Issue is that the Commissioner doesn't exist to make the fans happy. He's the owner's man. He exists to promote the game and make them more money. He has passed that test with flying colors. I think he's a pompous assbag but the owners are the ones he works for. Not us or the players.
Well, then his role is far different than the role of other Commissioners. Baseball, for instance, has a history of very independent Commissioners. So the idea that a sports Commissioner is a de facto owner's lackey isn't born out by history. Some have been, but they don't have to be. That's a choice.
Each Commissioner has the opportunity to represent the league's owners and the league WHILE at the same time representing the Office of the Commissioner with integrity and diligence. Goodell made his choices and he abandoned any pretense of integrity and diligence.
Goodell started out as Corporate Counsel for the NFL and never left that job. They just changed his title, but he never stopped doing the job of Corporate Counsel. They just expanded his responsibilities a little bit.
You don't promote a your own corporate lawyer to an oversight position like Commissioner because you expect that he'll grow morals or a spine and Goodell didn't disappoint. He's been everything the owners dreamed...an moral black hole whose sole interest is the owners (with the game a very distant second), but couched and caged by a lawyer's verbal skills to create the flimsiest of facades that the "Commish" is on the job, policing the NFL neighborhood.
It doesn't have to be this way.
Moreover, beyond the CTE issue which is a really big deal for me as someone with a brain lesion who deals with daily migraines and cluster headaches (so I understand what the chronic pain from CTE is like) and the heartbreaking line of former players who committed suicide without ever understanding why in part because the league had financial incentive to ensure they never know, long term I question how much I want to support a league that justifies minor penalties for woman beaters.
It's possible for an NFL Commissioner to be a business person AND get the NFL on better footing with not only CTE, but with a bunch of trench rules so that OL/DL can have a chance to leave the game and have a life. He or She could address the change about Marijuana enforcement so that it doesn't affect rosters the way it does now. Moreover, the NFL could actually LEAD and work with researchers abroad (since with marijuana being a schedule A drug, it can't be used for research for medicinal benefits, that's the definition of a Schedule A drug, it has no medicinal benefit) to fund additional studies like the one done by the man who discovered THC in Israel who's studies point to THC being CURATIVE for Post Concussion Syndrome, which could potentially help in remediating some players from experiencing CTE after their playing days are over. As well, it's possible to develop THC based medicines that don't make a person "high", which is very important if we're going to talk about actual facts and medicine and how it would affect the NFL and why THC-based alternatives are so important as opposed to the opiate based alternatives that the NFL has pushed for decades that has led to hundreds of addicts and thousands of complications in that time.
And NFL Commissioner could still make the owners scads of money AND have integrity with respect to the game, the rules, the players, the fans, the NFL communities and the law. None of that is impossible.
But...it does mean that the Commissioner has to be a leader, someone who has the ability to make the hard choices and demonstrate to all involved that those hard choices are in everyone's best interest.
Roger Goodell was never that guy. The league didn't want that guy. Unfortunately, they got exactly who and what they wanted.
Now, they need someone with integrity to clean up after Goodell. He has to go. And really, it doesn't matter who calls for his dismissal. I mean, they've got former players as broadcasters on the NFL Network saying they're embarrassed as former players to be associated with this latest decision saying so on record.
Seriously, the NFL deserves better.