Last week the NFL decided to make public that their players will be held to a higher standard than the rest of America. Not only are NFL players accountable to uphold the laws that everyone else is charged with upholding, but now they are subject to new, higher standards. Commissioner Roger Goodell acknowledged that he was not tough enough in his most recent punishment of a player charged with abusing his then fiance, and now wife. The public outcry was so loud and universal that the commissioner felt forced to take a more aggressive stance on "domestic violence". While this is the latest episode in the NFL reality show, this was a path chosen by Mr. Goodell when he became the league's latest director.
I think it speaks clearly to some of the underlying issues facing the NFL, that it would knee-jerk it's way into such a poorly veiled surrender to the public perception of it's players (read also: product). The tobacco industry put up a more valiant fight for a product that was proven to cause cancer and kill people. Now, a federal judge in Alabama has accepted a plea deal in a case that looks similar to the Ray Rice debacle. Does anyone think he will be suspended indefinitely as a first time offender? Yet, given a public outcry for increased punishment of a player, who clearly made a BIG mistake, there was no attempt to make a case for the player. In much the same way that the NFL will now try to defend Roger Goodell, it might have been a smarter decision to stand behind the original decision and how it was made. Instead, the logic became it is easier to discard a single player and move on than to make the case for the original decision. That crack in the relationship between the company (NFL) and it's product (the players who make plays on the field) will now be exploited to no end. To the extent that the company fails to recognize that breach, the brand will continue to sustain damage.
"Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone". Over the coming months and probably years, the NFL is going to learn a very harsh and expensive lesson. Once you cede leadership to others, meaning people outside your organization, it is very difficult to get it back. Once you get to the point that the president of NOW (National Organization for Women) is impacting public opinion, with regard to your National Football League, moreso than the commissioner, the battle has already been lost. True leadership is rarely about getting the best out of the top 10% of people, that group will most often do their best regardless of who is at the helm. However, that does not mean that you can discard people within that group, without impacting the whole. There are countless examples of people in leadership positions, specifically in sports, failing to understand this dynamic and the damage that it does to their brand is incalculable. We (fans) often get to witness the rebuilding of brands that could have been salvaged, with a little well-timed, public relations work. Sometimes those in the ivory tower simply miss this reality. I would like to sight a few examples that remind us history is a great teacher:
In the 1970's, Muhammad Ali was arguably the top ranked boxer in the world. During the Vietnam War, he was drafted and refused to fight on clearly conscientious and moral grounds. There was a public outcry and his boxing license was revoked. In the end, as more and more people began to doubt the reasoning and purpose of the Vietnam War, Muhammad Ali's popularity soared here in the U.S. However, at the pinnacle of his career, he had been castigated by the very profession to which he dedicated his life. The resulting fights in places like Manila and Zaire are legendary and cannot be recalled without the looming questions of how they ended up there. Unwittingly and by necessity, Ali took boxing international, but was forced to do it without the support of the sanctioning organization in the U.S. The results can be argued either way, but the clear loser was boxing itself. It had voluntarily undermined it's own champion, probably because of the discomfort he caused with his bold and brash persona. Lesson: Don't tear down your house to spite your most popular visitor, he will only find another place to rest his head.
In the 1990's, major league baseball began a very public campaign against steroids and other "performance enhancing drugs". While it was very clear that something needed to be done to slow the pace of the record breaking statistical seasons that seemed to be unstoppable, we still cannot be certain about the effectiveness of the path chosen or the lingering effects of the doubts raised. What we do know, for certain, is this: baseball paid a high price to PUBLICLY correct a problem that it had to correct. To this day, baseball has a difficult time recognizing Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and even Roger Clemens; as well as a whole host of other prominent players from the era. That means, for the foreseeable future, the sport of baseball is forced to live with an elephant in the room at all times, That elephant taints the legacy of players who would never have dreamed of using PED's as much as those who clearly succumbed to that temptation. Time cannot move forward quickly enough to fully erase what some would call a self-inflicted wound. Lesson: Be as strict as necessary to clean up your house, but do all you can to keep it inside the house.
In 2009, the PGA tour stood silently by as it's cash cow was dismantled. Through his own actions, and a healthy dose of hype and hyperbole, Tiger Woods was taken from the pinnacle of golf and shown the dog house. For those of us, who followed golf closely prior to the Tiger fiasco, it was well known that the PGA had some party stops that were as well known for the blowout parties, as for the tour events that happened to coincide. Those articles and books were written, long before Tiger came on the scene. However, when the Tiger tailspin began, there seemed to be no one willing or able to come to Tiger's rescue. A true shortage of people willing to stick their necks out, even on behalf of the person who had taken the sport from the fringe to center stage, increasing purses, television contracts, and viewership to unseen levels. In the end, even a major championship venue could not resist the temptation to be publicly critical of Tiger, as Master's chairman, Billy Payne took a few shots at Tiger just prior to The Master's. Five years later, with Tiger's career no where near where it once was, the same Chairmen finds himself undertaking efforts to grow the game. Lesson: Publicly speaking about the worst parts of your home, decreases it's value. You may never get that value back.
Finally, when the new commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodell came to town, one of his stated goals was to clean up the game. He started his quest by instituting stiffer fines and penalties on players for conduct detrimental to the league. The goal was to associate the brand with a higher standard of behavior, both personal and professional. In the end, it may be clearly shown that protecting the NFL brand requires a careful marriage of both internal and external work. It may have been a serious miscalculation to "protect" the brand by focusing solely on the negative aspects and perceptions of the brand. After all, if you find yourself more heavily aligned with the forces (like NOW) working against your product than with the product itself (which is the football players), trouble cannot be far away. At some point, Mr. Goodell will realize what anyone in real estate could have told him on day one: Focus on the positive attributes of your product as much as possible, they increase value. You will not increase value by pointing out each and every flaw. In fact, before long, you will have more help than you can manage in that endeavor.
Maybe Mr. Goodell should spend a little time watching Million Dollar Listings!
