For weeks now, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell thirsted for this kind of break. Nine consecutive days of league-related silence from President Donald Trump. Free of Twitter rants. No inflammatory speeches or off-the-cuff interviews. Such a blissful reprieve from Trump’s political theater would have been unthinkable not long ago.

Nine quiet days later, Trump is suddenly the least of Goodell’s problems.

With Papa John’s trashing of league leadership in a Wednesday earnings call with investors, a new low has arrived. And with Goodell’s next contract still unresolved, it’s fair to wonder if the future of the commissioner is on shaky ground.

View photos The latest figure to sound off on Roger Goodell’s leadership as NFL commissioner: one of the league’s top sponsors. (AP) More

This is what happens when a litany of problems cuts across every conceivable plateau. Goodell is grappling with this on a seemingly unrelenting basis. One needs only to move beyond Trump for a moment to see pressurized cracks of discontent spreading across the NFL like the crawling fractures of a chipped windshield. From players to fans … fans to ratings … ratings to owners … owners to Goodell. And now, as if the discord of that fundamental ecosystem wasn’t enough, from the entire NFL product to Wall Street.

Wednesday was really bad for Goodell because even the happy-go-lucky pizza guy – Mr. Papa John’s himself – publicly turned on the NFL. And he did it with all his stockholders and the larger financial community listening. In an earnings call for investors that would send a cannon ball through the wood panels of every NFL ownership office.

“The NFL has hurt us by not resolving the current [protest] debacle to the players’ and owners’ satisfaction,” said John Schnatter, the Papa John’s CEO who famously appears on the company’s litany of game-day advertisements. “NFL leadership has hurt Papa John’s shareholders. … Leadership starts at the top, and this is an example of poor leadership.”

That banging you hear right now isn’t the shots fired by a pizza chain synonymous with the NFL brand. It’s the sound of ownership groups collectively falling out of their plush leather chairs.

The NFL has hurt us …

That’s not a message from a few dozen players. It’s not a growing mass of disenfranchised fans screaming on Twitter and the comment sections of stories. It’s not even the President of the United States. No, this is a business partner who has paid tens of millions since 2010 to be the “Official Pizza Sponsor of the NFL and Super Bowl.” It’s Papa Freaking John. The guy who clowns around with Peyton Manning and chisels that “Better ingredients. Better Pizza.” slogan into the deepest folds of your brain.

Regardless of whether you eat the pizza or not, that’s a big sponsor. From a visibility standpoint, it’s right up there with being the NFL’s official beer and auto sponsor. And it’s arguably even more recognizable than any other because pizza is sold as an integral part of the NFL experience, and almost everybody in America knows what the Papa John’s product is.

Worse for Goodell, most Americans, even those who don’t invest in the stock market, have some idea who Papa John is. Largely because of his placement as the centerpiece of the pizza chain’s commercials, the average person in the United States can grasp the idea of Papa John calling out the NFL. He’s not some suit in a boardroom. This is like Ronald McDonald ripping someone. It gets everyone’s attention. And most especially, it gets the attention of the people who are dividing up millions of dollars paid by the pizza guy.

More than even Trump, this is what NFL owners have feared. That the advertisers or sponsors would turn on them. That fan discontent could get so sour that the league’s business partners would pick up their torches and pitchforks and head toward the Park Avenue offices like they were preparing to storm the Bastille.

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