The uppermost level of the NFL’s security department is based at the league’s New York City headquarters and is comprised of about a dozen employees — the NFL won’t give a precise number — most of them decorated former law-enforcement officials. Jeffrey Miller, its chief security officer, was once Pennsylvania’s state police commissioner; his lead investigator is John Raucci, a former assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where he was the bureau’s top agent in London and helped coordinate the 2012 Olympics. Despite the bona fides, only the most potentially damaging cases — Michael Vick’s involvement in a dog fighting ring, former Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis’s connection to a double murder in 1999, the New England Patriots videotaping opposing teams’ signals in 2007 — typically lead to loafers-on-the-ground investigations by the league office’s security staff.

Another specialist within the league office, a former FBI agent, oversees security for the NFL draft and the Super Bowl, the league’s most visible events, often making preliminary plans years in advance. Another official supervises security at each of the league’s 32 stadiums, according to an individual familiar with the staff’s organization. …

Each NFL team is assigned a contractor, along with an associate investigator, to act as the league’s eyes and ears (many teams hire their own in-house security experts to protect their interests). Of the consultants assigned by the league, many have experience in federal law enforcement agencies — most commonly the FBI — and their directive is to establish knowledge of and comfort within the local legal setting. They get to know the area’s information brokers, and after player arrests or potential incidents of misconduct, the representative ferrets out information — often details that would never be made public — with the intention of sharing it with the league office.