The Chris Moeller Archives

The slow but inevitable death of the sports commissioner

Today's deflate-gate court verdict-- a stark repudiation of the NFL rules enforcement regime--  is vitally-important for all American sports leagues, a land in which "commissioners" still attempt to fly above the laws of the larger world as if the current year was 1920. The district judge in the Tom Brady appeal made the issue clear: Commissioner Roger Goodell didn't inform Brady of the punishment he faced, or even of the offense of which he was charged. Brady's legal team was not allowed to question the NFL attorney at the quarterback's appeal, nor was it allowed to examine the evidence.

This is a legal smack-down of Goodell louder than the one former commissioner Pete Rozelle got when Al Davis took him to court in 1982 over the issue of relocating the Oakland Raiders. It will be Goodell's legacy. In an instant, the ruling extraordinarily increases the power of the NFL Players Association by weakening the power of the league and its owners. Goodell's rulings on matters of employee discipline have now been overturned in court on deflate-gate, on the Ray Rice suspension, on New Orleans' alleged bounty program, and on Adrian Peterson's child abuse case. I only wish now that Josh Gordon had appealed his substance abuse suspension in federal court in time to have rejoined my fantasy team last year. (A 7-7 regular-season record eventually claimed the championship.)

This case took the pudding for outlandishness. The charge was strange, and the commissioner's demand during the investigation that Brady surrender unto the league his personal cell phone warranted and earned some deep and impassioned belly laughs. Goodell as tyrant judge and jury is dead. Consistency and transparency both still matter today. Due process kicks ass.

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The revolution must spread to baseball next. It's harebrained already that the figurehead leader of a large baseball corporation can determine which individuals should and should not be eligible for enshrinement at our nation's baseball museum, but this new figurehead we got seems especially to offer nothing fresh. Rob Manfred denied the request this week of the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum in Greenville, South Carolina to reinstate the 0.356 lifetime slugger that was banned from baseball 95 years ago under the accusation that he had conspired to lose a World Series during which he rapped a then-MLB record 12 hits.

The persecuted party has been dead longer than the Rosenbergs, yet the punishment for his alleged crime has not lasted long enough for the likes of Manfred. In his letter of refusal addressed to the Jackson museum, he explained, "The results of this work (research) demonstrate to me that it is not possible now, over 95 years since those events took place and were considered by Commissioner (Kenesaw Mountain) Landis, to be certain enough of the truth to overrule Commissioner Landis' determinations."

So an all-time great can't be reinstated after nearly a century of punishment because it's now been too long. This is bafflegab worthy of the great Sid Caesar. It's a great thing for the lot of us that Commissioner Happy Chandler had the wherewithal to overrule another infamous Landis decision only two years after the Judge's death and allow Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey to break down baseball's color line, because if Manfred was faced with that particular controversy-- now seven decades after the fact-- he would be liable to find he wasn't "certain enough of the truth to overrule Commissioner Landis' determinations."

posted by CM @ 7:30 PM