When reports broke on Tuesday that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell earned $34.1 million in 2014, the first (and only) question that came to mind was… that’s it?
Seriously, that’s it? Goodell only made $34.1 million in 2014, after reportedly making an additional $10 million the year before? The NFL is booming, and year after year the league seems to boast new revenue streams and increased interest both domestically and internationally. The NFL is too big to fail, and even though Goodell had one of the worst years any professional sports commissioner could have possibly had in 2014—it couldn’t have gone worse for Goodell even if half the season was canceled because of a strike or lockout—the $34.1 million seems, well, a bit low.
Per Darren Rovell at ESPN.com, Goodell’s base salary is $3.5 million, but he receives a pension and benefits package of more than that, plus more than a quarter of a million dollars in “other reportable compensation.” That $7.5 million or so was buoyed last year by one hell of a bonus.
Goodell had a $3.5 million base salary, but he also received a bonus of $26.5 million, a figure that was determined in 2013.
One has to imagine Goodell’s pre-determined bonus in 2015 will be a tad lower than the previous year, what with a shambolic handling of the Ray Rice situation, the hackneyed way the league initially addressed issues of domestic violence and the increased concerns about player safety that Goodell and his regime have, at times, brushed aside. Sure, there have been public relations programs led by Goodell—himself a former PR man, if you can believe that, with how horrible his own personal brand has become—and increased discussion in player safety seems real, but where the money is going, and where the NFL has been accused of pulling funding, will continue to sully Goodell’s attempts to prove to the NFL’s fans that he has the best interest of the players in mind.
That said, Goodell surely has the best interest of the game of football in mind, if not the interest of its players, as he’s making more and more money for his 32 bosses than ever before. For all the transitions surrounding Jimmy Haslam and his team or Jerry Jones and his team or Daniel Snyder and his team, it’s Goodell who takes most of the ire from fans and media. It’s Goodell who, as Alex Goot wrote last week, doesn’t protect the shield, so much as he’s become the shield.
That’s gotta be worth something, right?
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Turns out, it’s worth about $100 million over the last three years, give or take eight million.
Five years ago, Goodell famously said he would not draw more than $1 salary while the NFL was in a lockout, but since that 2011 work stoppage—which didn’t result in any actual games that mattered being lost—the commissioner of the country’s most popular league has earned roughly $137.5 million in salary and bonuses. Wait, sorry, that doesn’t include whatever he made in 2015, which won’t be publicly disclosed after the NFL re-classified its brand to no longer file as tax exempt. So in four years after (and, technically including) the 2011 NFL lockout, Goodell earned $137.5 million.
To put in context, the average NFL salary cap in the four years after the uncapped year in 2010 was $124.15 million. Even adding in last year’s cap, which at $143 million had ballooned to more than $10 million the previous season, the average for the last five years is $127.92 million.
For 53 players!
The average player pay last season, if every team had spent its full allotment of salary, is just shy of $2.6 million. In 2015, per Joel Corry of CBS Sports, Aaron Rodgers was listed as the highest-paid player in the game at around $22 million per season, but Philip Rivers, because of the way his contract was structured, earned the most last year, taking in more than $31 million before taxes. Fuzzy math, sure, but Goodell made more in one year than the highest paid player in the league and two of his teammates making the league average.
Better put, the man who presided over DeflateGate made more money last season than 39 members of the New England Patriots… combined!
No. Seriously. According to Spotrac, the Super Bowl champion Patriots had 39 of the team’s 53 players earn, after salary and bonuses, a combined $33,166,090 in 2014. Add in Nate Solder’s base salary and roster bonus and 40 members of the Super Bowl champs made about as much as the guy who went to federal court to try to suspend their quarterback.
And yet, it seems like $34 million wasn’t enough for a man who presides over a brand that rakes in $11 billion, with projections going up to $13 for 2015. Oh, and then there’s this, per ESPN’s Kevin Seifert:
[F]ormer NFL player Sean Gilbert — who lost a vote last year to be the executive director of the NFL Players Association — has calculated that the CBA will short players $10 billion that they would have received under the previous CBA. Instead, according to Gilbert, that money will shift to owners.
Rovell, in his ESPN piece on Goodell’s salary, pointed out that Mark Parker, CEO of Nike, made $14.7 million off a company that made $27.7 billion, less than half of what Goodell earned off nearly triple the revenue. He also noted that Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, made more than Goodell ($42.1 million) despite $4.6 billion in revenue.
Rovell didn’t include his boss, Bob Iger of Disney, who in 2013 earned $34 million, per Bloomberg Business, off $48 billion in revenue. Per Equilar, Iger earned $43.7 million in 2014, while Fox’s Rupert Murdoch pulled down $23.9 million. As leaders go, Goodell is in some pretty damn good company, but the structure of the NFL as compared to these media companies has Goodell out on the front lines far more than Iger or Murdoch. When’s the last time Lawrence J. Ellison of Oracle or Steven M. Mollenkopf of Qualcomm faced the media after an employee was charged with some crime or issues of employee safety turned into major motion pictures?
Most leaders at that level are insulated, heavily, while Goodell’s job is in part to be that layer of insulation for those who really run the league; to face the heat when things go wrong, so the owners don’t have to.
Comparing Goodell’s salary to the players isn’t really fair and even to CEOs in the private sector doesn’t make a who lot of sense. It’s the owners we should be comparing Goodell to, and there’s no way he’d be making that much money each year if they all weren’t making a whole helluva lot more than him.
This is the last year the public will know how much Goodell makes, but it’s easy to see how much the owners value him, even as most of us cackle at how overmatched he seems. On a base level, the league is better than it has ever been, and while much of that might be in spite of Goodell rather than because of him, the 32 owners surely could not be much happier with where the game is today. And it’s hard to put a price tag on happiness.
Okay, wait. For the NFL owners, it’s easy to put a price tag on happiness. It seems that number, while down significantly, is still up at $34.1 million. Wow. That is a lot.
