Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones Seeks Secret Ballot for Vote on Roger Goodell’s Contract

The clock is ticking and Jerry Jones is running out of options, but the Cowboys owner has one more card to play in his quest to delay/derail Roger Goodell’s contract extension.

According to reports, Jones wants a secret ballot of owners to be conducted prior to any extension for Goodell.

What exactly Jones intends to gain from the secret ballot, isn’t yet known. Though, according to Pro Football Talk, there are several options.

“A majority of 17 owners is required to trigger the process of secret balloting. A 75-percent majority of 24 votes will be needed to rescind or to revise the resolution that owners adopted with a 32-0 vote in May.

“The league’s owner used secret ballots in early 2016, in connection with the voting that resulted in the selection of the Inglewood site over the proposed Carson location for a new NFL stadium in the L.A. area.”

Another possibility could include using the secret ballot for every vote regarding Goodell’s contract. As Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio notes, “It could be that every proposed vote regarding Goodell’s contract would occur via secret ballot, from whether to scrap the May resolution to what it would be replaced with. Eventually, the owners may conclude that the most sensible approach would be to cast whatever votes are needed to get to the point where the Compensation Committee would be required negotiate a contract, and the owners then would vote on whether to approve it.”

Regardless of Jones’ specific intentions regarding the use of a secret ballot, one thing seems clear. The only motivation for going to a secret ballot  is if Jones believes there’s far more support for delaying/derailing Goodell’s contract, but many of those owners may fear public exposure and scrutiny. By going the secret ballot route, Jones could allow those owners to vote their conscience without fear of public reprisals by the media, or the league.

Though, one imagines, at some point the identities of those owners would eventually come out.  In any case, it’s a very interesting and daring play, for an owner who is running out of options.