Whoa hey, loogit who's gracing the cover of this week's Time magazine: your friend and Peter King's, Roger Goodell. Sean Gregory has a lengthy profile of the NFL commissioner in this week's issue, and it contains the usual bits of hagiography (he keeps in shape! his daddy didn't like Vietnam, and that kind of integrity is clearly hereditary!), along with Goodell bravely congratulating himself for having the balls to make the game safer in the face of a supposedly stern opposition ("I don't do things for public relations," he says. "I do things because they're the right thing to do, because I love the game."). If you think Goodell is a small-minded authoritarian hypocrite—as I do, because it's true—the piece will make you wonder how people could still be carrying water for this asshole. A reminder: This is the commissioner who was willing to nuke a season if he couldn't take more money out of his players' pockets and who saddled another one with clown refs simply for the sake of ideological purity. That's how much Roger Goodell loves the game.


But buried deep in all the plaudits and stories of Goodell bro-hugging fans in parking lots (he's just like you!) is this one perfect little anecdote that sums up the man perfectly:

Even in high school, Goodell enforced a personal-conduct policy. Bronxville High School required athletes to sign a pledge: No drinking or troublemaking, or they'd be booted off the team. The other players knew Goodell would rat them out for misbehaving. "They didn't like to see me come to a party," says Goodell. "I took that pledge seriously."


Holy shit, he's Coach Conrad's mole! He's a fucking NARC! And not only was Goodell a narc in high school, but he's apparently PROUD of it! What kind of horrible human being looks back on his high school days and thinks, "Boy, that sure was fun when I told on Bobby for drinking Thunderbird behind the equipment shed!"? You can take as many thoughtful-statesman cover shots of Goodell as you like; it still won't cover up the fact that THIS is the man currently in charge of football's future: a hired goon, a glorified lackey who will "protect" the integrity of a sport that has none to begin with by shoving all liability for the health of the players onto the players themselves. Unreal. The guy enforced a fucking pledge. It's time we all summon our inner Randall "Pink" Floyd. We might play ball, commissioner. But we will never sign that. LET'S ROCK N ROLL.