Why do NFL fans boo Roger Goodell? An investigation

• Every year at the NFL Draft, Roger Goodell gets booed.
• The boos are universally loud and raucous, but they stem from fans for different reasons.

LAS VEGAS — As NFL commissioner Roger Goodell stepped out on stage to open the 2022 NFL Draft in Las Vegas, he was immediately met with a familiar sound.

"Booooooooooooooooooooo," the crowd of NFL fans, tens of thousands strong, roared at the man in charge of the sport they love.

After years of practice, Goodell knew to expect them. NFL fans have been booing Goodell at the NFL Draft for some time.

But after asking fans around the NFL Draft why they specifically booed the commissioner, the responses I got were varied and vague.

"Cause he's Roger Goodell," said Alan, a San Francisco 49ers fan, on Day 1 of the Draft. "It's as simple as that."

"I mean come on. You gotta boo that motherfucker," said John Kress, decked out in Lions gear. Why? I asked.

"Because he's an asshole!"

It hasn't always been this way.

Paul Tagliabue, who served as NFL Commissioner before Goodell's tenure began in 2006, received cheers as he walked to the podium to begin the 1998 NFL Draft.

And even Goodell, for a stretch of his commissionership, saw him largely supported at the start of the draft. At the 2007 NFL Draft, Goodell received a smattering of light applause as he opened the ceremony, and he was not booed down into oblivion when he came out to announce that the Oakland Raiders had selected quarterback JaMarcus Russell with the first overall pick.

In 2012, Goodell received both jeers and cheers from the fans gathered at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

Still, somewhere along the way, fan sentiment seemed to turn for the worse.

It's possible the biggest shift came when the NFL decided to take the draft on the road for the first time in the modern era. From 1964 until 2014, New York City was home to the draft, with Radio City playing host starting in 2006.

From year-to-year in New York, Goodell might receive a smattering of boos depending on the state of the league, potential looming lockouts, or player punishments that had been handed down from the league office, but largely, Goodell was not booed out of the room as he is today.

In 2015, the NFL moved the draft to the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago. In front of a new crowd that had not had the luxury of getting annual facetime with the commissioner every year, the boos came through clearly.

Two years later, with the draft in Philadelphia and now officially a touring circus, free from the confines of New York City, the boos for Goodell grew louder.

It makes sense that as the draft began to move, the boos for Goodell grew louder. Given how few appearances the commissioner makes in front of the football public, the touring draft gave a new city the opportunity to get in their Two Minutes Hate on Goodell each year.

For his part, Goodell has leaned into the boos more and more with each passing year. During the remote draft of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, league partner Bud Light put together a campaign aimed at ensuring fans were still able to boo Goodell from the comforts of quarantine.

In Las Vegas, it was much of the same. When Goodell returned on night two of the draft, he egged fans on to boo him louder.

"Now he actually wants us to do it," Isaac Adams, a Steelers fan, told me as we waited for our flight to Las Vegas in Terminal 4 of JFK. "It's still fun to do it, but it's kind of lost its coolness, because now he's in on it."

But even with Goodell in on the joke, Adams still said he would do his duty as a fan.

"I will boo again this year," he said. "I will continue that tradition of booing him live."

For Raiders fans in attendance, the booing of Goodell was a bit more personal. Given the history between the NFL and the Raiders, specifically late-owner Al Davis' lawsuit against the NFL, Raiders fans felt they were doing their duty in booing the personification of the league in Goodell.

"We always boo Roger Goodell," said Steve Sanchez, better known as El Calaca amongst Raider Nation. "Because we are against the NFL."

"He's always against us," said Marcos, carrying a Raider flag through the first night of the draft. "That's why we boo him. As a Raider fan, Al Davis sued the NFL, and now we only get bad calls. I boo him for Al."

But while their justification made sense for the silver-and-black, it still failed to offer a unifying theory on just why Goodell gets so much grief from NFL fans.

The best explanation I heard all weekend came from Steelers fan Derek Hunter.

"I mean, that's tradition. I'm a big hockey fan, and you've gotta boo [Gary] Bettman. And stemming from that, you've gotta boo the commissioner."

Indeed, no man in sports is booed quite like the NHL commissioner.

It's possible the boos aimed at Goodell go beyond a disdain for just the man himself, but rather are a general show of displeasure with authority at large.

In sports, you boo the commissioner, and in this case, that commissioner is Goodell. While fans of specific teams have plenty of personal grudges against the NFL, as exemplified by Raider Nation, the royal "we" of football fandom boo because we boo.

After asking fan after fan present in Las Vegas why they would be booing Goodell, I began to wonder if I was asking the wrong question. "Why do NFL fans boo Roger Goodell?" might just be up there with the sound a tree makes when no one is around to hear it, or whether God could make a rock so heavy not even he could lift it.

If you have to ask, you'll never know.

Just as I was getting dismayed in my quest for answers, Steelers fans Dawn King and Kim Watkins made their conclusion as clear as could be.

Why would they boo Roger Goodell? I asked.

"Because it's tradition," Dawn said.

"And he's a butt," concluded Kim.