.
They make billions each year from these players in an exploitative system that sees owners retire to villas and yachts while players suffer with brain damage and debt. And Goodell says players should be satisfied with that system, and demanding more makes them whiny millionaires.
Instead of making the NFL more fair, Roger Goodell wants you to hate the players. He wants you to think they're a bunch of prima donnas. He wants you to think they fix numbers so the world throws them a pity party.
But he's the one pulling out meaningless numbers, and he's the one making money without having to face what comes after 3.5 years of hits to the head and injures, and he's the one promoting the owners' agenda without giving a damn whether the players get what's rightfully theirs.
He's the one you should blame.
What do you think about the NFL labor controversy? E-mail Nico at savidgewilki@dailycardinal.com.
