The last time NFL owners met, two months ago in lower Manhattan, a privileged session containing only owners and their kin concluded with commissioner Roger Goodell delivering a forceful message.
He told the league’s biggest power brokers, more or less, to pipe down, and let the process take care of itself. Colts owner Jim Irsay had stepped out of line hours earlier, and explained to the media that he wanted his peers to seriously consider pressing the nuclear button—and, if the evidence warranted it, to vote out Commanders owner Dan Snyder. In reaction, Goodell told them to trust that he and the league office would land on the right conclusion.
Then came the news of Snyder hiring Bank of America and publicly acknowledging that he’d look at selling the team. That represented a 180 from every other statement he or the team had made, and, well, it seemed like the writing was on the wall.
Now? People in D.C. ought to keep the champagne on ice for the time being.
This time around, at the league’s annual winter meeting in suburban Dallas, every owner who wound up with a microphone in his face toed the league’s line. Even Irsay himself.
I asked Irsay, reporters surrounding his golf cart, if his position on Snyder had changed.
“It hasn’t changed,” he responded. “But I need more information. Again, guys, this is a big decision. And I’ve said from the beginning I was only interested in finding out more because there’s a lot of concern there, and there’s merit to look at that possibility [of forcing a sale]. But I only said to give it consideration and look at it. I never said vote him out. It’s something that’s a big deal. We’ll see what the new year brings.”
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The next question, then, is whether or not the public can trust the NFL, and Snyder, to get to the right place on this. And for two months, it’s seemed like an ever-narrowing path ahead could only lead Snyder to a sale. But after what I saw Wednesday, I’ll leave Dallas less sure of that than I was when I arrived.
The Washington Post, which has done a fantastic job covering the story, reported Wednesday morning that Bank of America has moved forward with its sale process, and is set to send a confidential prospectus to qualified bidders soon. That’s the first step to formally starting to accept bids, and kick off what would be a process of probably about six months or so, depending on the liquidity of the eventual buyer’s bid.
But one experienced league executive floated to me the possibility that Snyder eventually plays the role of Lucy in pulling the football away from Commanders fans at the very end. This exec was suspicious that Snyder could set his price exorbitantly high and refuse to sell the team if that price wasn’t met, then keep the Commanders when bidders fail to get there.
Let’s say the number for Snyder is the one most mentioned—$7 billion. And then let’s say that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, whom Snyder doesn’t want to sell to in the first place, is just a stalking horse (which I’ve heard speculated) to drive bidding into the stratosphere, and the actual bidders know it, and top out in the $6 billion range.
Then, as the exec said, Snyder could conceivably try to take his ball and go home. Thing is, while the franchise is very valuable, and a distressed asset the way Premier League teams were a generation ago, whoever buys the team will likely need to invest another couple of billion dollars into a stadium, and would be inheriting a team with low (for the NFL) current revenues that needs a lot of work. Which means getting a bidder even to $6 billion (the Broncos went for $4.65 billion) might be a challenge.
So is it likely Snyder tries to play a sort of shell game, where he sets an unrealistic goal in hopes of finding an excuse to keep the team? From the tone coming out of this meeting, it seemed like people in that room were preparing for the possibility he might try to.
Asked about discussion of the Commanders’ sale in the meeting, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said, “I don’t have any comments as to the content of the meeting. Don’t want to talk, we want to be really, really guarded about what’s said in the meetings.” Then asked to characterize his relationship with the Snyders, Jones said, “I had a good visit with Tanya. It’s good. It’s good.”
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Goodell, for his part, said there was no talk of a sale in the privileged session this time around, and that they only got an update from lawyers on the congressional findings after the House Oversight Committee published its report. Asked for his own thoughts on Snyder selling the team, Goodell was as vague and noncommittal as Jones and Irsay were.
“I don’t have any expectations on that,” Goodell said. “Dan’s statement that he put out was that he was exploring that, and we will continue to work with him on that. As it relates to the House Oversight [report], I think we’ve been very consistent on this from day one. We fully cooperated. I think we had over 500,000 documents that we submitted. I personally spent two-and-a-half hours in testimony, I think someone told me it was 120 questions during that time period.
“So I really feel like, from the standpoint of cooperation, we know, because we have audits going on with the club, that because of the discipline, because of the terrific investigation led by our independent counsel in this case, the change has occurred in the Washington Commanders organization. That’s verified by audits. That’s the outcome we were seeking, that’s the outcome we all wanted, so I don’t have anything further to say about it.”
Parse those words, and it sounds like Goodell is saying that, while what happened was clearly egregious, the Snyders have fixed the problem.
That’s relevant, of course, only if the NFL is going forward with Snyder as an owner. Or feels like it has to go forward with Snyder as an owner. And it sure seems to me like after this meeting, with the Mary Jo White report pending and other owners split on whether a vote should ever take place, the league and its teams are at least bracing for that possibility.
Because in the end, while those guys may trust Goodell, they do know who they can’t trust.
