Our Business of Football expert breaks down the most impactful off-field stories of the last year in the NFL.
Here are my Top 10 Business of Football stories from the world’s more profitable and popular sports league in 2022.
Watson’s trade and suspension, calls for Snyder to sell the Commanders and Jackson’s contract negotiations were among the biggest stories of the year.
1. Deshaun Watson’s discipline The first major disciplinary matter since the new CBA revised the league’s personal conduct policy involved Watson,
one of the league’s young stars, and his lawsuits stemming from accounts of s-e-x-ual harassment and assault toward dozens of massage therapists over a 17-month span.
Initial discipline was meted out by an arbiter jointly selected by the NFL and NFLPA, former judge Sue Robinson, making commissioner Roger Goodell only the “executioner” without also being judge and jury.
Robinson termed Watson’s behavior “egregious” and even “predatory” but applied only a six-game suspension due to her view of the behavior as “non-violent.”
Goodell exercised his appeal right to—wait for it—himself, and handpicked an appeal officer to apply harsher discipline.
That appeal officer, however, never ruled, as a settlement of an 11-game suspension was reached.
Although Watson was unrepentant in accepting the punishment, the league relented in pushing for the entire year (or more),
perhaps just wanting to put this yearlong bad news cycle, complete with more than 50 settled civil lawsuits (between cases settled by the Texans and those settled by Watson), behind them.
2a. Deshaun Watson’s deal 2b. Impact of Watson’s deal
3. Lamar’s lament
4. Snyder’s end of days?
5. New market for wide receivers 6. Broncos busting franchise value 7. Bills’ and Titans’ stadium subsidies
8. Tom Brady’s wild ride 9. Rams’ implosion
10. YouTube in the fold One of last year’s top stories was the completion of NFL media deals for a staggering cumulative number of $110 billion from Fox/ESPN/CBS/NBC/Amazon.