EVERY DAY IS SUNDAY: How Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell Turned the NFL Into a Cultural and Economic Juggernaut, by Ken Belson
Last month, on the eve of his state visit to England, President Trump posted some angry words about an organization that has irked him for years. His grievances against the National Football League run the gamut from players kneeling during the national anthem to owners denying him the chance to buy a team. The offense this time is a kickoff rule that Trump views as a woke attempt to feminize the game. “‘Sissy’ football is bad for America,” he declared on Truth Social, “and bad for the NFL!”
Pro football is always in the news and never out of season. According to the New York Times reporter Ken Belson, the credit belongs to a group of N.F.L. executives and team owners who turned a moribund game into a high-scoring carnival of acrobatic skill and controlled violence perfectly suited to a media revolution starved for new content. It includes three men still calling the shots: Roger Goodell, Robert Kraft and Jerry Jones. Belson has covered them for years. His unique access and firm grasp of football culture have produced “Every Day Is Sunday,” a polished, entertaining account of what he aptly calls “an immensely profitable American religion.”
His story begins in the 1960s, when Commissioner Pete Rozelle hitched the N.F.L. to the power of television. Rozelle managed the merger of the N.F.L. and the rival American Football League, added “Monday Night Football” and introduced the Super Bowl, which draws 100 million more viewers than any other single American sporting event. The attorney Paul Tagliabue followed Rozelle, crafting a nuts-and-bolts legacy of revenue sharing and territorial expansion; then came Roger Goodell, the commissioner fans love to hate.
Until the 1980s, N.F.L. teams were typically owned by families of moderate wealth. But that changed dramatically when self-made entrepreneurs like Kraft and Jones bought their way into the league. Often overpaying for the privilege, they expected their teams to be profitable. In Goodell, Belson notes, they found the commissioner of their dreams.
Kraft, the son of Orthodox Jewish parents, earned degrees from Columbia and Harvard Business School before turning his father-in-law’s modest packaging firm into a global behemoth. He bought the financially strapped Patriots for $172 million in 1994 against the wishes of his wife, who feared the purchase could bankrupt them. (“The summer house better be in my name,” she quipped.) Belson is less interested in rehashing the magic of the Brady/Belichick era than in describing Kraft’s outsize role in marketing the N.F.L. and bringing labor peace by giving players a bigger share of the profits. Six Super Bowl rings can change a lot of minds.
Last year, according to Forbes, the N.F.L. was home to 13 of the 21 most valuable sports teams in the world. The Patriots ranked sixth, at $7.4 billion. Heading the list at $10.1 billion was “America’s Team,” the Dallas Cowboys, bought by the oil-and-gas magnate Jerry Jones for $140 million in 1989. Jones hired his good friend Jimmy Johnson, the best coach in college football, and the Cowboys won consecutive Super Bowls in 1992 and 1993 before the two men bitterly parted ways. The team quickly returned to mediocrity, where it’s remained ever since. While Belson avoids the blame game, he does note that Jones is “the only owner who is team president and general manager, running the Cowboys’ business and football operations.”
Jones presents himself as a good ol’ boy. He drinks to excess, loves to party and blurts out whatever crosses his mind. He’s called the Dallas cheerleaders “the pick of the litter” and claimed that quarterback Troy Aikman “looks good in the shower.” But behind this hillbilly facade lurks a C.E.O. obsessed with outperforming his rivals. Making money, his son Stephen Jones says, is Jerry’s way of “keeping score.”
A key difference between Kraft and Jones, Belson writes, is that Kraft treats fellow owners more as allies than as competitors because he’s comfortable with the N.F.L. resembling “a socialist collective where roughly two-thirds of every team’s revenue is shared.” For Kraft, what’s best for the league is usually what’s best for his team. For Jones, it’s often the reverse. His battles with the collective are legendary. He’s sued the N.F.L. over sponsorship rights, and threatened to sue other owners over Goodell’s contract extension, leading the commissioner to fine him “about $2 million,” Belson says, “for conduct detrimental to the league.”
Kraft and Jones are well into their 80s; Goodell is 66. Their years together have produced a bonanza. In 2010, the commissioner set a goal of reaching $25 billion in total revenue by 2027 (up from $8 billion); that figure today exceeds $23 billion, comparable to that of “Fortune 500 companies like Colgate-Palmolive and Goodyear Tires.” Intense marketing has created an international fan base. Owners can now rake in additional cash by selling up to 10 percent of their franchise to private equity groups that will have no say in how the team is run. Goodell’s reported annual salary exceeded $60 million in 2021 — 90 percent coming in performance bonuses. Fans who’ve been priced out of season tickets may boo him, but to those who matter most he’s worth every penny.
Belson does give Goodell due credit for improving the game. Rule changes have produced more scoring and better policing of helmet-to-helmet collisions. Goodell has been serious about curbing injuries, especially concussions. But even here, the drive for profits has led to an expanded schedule that increases such risks. Meanwhile, Goodell has embraced a controversial revenue stream that he and his predecessors resisted for years — with little concern for the social consequences, Belson suggests.
In 1963, Rozelle disciplined two superstars, Detroit’s Alex Karras and Green Bay’s Paul Hornung, for wagering on N.F.L. games. Both were suspended for one season and prohibited from visiting Las Vegas during their playing careers — Nevada being the only state where sports betting was legal. The city was so toxic that in 2003 Tagliabue blocked it from running its popular advertisement “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” during the Super Bowl. But several owners, including Kraft and Jones, had begun to invest in online casinos in the belief that the Supreme Court would legalize sports betting nationwide, which it did in 2018. “Las Vegas was no longer the league’s Kryptonite,” Belson says. It would be awarded a Super Bowl and its own football team, as the Oakland Raiders relocated to a fully enclosed, climate-controlled stadium just off the Vegas Strip.
The N.F.L. now has contracts with three “official” sportsbook partners — Caesars, DraftKings and FanDuel — which are already operating in several league stadiums. One of the few owners to express concern is John Mara of the New York Giants, the grandson of a bookie. “It makes me nervous,” Mara said. “You just worry about whether it’s going to lead to more addictive behavior.” Belson believes it already has.
The league responded by donating a modest $6.2 million to the National Council on Problem Gambling and appointing Mara to its Legalized Sports Betting Committee, whose members include Kraft’s son Jonathan and Jones’s daughter, Charlotte. In 2024, Goodell defended the reversal as a bow to shifting attitudes. “We didn’t support making it legal,” he blandly explained, “but we just have to adjust to whatever the law is.” Who can argue with that?
EVERY DAY IS SUNDAY: How Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell Turned the NFL Into a Cultural and Economic Juggernaut | By Ken Belson | Grand Central | 327 pp. | $30
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