The Whiskey Congress podcast has previously discussed the Ezekiel Elliott saga and the suspension imposed by the NFL’s Commissioner Roger Goodell (check out The Booze Kicks In published 8/16/2017, Who Is ANTIFA Really??? published 9/5/2017 and Single Payer Baby published 9/12/2017 for information and opinions). Now that the suspension has been upheld and Elliott has begun serving his six games, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones seems to be striking back at the Commissioner who is due to have his contract extended. Several NFL owners have warned Jones not to meddle with the process and things could get interesting.
Several fellow owners of N.F.L. teams have given Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones a cease-and-desist warning, threatening to punish him over his efforts to block a contract extension for Commissioner Roger Goodell, according to several people with knowledge of the situation.
The warning to Jones, which was issued by the six owners on the N.F.L. compensation committee after the group held a conference call Monday, comes less than two weeks after he threatened to sue the league and the owners on the committee who have been working for months on a new contract for Goodell.
The league could take a range of steps, including fines, docking draft picks and even suspending Jones.
Jones’s maneuvers have escalated one of the worst fissures in decades in the normally clubby ownership group. Jones, who had been a nonvoting member of the committee, was immediately thrown out of the group after he threatened to sue the six other owners. Those owners and Jones have since communicated through lawyers.
“The committee is continuing its work towards finalizing a contract extension with the commissioner,” the compensation committee chairman, Falcons owner Arthur Blank, said in a statement on Monday. “The negotiations are progressing and we will keep ownership apprised of the negotiations as they move forward. We do not intend to publicly comment on our discussions.”
Jones’s efforts to derail the five-year extension for the commissioner, which has been in the works for months and is nearly complete, has annoyed a growing number of owners, who are angry that Jones has tried to hold Goodell’s compensation hostage as a way to punish the commissioner for his decision to suspend Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott.
