Roger Goodell Has a Jerry Jones Problem, and Nobody Knows How It Will End
Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, elevated both his team and America’s sport to all-time highs, but in this age of athlete protests and declining owner influence, can an individual with Jones’ stature—and arrogance—exist within modern-day football? Inside the growing crisis between Jones, commissioner Roger Goodell, and the NFL.
The Wow Factor
The story behind the complicated and bitter fight between owners in the NFL over which teams would have the right to move to Los Angeles and build a stadium.
Spygate to Deflategate: What Split the NFL and Patriots Apart
An in-depth investigation into the “Spygate” cheating allegations against the New England Patriots, and an alleged cover-up by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to keep many more cheating accusations from going public.
The Book of Coach
How late 49ers coach Bill Walsh wrote a 550-page book that became a bible for NFL coaches:
“So it was no surprise that Walsh instantly regretted retiring. Believing that he left at least one Super Bowl on the table, Walsh was ‘melancholy and terrible,’ according to Craig. That the 1989 49ers were more dominant in the playoffs under new coach George Seifert than they ever were under Walsh made it worse. Walsh hated that Seifert won a championship that year with his team, his West Coast offense, his philosophy; he so hated the ring that the team awarded him that he gave it away. ‘He didn’t want them to win,’ Craig says. ‘He couldn’t hand over the team he had created to someone else, because he wasn’t capable of it.’
“He tried broadcasting but quit in 1991. ‘I’m not going to sit for three hours and let some 27-year-old f– in my ear tell me about the game,’ he told Brian Billick, former Ravens coach and one of his many protégés. In 1992 Walsh returned to Stanford, where he had coached in the ’70s, but left after two losing seasons in three years, his magic gone. ‘He needed to be Bill Walsh,’ Billick says. ‘He needed to be a genius.’
“So he decided to write a book.”
Into the Wild
On the fate of Marko Cheseto, the former Kenyan track star who lost his career, his best best friend and his feet at the University of Alaska:
“He’s in the first days of his new life. A man who could run farther and faster than almost anybody in the world now sits to shower. He washes his hands only in warm water because his frostbitten fingers are sensitive to cold. He removes his legs at night and massages his stumps. In the morning, he fits his nubs into cups at the top of plastic shins, then pushes down hard, as if he’s squeezing into ski boots.
“He tells everyone he’s good. Losing his feet, he says, is sufficient penance for ignoring William. But privately, Marko says what his closest friends now know to suspect: ‘Just because I say I’m good doesn’t mean that everything is okay.'”
