NFL owners haven’t met in person since December 2019, before the start of the pandemic. They’ll gather for the first time in 22 months, starting today in Manhattan.
Via Sports Business Journal, owners are expected to learn more about the Sunday Ticket negotiations, the upcoming trial of the Rams relocation litigation in St. Louis, stadium issues in Buffalo and Chicago, international growth, and more.
The Washington Football Team investigation and email scandal surely will be an issue, for various reasons. From the supposed secrecy of the outcome of the probe to the fact that the supposedly secret emails were weaponized to take out Jon Gruden to the recent letter from the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee to the November 4 deadline for responding to it, the situation will surely be discussed. Peter King suggested in his latest Football Morning in America column that the comments in open meetings will be “pretty vanilla,” given the potential for someone leaking the contents of the conversations to reporters.
Whether in open meetings or private discussions, it’s likely that at some point someone will raise concerns about the stated confidentiality of the WFT investigation results and the obvious failure by someone (or multiple someones) to honor it.
It also will be interesting to hear what owners have to say when asked by reporters who inevitably will be staking out the meetings. Then there’s the usual post-meeting press conference conducted by the Commissioner.
Will he be grilled about the WFT situation? Will he give actual answers, or will he filibuster and evade? And who from the assembled reporters will risk pissing him off by asking tough, pointed, aggressive questions, like Rachel Nichols did when Goodell finally faced the music regarding the Ray Rice scandal in 2014?
As much as the league would prefer that the WFT situation die down, it’s inevitable that, over the next two days, it will be resurrected.