Roger Goodell took the stand in federal court this week and made a startling admission: he did not believe the coverage of NFL Network was up to scratch.
Goodell was testifying in the NFL Sunday Ticket lawsuit, in which fans allege that the league sold its package at an inflated cost – breaking antitrust laws in the process.
The commissioner explained that one of the reasons the NFL sold Thursday night games was due to the broadcast quality.
NFL Network had the exclusive rights to Thursday night football from 2006 to 2013. The games were then split between CBS and NBC until 2017, when Fox took over the rights. Thursday night football has been on Amazon Prime Video since 2022.
‘I had my own opinion that our production was below standards that the networks had set,’ he said Monday, referring to CBS and Fox. ‘We had not met that standard.’
During those early years, the NFL Network crew consisted of Bryant Gumbel, Cris Collinsworth, and Dick Vermeil.
Gumbel lasted only two years after coming in for heavy criticism as a play-by-play caller.
These days, Collinsworth is a regular on NBC’s Sunday Night Football. He works as the color analyst alongside Mike Tirico.
NFL Network could soon be taken out of the league’s hands. Earlier this year, it was claimed the ESPN could take it over in exchange for the NFL investing a minority stake in the network.