Dawgs By Nature
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and the league’s 32 owners do not always see eye-to-eye when it comes to governing the nation’s top sports league.
However, there is one thing that they can all agree on: they love making money.
This is a league where the average team is worth an estimated $7.13 billion, and one where even a poverty franchise like the Cincinnati Bengals is worth $5.5 billion.
One way the league brings in money is through broadcast deals with their various media partners. The current 11-year agreement is worth $125.5 billion overall, which works out to $3.92 billion per team.
The NFL can pull in that type of money because it delivers with ratings as its games regularly dominate the list of the 100 most-watched television programs each year.
Those ratings are fueled, in part, by players who have a national following. Fans in New Orleans are going to naturally watch the Saints, for instance, but ratings are also boosted when fans of individual players – not just teams – are tuning in.
Which brings us to rookie quarterback Shedeur Sanders of the Cleveland Browns.
For reasons known only to them, there are fans and media members who continue to push conspiracy theories about why Sanders fell to the fifth round of the 2025 NFL Draft. It certainly had nothing to do with the fact that his game still needs work; there must have been sinister outside forces working against the young man.
Enter former NFL running back Eric Dickerson and possibly the most daft conspiracy imaginable.
Earlier this week, Dickerson went on a sports talk radio channel in Los Angeles and dropped the following tall tale:
“I tell you this much, what I heard from someone that’s in the NFL that the NFL told [teams] don’t draft him, do not draft him. We’re going to make an example out of him. And this came from a very good source, a very good source.
“He said that – I won’t say who – somebody called the Cleveland Browns and said ‘don’t do that, draft him. Because they weren’t going to draft him either… They were forced into drafting him because somebody made a call to them.
“They were going to have him not get drafted to basically show you ‘this is what happens when you do this.’ I mean, look, the NFL’s got all kinds of power, they do all kinds of stuff. You know it and I know it too.”
Wow!
Like most – all? – conspiracy theories, this one starts to fall apart rather easily once you get past the headline.
