Jeffrey Standen, a professor of law at Williamette University writes a blog called The Sports Law Professor. His most recent entry, entitled "Roger Goodell and the Cheating Scandal," I think is worth a read, even if I don't agree with all of it.His argument is nuanced and is best read in its non-summarized form, but he's a blogger so he knows how these things work. His contention is that the most profitable sports league in the world could have chosen someone more educated, seasoned and accomplished to be its commissioner. That so far in his job, Roger Goodell is "starting to look like an unthinking moralist."
A moralist, as Professor Standen explains, is "the kind of person who prefers to arrive at the facile, stark ethical conclusion than to perform the heavy mental exercise of making fine distinctions that might produce a better answer."
From this POV, Goodell has painted himself into a corner with the severity of the rhetoric and punishment he's used to respond to the
"A commissioner only has so much moral capital to expend," he writes, and Goodell has spent his in awkward, to high profile ways.
I'm not sure I agree with his conclusions relating to Spygate (I believe Goodell is responding in part to the pressure he is feeling from Senator Arlen Specter). However, I do have significant concerns about Goodell turning the commissioners office into nothing more than an arbitrary and capricious police, jury and judge.
