Roger Goodell focused on making football safer

Erik Brady | USA TODAY Sports

Show Caption Hide Caption NFL's Roger Goodell: Appetite for football is worldwide In USA TODAY's Innovators and Icons series, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell discusses the future of the league. He says technology, player injuries and expanding worldwide have to be the focus to grow the game.

Goodell%27s first job with the NFL was as an administrative intern

The biggest risk to pro football%2C according to Goodell%2C is getting complacent

Part of his push on players safety includes educating kids and medical research

NEW YORK — When Roger Goodell graduated from college, he sent a letter to his father. "If there is one thing I want to accomplish in my life besides becoming commissioner of the NFL," he wrote, "it is to make you proud of me."

Goodell would make good on both goals. He began by writing more than 40 letters to NFL teams and to league headquarters, looking for any sort of opening. That led to an offer of low-level administrative intern in the league office in 1982, clipping newspaper stories and the like, and he was on his way.

By now he's made the leap from intern to icon.

"I didn't say that," Goodell says, laughing. "I wouldn't say that at all."

He is talking to USA TODAY Sports in a conference room at the NFL's Park Avenue headquarters for a series on Icons and Innovators. Goodell is more comfortable with that other I-word. When up for commissioner in 2006, he promised NFL owners he'd focus on three primary areas: The game, the 32 franchises — and innovation.

"I made the very strong point at that time that our biggest risk was getting complacent," Goodell says of the nation's most popular sports league. "We have to continue to find new ways to grow the NFL, to respond to the interest in the game and make everything we do better. For us in the NFL, innovation is simply about better ways to do things."

THE NO. 1 PRIORITY

Complacency, as it turned out, wouldn't be a problem. The NFL is facing perhaps its greatest existential crisis. A growing body of evidence suggests blows to the head from playing the game can lead to ills such as dementia, depression and Alzheimer's disease. More than 4,000 former players are suing the NFL, arguing that the league spread misinformation about neurological risks even as it profited from the game's violent nature.

Goodell, 54, says much of the innovation during his tenure has come in the crucial area of player safety. In 2009, the NFL disbanded its Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee, which had refuted a link between the game and chronic brain damage. In 2010, safety rules were expanded with a focus on illegal hits to the head. In 2011, the NFL's Head, Neck and Spine Committee created a standardized concussion assessment protocol and the league committed more than $100 million to medical research with a special focus on brain injuries.

"I've been very open about it, it's our No. 1 priority," Goodell says. "To continue to make our game safer and improve it and make it safer for the players who play the game. And that's not only at the NFL level. I think that's all levels of football."

The NFL has made significant research grants to the National Institutes of Health and other organizations. The league supports USA Football's initiative called Heads Up Football, a comprehensive youth football membership program designed to improve youth player safety.

Goodell will appear Friday in Cincinnati at the 117th annual National PTA Convention and Exposition, where he'll speak on Health and Safety for a New Generation.

"We want to make sure the parents understand what we're doing not just to make football at our level safer but also at all levels, including our efforts with USA Football and our Heads Up initiative," Goodell says.

Heads Up takes its name from tackling techniques that take the head out of the line of contact.

"It starts to a large extent with who's supervising their children, who's coaching their children," Goodell says. "Have they been properly certified, trained? Not only what they're coaching but also to recognize when injuries occur and to make sure that they're managed conservatively."

Goodell says he hopes research into concussions can help athletes in all sports.

"We recognize our leadership position," he says. "We want to make sure we are doing the right things for the people who play the game of football but we also believe this has tremendous benefits for people who play other sports. I have twin daughters who are 11 and I want my kids to be active in sports."

President Obama, who also has two daughters, famously told The New Republic this winter that if he had a son he'd "think long and hard" before letting him play football.

Goodell wrote Obama a letter soon after. "Obviously we have a different view," Goodell says. "We believe that we are doing all the right things. We need to do more. And we're committed to doing more."

And what of critics who suggest the NFL is not doing enough?

"I agree, we're not," Goodell says. "We're always trying to do more. We're always going to look for what else we can do. … We just want to do it responsibly. We want to do it in a very thoughtful way. And you've got to look at the unintended consequences of anything you do. So these things take a great deal of analysis and evaluation. We're proud of the work we've done and we agree we have more to do."

Kevin Guskiewicz, who directs the Matthew Gfeller Sport-Related Traumatic Brain Injury Research Center at the University of North Carolina, is a member of the NFL's Head, Neck and Spine Committee.

"What I like about Roger is he's a good listener," Guskiewicz says. "He takes in a lot of information and the decisions he makes are informed. He appreciates that there is a trickle-down effect to the college, high school and youth levels and I think his legacy will be that across the board he cares about health and safety."

LESSONS FROM HIS FATHER

Goodell was co-captain of his high school football team in Bronxville, N.Y., and he'd planned to play Division III football at Washington and Jefferson in Washington, Pa., but tore a knee ligament while working out during the summer before college.

"Sports are part of our life," Goodell says. "They're important in building our self esteem and our sense of confidence. For a kid who played nine years of tackle football, I wouldn't give back one day of that. I believe the things that I learned playing tackle football are the things that help me today. I use those values and those lessons every day of my life."

He also learned lessons from his father, the man to whom he wrote that prescient letter all those years ago. Charles Goodell was elected to Congress from New York just months after Roger's birth in 1959 in Jamestown, about 75 miles southwest of Buffalo.

New York governor Nelson Rockefeller selected Goodell's father to complete the nearly two years remaining in Robert F. Kennedy's Senate term after the former attorney general's assassination 45 years ago this month. Charles Goodell bucked his own Republican party when he joined Democrats in co-sponsoring a bill that called for a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam.

"He knew the consequences would likely be that he'd lose his seat in the next election because he was speaking out against the current administration," Goodell says. "And he did it, because it was the right thing to do, and was proven to be the right thing to do."

Charles Goodell earned a place on President Nixon's so-called Enemies List and the sitting senator placed a distant third in a three-party race in the 1970 election.

"He believed that he was in public service, that he had a responsibility to the people who elected him to do the right thing," Goodell says. "And they may not always be popular. … We are proud of the stand he took. And I think that demonstrates a principle that I try to stand by, which is, 'Do the right thing at all times, can't worry about short-term consequences.'"

His father died in 1987, nearly 20 years before Goodell would succeed Paul Tagliabue as the NFL's eighth commissioner. This interview takes place a few days before Fathers' Day and Goodell ends it with thoughts of his wife and twin daughters.

"It's my responsibility as a husband and a father in making sure that I can do everything to spend that quality time with them, while they still want to be with Dad," he says. "I got them Sunday, at least, for Fathers' Day. They love being with Dad and I love being with them."