Tucked away in a pretty insightful and revealing interview NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell had Friday on the Pat McAfee Show was Goodell remembering his spirited conversations with the late Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney. In one corner, Goodell was trying to, in his mind, advance the game by changing rules and make it safer. Rooney, one to defend and understand the players’ concerns, argued to keep football football.
“It’s not easy,” Goodell said when asked about the balance of keeping the game safer. “I got to tell you, Dan Rooney, who I was probably as close to as anybody. And I spoke to him every day. But we’d argue every day on this issue. Because he was more of a purist. And he said, ‘This isn’t football.'”
Goodell doesn’t detail when those conversations happened. But it’s a fair bet they occurred when Goodell and the NFL cracked down on James Harrison and the Steelers’ defense in 2010, levying down huge fines for Harrison’s hits as the league scrambled to remove vicious hits to the head. Harrison spoke out against the league and made some, shall we say, pointed comments towards Goodell.
Defending his players and his team, Rooney probably didn’t like the direction the league was going. At least not at the pace and the speed NFL did it with, on the fly, all while promoting and selling photos of Harrison’s huge hits, too.
Roger Goodell said his stance was the league evolving with the times.
“My argument is, it is football. It’s still a physical game. These guys are faster, they’re more athletic. We don’t need those shots to the head. We don’t need the techniques that we’ve seen. The hip drop.”
The league has continued to crack down on hits, especially ones to the head, though the hip-drop tackle will protect runner’s legs and ankles after it was banned this offseason. The NFL certainly has a duty to protect the long-term health of its players. And in many ways, it’s good the game isn’t played the same way as it used to. It’s good the NFL acknowledges concussions and the risk they pose instead of hiding that fact, though it took lawsuits and the threat of their standing to do so, not some moral compass that showed them the light.
And Rooney, to be clear, wasn’t some caveman who showed no regard for player health. Fighting for players means fighting for their health and well-being, something Rooney did. He helped create the team’s practice facility that included top medical facilities that other teams modeled. And in 2021, UPMC named its concussion fellowship program after him.
Goodell’s words paint Rooney out to be someone he wasn’t, and frankly they weren’t even necessary in responding to McAfee about balancing player safety in this modern age.
