After Roger Goodell’s complete mishandling of the Ray Rice domestic violence issue in 2014, many were clamoring for NFL owners to fire the embattled commissioner.
But not only did owners allow Goodell to keep his job, they approved a $32 million salary for him in 2015.
This was, admittedly, a $2 million decrease from his 2014 salary, a drop of six percent.
But remember, this came the year after Goodell interviewed Rice’s wife Janay about the domestic violence with Ray sitting right next to her, blatantly lied about how much he knew about the incident, and initially suspended Rice only two games for punching his wife in the face and knocking her out.
Even so, ESPN’s Mina Kimes reported in January that Goodell was significantly overpaid compared to CEOs of comparably-sized companies.
“Consider the comparables: The 10 publicly traded companies closest in size to the NFL — a group that did $10.9 billion-$11.1 billion in revenue in 2014 — paid their CEOs an average of $12.1 million, including stock, bonuses and other forms of pay,” Kimes wrote. “Goodell made nearly three times that.”
This year, NFL profits are expected to reach $13 billion.
After Ray Rice, The NFL Pledged Millions To Fight Domestic Violence. Here’s How The Money Was Spent…Rob Valente remembers the moment like it was yesterday. It was September 8, 2014, and she was in Washington, D.C.…thinkprogress.orgMeanwhile, the NFL continues to struggle with how to best handle cases of violence against women.
After the video of Rice punching his then-fiance in the Atlantic City elevator became public, the NFL donated $5 million a year for five years to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. This week, the NFL announced that it was donating $10 million to sexual violence organizations — including 27 grants worth worth $50,000 will be given out to a variety of organizations across the United States.
These are significant donations and will certainly help, but it’s notable that when broken down per year over the next five years, this equates to $7 million per year to fight violence against women, less than 25 percent of Goodell’s yearly salary.