You can dress it up, you can bike it out — but some traditions are simply too strong to break. Roger Goodell could’ve ridden into Green Bay on a Harley with a cheesehead crown and Packers tattoo sleeve, and it still wouldn’t have saved him. As per the Draft tradition, Roger got thunderously booed the moment he hit the stage. All while grinning atop a bicycle in honor of a beloved Packers pregame ritual.
Green Bay legends like Clay Matthews, Jordy Nelson, and even Lil’ Wayne pedaled out alongside him. Didn’t matter. The boos rained down harder than a Lambeau blizzard. And by his expression, it was taking us back to when he said, “Hey, keep booing. We’re still here, not going anywhere.”
For the uninitiated, booing Goodell isn’t just sport — it’s a ceremony. It’s been baked into the NFL Draft since the early 2010s, growing louder with every fine, suspension, scandal, and questionable officiating call. Concussions? Deflategate? The Ray Rice fiasco? The Kaepernick blackballing? If it made headlines, Roger caught the shrapnel.
Plus, you add to the fact that the draft stage is one of the few places where fans, hyped up on cheap beer and hope, get to voice years of pent-up fury straight into the Commish’s earpiece. And you know what? Roger Goodell absolutely leans into it. Like a WWE villain cutting a promo, he almost seems to welcome the chorus of boos.
Back in 2020, he even partnered with Bud Light on a #BooTheCommish campaign, turning every jeer into a charitable donation. It’s a brilliant move when you think about it: why fight the tide when you can surf it? Yet no matter how many charity dollars or bike rides he piles up, nothing softens the sheer awkwardness of getting booed.
Green Bay’s setting only made the scene more surreal. Here was Goodell trying to play nice, embracing the town’s most wholesome tradition — kids loaning their bikes to Packers players before games — and still getting blasted like he was wearing a Bears jersey.
But can we blame the fans? They haven’t made peace with, when he said: “We’re not going to relent in our effort to make sure we have a disciplined culture in the NFL.” Given how uneven the punishments have been (Ray Rice, etc.), people saw this as total hypocrisy. Or when Roger said, “I think we can do it safely and properly. I don’t think 18 games is too much.” This was the league’s commissioner advocating for an 18-game season, even as fans and players were raising alarms about injuries.
So, we can understand the reason for these boos. But maybe, after all, these erratic decisions, maybe, we are about to see a rarer Roger W. Or that’s what a section of the fans think.
Roger Goodell’s latest idea has sent the fans into debating
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