Living and working in a political town often encourages political solutions for life’s problems. Josh Norman of the Washington Redskins lives in a political town and Roger Goodell is his problem. When asked how the NFL could rebuild its brand and image, Norman suggested a change in leadership.
“Get the people who are in there out. Whoever’s making the rules, just get ’em out. We have a new president; have a new NFL commissioner,” Norman opined via The Associated Press, before adding, “I hope I don’t get fined for that.”
It certainly wouldn’t be a first for the Redskins cornerback. The NFL has hit Norman with over $75,000 dollars in fines this year for bad mouthing officials, illegal hits, and pulling imaginary bows from imaginary quivers and pretending to fire them.
Norman laid out his case for term limits in plain terms:
“The game has been this way for 100 years. Why are people in the [league] office trying to change it? What are you trying to make better? Why touch the game? … Change the staff.
“We changed the president; let’s change them, too. There should be a number of years you can run it. There should be a term limit in the NFL.”
Though an intriguing idea, many times the case for term limits falls short in politics since it relies on the very people term limits would hurt the most, politicians, voting to term limit themselves. In the case of the NFL, Roger Goodell serves at the pleasure of 32 league owners who could cast that vote without him.
No one can guarantee the NFL would replace Goodell with anyone better, and judging by some of the decisions that have come out of the league office no one should assume that they would manage to find an improvement. Sports fans always want to believe the next best thing lurks just around the corner, which explains the disproportionate popularity of back-up quarterbacks in most NFL towns.
On the other hand, when we get a good commissioner, then we will have to force him out because of artificially-set time limits.
The fifth stage of grief is acceptance. NFL fans might have to fast-forward through the first four and accept that Roger Goodell is likely not going anywhere for a very long time.
Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter: @themightygwinn
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