Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times. Mark Leibovich

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      Shopping mall developer Edward John “Eddie” DeBartolo Jr., the beloved 49ers owner who won five Super Bowl championships during his ­twenty-­three-­year tenure, was suspended by the league for a year and eventually gave up control of the team to his sister after pleading guilty to his role in a gambling fraud scandal in Louisiana. In an ­ill-­fated effort to get a riverboat gambling license, DeBartolo had agreed to pay Governor Edwin Edwards $400,000 in $100 bills. Somehow “Eddie D” managed to avoid prison and was sentenced instead to the pro football Hall of Fame in 2016.

      Membership positions come with no term limits, let alone reelection campaigns. “I own this football team,” 49ers CEO Jed York, DeBartolo’s nephew, told a group of reporters after firing his general manager and third coach in three years after the ­2016–­17 season. “You don’t dismiss owners,” he felt the need to remind everyone. In an otherwise defensive and bumbling performance, this was York’s one indisputable line. Technically, York’s mother owned the team and she could fire him (as Panthers owner Jerry Richardson once made his sons resign). But his larger point was clear: York served at the pleasure of the roost he then ruled, and so did everyone else.

      League meetings offer incidental bits of access at an oligarchic theme park. Normally reclusive and fortified figures favor us with happenstance encounters. Niners cochairman John York happened to be standing next to me in the valet parking line; he is a retired cancer research pathologist and brilliantly credentialed to own an NFL team. How? Because he was smart enough to marry Eddie DeBartolo’s sister years before model owner Eddie D became a felon and lost his team. I introduced myself to Mr. York, asked him how the 49ers were looking, and mentioned that I was a reporter, which appeared to stun and terrify him. “We are very excited about our team under Coach Kelly,” he said, referring to the team’s newly hired coach, Chip Kelly. I wished Mr. York luck in the coming season, by the end of which it would be “former coach Chip Kelly.”

      AS IT DOES EVERY YEAR, THE LEAGUE KICKED OFF ITS ANNUAL meeting with a welcome party that was open to all branches of the family. There were splendid buffets, a live band, bright renderings of the Shield in various forms, and even a magician for the kids. Guests balanced cocktails and plates of food around a swimming pool. Everyone was there, Roger and the Membership on down to the lowliest league officials. Even Dr. Elliot Pellman was attending, the notorious former Jets team doctor who went on to become the league’s go-to concussion denier for many years. He had chaired the NFL’s Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee despite turning out to be a rheumatologist who was trained in Guadalajara and had limited expertise in heads. As best anyone could tell, Pellman’s chief qualification for the job seemed to be that he was former commissioner Paul Tagliabue’s personal physician.

      “Is that Elliot Pellman?” I asked a league executive. I recognized Pellman from the various reports I’d watched and read over the years about the league’s fumbling of its concussion problem. “Yep, he’s still here,” the league official said, head shaking. I suggested that maybe the magician could make Dr. Pellman disappear. The executive laughed, but it turns out the league was already on the case. “He’s retiring,” the NFL’s executive vice president for health and safety policy, Jeff Miller, told USA Today the very next day.

      My main goal for the reception was to eat as much shellfish as possible and to specifically avoid two people. The first was Tony Wyllie, the antagonistic head of communications for the Washington Redskins. He was mad at me because of a story I had written for the New York Times Magazine about Goodell a few months earlier. Wyllie had arranged a brief interview for me to discuss Goodell with Redskins owner Dan Snyder. It was a session that essentially amounted to Snyder’s telling me about one hundred different ways in fifteen minutes that Goodell “always protects the Shield.” Wyllie monitored our interview (as PR guys do), or “babysat,” as I described Wyllie’s role. Wyllie registered his displeasure to me earlier at being called a “babysitter.”

      “We’re done,” Wyllie told me, after also saying that I had no right in the story to mention the issue of the name “Redskins” being offensive to Native Americans. I had indeed mentioned the Redskins name in the story, mostly because Houston Texans owner Bob McNair had weighed in on the issue in a particularly striking fashion. McNair told me he was not offended by the name “Redskins” and explained that he had grown up in North Carolina around many Cherokee Indians. ‘‘Everybody respected their courage,’’ McNair said of the Cherokees. ‘‘They might not have respected the way they held their whiskey, ­but . . .’’ McNair laughed.

      This not surprisingly drew criticism from offended Native American groups, ­anti–­Redskins name protesters, and people who can appreciate the irony of headlines like this one, on Deadspin: nfl assures

       fans there’s no tolerance for racial slurs at redskins games. But I had been told that McNair was mad since the “Redskins” name was not the designated topic of our interview (the unquestioned greatness of Roger Goodell was said designated topic). As for the commissioner, I had asked the Texans owner whether he was concerned about the volume of criticism Goodell had been receiving. With success comes scrutiny, was how McNair had replied, although once again he said it in a much more excellent way. “It’s like the old saying,’’ McNair said. ‘‘The higher up the palm tree the monkey climbs, the more of his ass is exposed.’’ McNair laughed. If the commish objected to being compared with a monkey’s ass by one of his bosses, he had about 40 million reasons this year to take it like a man.

      MCNAIR, THEN SEVENTY-NINE, HAS A BALD OVAL HEAD AND A slight resemblance to Mr. Clean. I saw him standing with his wife at the reception looking clean in a pressed white suit. I surveyed the monkey’s ass in full. Everyone was dressed for leisure: Kraft in a ­too-­unbuttoned dress shirt and his customized Nikes; Jones in a ­powder-­blue blazer, no tie, and a glass (sorry, tumbler) of something; Ravens chief Steve Bisciotti in beautifully pressed jeans, white shirt with an open collar, and loafers without socks.

      49ers coach Chip Kelly elbowed his way up next to me at the paella table. He had been talking to Rex Ryan, who was then coaching the Bills and whom I barely recognized after he had lost considerable weight following a lap band procedure in 2010 (Kelly might consider this). I had, for the record, never seen so much paella in my life. The league does know how to feed itself.

      After a few minutes, I gravitated to a mountain of lobster meat, crab, and shrimp. And also to Woody Johnson. I was eager to discuss politics with the Wood Man given his longtime involvement with the Republican Party. He had been the national finance chairman of Jeb Bush’s ­ill-­fated presidential campaign until it had been officially euthanized a few weeks earlier. Trump had taunted Johnson via a tweet, saying, “If Woody would’ve been w/ me, he would’ve been in the playoffs, at least!” The Jets owner was now slowly warming to Trump.

      He gushed to me about how brilliant “build a wall” was as Trump’s signature theme. The phrase sent a simple, elegant message of what he stood for and what his campaign was about. Johnson was hopeful that Trump could act in a more restrained and presidential manner going ­forward—­hopeful enough that Johnson would eventually raise nearly $25 million for the future president, much of it from fellow NFL owners.¹⁵

      ESPN’s Herm Edwards, the former Eagles defensive back and Jets head coach, came over to say hello to Johnson. “Love you, man,” the owner said, greeting his former coach. Johnson had also professed his “love” for Herm following the 2005 season exactly six weeks before ­“releasing him from his contract” under mysterious circumstances. I excused myself from this discussion, walked about ten feet, and found myself face-to-face with Goodell. “Good to see you,” Goodell said to me, and I reminded him I had interviewed him two months earlier for a story he claimed not to read. Suddenly there was a loud pop. I turned my head to see that a kid’s balloon had burst and its poor owner had burst into tears. By the time I turned back around the commissioner was gone, escaping behind a wall of owners.

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