Good Dell Sir!

Roger Goodell's Op-Ed piece in today's WSJ seems like a farce - it's absolutely the wrong audience to try to sell this surface level fluff to given the legal and financial intricacies of the NFL lockout (or whatever the appropriate term is to call it at this point). It reads like it's written by a bully scrambling for reasons as to why he's losing a fight - maybe the NFL Union simply needed intelligent, well-trained leadership to put the owners in their place. Reading the op-ed after Joe Posnaski's rebuke, the only thing that comes to mind in Goodell's defense is if he wrote it not for the general readership of the Wall Street Journal, but for the NFL owners themselves. It's likely that every NFL owner reads the Journal (and certainly many times more likely than an NFL player or the average sports fan) - perhaps Goodell's attempt to promote these lame arguments might awaken the owners to their inability to sell their case to a court, let alone the general public. That's the one ploy I would give Goodell credit for, he's been getting beaten badly (and publicly) by NFLPA head DeMaurice Smith, who has done a fantastic job of winning legal battles while staying out of the media limelight. I suppose that shouldn't really be a surprise given all the success Smith has attained in both the private and public sector versus Goodell, whose only post-college job experience has been within the confines of the NFL home office.

For those not inclined to read Goodell's Op-ed, here's a video summary of his argument to the players: