Sunday Letters – Roger Goodell

(I was going to make this baby out to Bill Hancock or the NCAA but I don’t know if I have 34,000 words in me right now to try and methodically poke holes in their fairy-tale of a balloon that most of you know by the letters B, C, and S)

Dear Commissioner Goodell,

I wish I didn’t have to write this letter to you for a number of reasons. I must though, mostly because you’re operating your organization with an efficiency and understanding that the entity I cover (NCAA sports) can barely dream of.

You and your team of lawyers, managers, and operational geniuses have figured out that all the American people want is a democratic way to elect their champion. Thanks for not turning it into an autocracy.

Somehow (and I know this was very difficult so I’m glad you went to a good school like Washington & Jefferson College), you determined a way to give every team in your league an opportunity to win your league’s championship. Although I suppose it would be rather odd if the Lions and Raiders didn’t incur a single loss for the entirety of a season and finished in second and third place respectively. Not that either of those teams would ever go undefeated.

Thank you for not outsourcing your postseason festivities to another organization for them to desecrate to the point that you don’t even know who is playing in what games anymore. Dolphins Cards on a Wednesday night in Springfield, MO? Yeahhhh we’ll probably pass.

You’ve got the stranglehold on college athletics right now for a number of reasons and although postseason playoffs doesn’t top that list, it must be pretty high. Case in point — your league forced me to care about a game today between a balding quarterback who looks like he should run to a FUE hair transplant in Sydney or run a winery in Napa Valley and a punk trust-fund baby quarterback who is probably sitting in his downtown apartment right now five Sam Adams deep playing Poker Stars online while all his teammates celebrate their big win. It’s only the second round, how in the world did you get me to do that?

I mean I’m the same guy barely saw an hour combined of 4 of my sport’s 5 “games of the year.” See I don’t even know what to call them, that’s how bad it’s gotten.

Don’t take this for granted either. Sure, in two weeks you’ll be standing on a podium in Dallas, TX handing the second most-storied trophy in all of sports to a billionaire as half the country watches. But one slip-up, one “I think this would be better if we used a complex formula that nobody really understands to determine who should play for our league’s title” and you’ll find yourself in a bar in Rochester watching Jake Delhomme and Matthew Stafford trade pick sixes in a pointless “postseason game” as you wonder where it all went wrong.

Your acknowledgment of our subtle (and vast) knowledge of sports is appreciated too. I like that you say “here are the records, judge them as you may” instead of belittling us as peons who are too uneducated to make sense of a formula that its creators don’t even understand. Your confidence in us is rewarded with our eyeballs on your game every Sunday afternoon and night. If you think you know better, you can buy custom football uniforms here and start your own team, show us.

Be careful though, I’ve read that this Summer might get a little dicey. You hold all the cards, just make sure everybody else feels like they’re still playing.

Enjoy Dallas (and call me if you need anything),
Pistols Guy