As it turns out, the league employee who came up with the idea for that compelling video from multiple star NFL players wasn’t the only league employee who went rogue this week.
According to Mark Maske of the Washington Post, the NFL’s 32 owners “mostly were taken by surprise” by Commissioner Roger Goodell’s video response to the video published a day earlier by the players. Per the report, Goodell “gave a head’s up to a few owners” after he decided what to do.
The “few owners” undoubtedly were the most powerful of the owners, the ones who actually run the league and the ones with whom Goodell communicates most frequently. The rest, the ones who don’t run the league, didn’t get advance notice.
But those aren’t the ones Goodell would have to worry about. He spoke to the ones who run the show, which takes a lot of steam out of the perception that Goodell went out on a limb without approval.
An unnamed source told Maske that “most owners” are expected to support Goodell’s statement. However, some owners expect a backlash from fans whose views on protests mesh with the President’s. Maske also reports that some wonder about Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, given his past position that players always should stand for the anthem.
