Who is the most powerful commissioner in sports?
The NFL, MLB, NBA, and the NHL have long been known as the four major sports in America. Each of the sports is run by a commissioner dedicated to making their game as strong a business and entertainment entity as possible, while maintaining the quality of the game.
The NFL is no doubt the top sport in America today. It is the Sunday staple in most households in the fall. Commissioner Roger Goodell and the NFL have a distinct advantage over the other sports, given the league's intense popularity. He is entering his third season as commissioner of the thriving sport, but he’s already made a significant impact, both as a disciplinarian and as a businessman.
Major League Baseball has gone through sweeping changes under commissioner Bud Selig. He has been in charge since 1992, leading the sport through major changes both on and off the field. He presided over innovations such as the wild card and interleague play—but most importantly, he led the sport through the 1994 strike that almost killed baseball.
The NBA is not the most successful league, but no commissioner is as identifiable with his game as David Stern. The NBA has been a difficult league to navigate through scandals both on and off the court, but Stern has maintained a strong handle over the league, improving its global popularity greatly.
The NHL hired Gary Bettman as its first commissioner in 1993. Since then, the amount of teams has increased, but the league suffered through two lockouts, and the quality of the game has decreased. But he has also led the league through increasing revenues and increasing team values—so financially, he has been fairly shrewd.
So which of the four commissioners is the most powerful? Here’s a look at all four, starting with No. 1.
1. Roger Goodell, NFL
Goodell is the new kid on the block when it comes to sports commissioners, but he’s been very busy in his first few seasons. He had large shoes to fill when he took over as commissioner in August of 2006, but he’s handled the job very well so far, despite being dealt a fairly rough hand.
His personal conduct policy, instituted in 2007, increased fines and suspensions for those who get into trouble. His policy even targets teams, causing players with troubled pasts or presents to become close to pariahs. Talent is still the most important thing at the end of the day—but teams think twice before drafting players with checkered pasts.
This policy is most known for Pacman Jones, Michael Vick, and Chris Henry. All three players were suspended under this policy. Jones wasn’t even convicted of anything before he was suspended for a full season.
Goodell was also was forced to crack down on the New England Patriots, who cheated during the 2008 season. He levied the biggest fine ever on a coach—$500,000 to Bill Belichick. He also fined the Patriots organization $250,000, and docked the team a draft pick.
Goodell also introduced flexible scheduling to the NFL in his first season, allowing for games late in the season to be maneuvered into prime time. While the system is not perfect, the networks are happy—and many NFL fans are happy that there are fewer meaningless games in prime time late in the season.
Finally, Goodell terminated NFL Europe in 2007. The league was losing money every year, and the league wanted to market real NFL games more over there. The first regular-season game played in Europe was in 2007, with the Miami Dolphins facing the New York Giants, and this year the New Orleans Saints will lose a home game and “host” the San Diego Chargers.
Goodell has done a lot in his first few years, exerting his power to change the schedule, to modify the plan for globalization, and to crack down on law offenders. It might be too early in his tenure to call him the most powerful commissioner, but he is the most powerful man in the most popular sport. That makes him the most powerful commissioner in sports.
2. David Stern, NBA
Stern is the longest tenured of the four commissioners, and this has made him the face of his sport. Stern has focused his efforts on globalizing the game, making it more popular around the world.
His idea for globalization has led to a huge influx of European players to the NBA. Take a look at the NBA draft. In 1994, every draft pick went to an American college player. Eight years later, Yao Ming was the first foreign player to go first overall, and a total of six international players were taken in the first round.
Stern’s long-term plan is to put NBA teams in Europe. Multiple sources have reported that there are plans to put five teams in Europe, possibly in the next decade.
This globalization of the game is only a part of what Stern has been able to do in terms of making everybody familiar with the game of basketball. Stern has done a brilliant job of branding the NBA, not only across the world, but also to the female gender—a largely untapped market. He created the WNBA in 1996 and remains committed to it today, despite the league operating at a loss every year.
It’s all a part of crafting an image of the game. This has also been true with his response to drugs and other problems. He survived the drug abuses of the 1980s, when the league was viewed as so drug-infested that the NBA playoffs would often be on tape delay.
After the Detroit-Indiana brawl, Stern instituted a dress code to make the league look more professional and clean. Again, the image of the NBA was the primary reasoning behind this decision, as once again, many white and older fans were becoming disenchanted with the league.
The NBA is the third-most popular league in the United States, but it is very secure in that position. Love or hate David Stern (and you have every right, Sonics fans), he has done a very good job as commissioner in molding the league however he wants to. His iron fist and constant watch over the game makes him the second-most powerful commissioner in sports.
3. Bud Selig, MLB
In 1992, baseball was an entirely different sport. Each league was run separately, with just two divisions per league. The only time teams from opposing leagues would play each other would be in the World Series.
Today, baseball is a thriving sport, with attendance and viewership on the way back up. Selig has navigated the league through the 1994 strike that cost the fans and the league a World Series. Each league has three divisions, and four teams make the playoffs in each league.
The new four-team, wild-card playoff format has made the game much more appealing, as it allows more teams to stay in the races longer. Of course, some teams will still be out of contention fairly early, but the four extra playoff spots allow many different cities to pay attention to baseball deeper into the season.
Selig has also made two major changes to the schedule—interleague play and unbalanced schedules. Interleague play has probably been a success, though many purists still hate it.
The unbalanced schedule allows for teams in the same division to play each other more, making the divisions more competitive and creating rivalries between teams.
However, Selig has also been commissioner through two of the darkest moments in baseball’s history. The 1994 strike nearly destroyed baseball. It took some fans a long time to get back into the sport, and some still haven’t forgiven.
Then, in the new millennium, information came to light about steroids. Many star players who hit so many home runs and drew the fans back into the sport were revealed to have taken steroids, forever tainting many statistics from that era.
Selig has taken a lot of heat from his critics, but his role in modernizing the sport cannot be understated. It’s futile to speculate how much he knew about steroids in the late 1990s, and he deserves some of the blame for the 1994 strike.
But under his watch, baseball has become a much more modern sport, and that will only continue with the implementation of selective instant replay later this season.
He comes in as the third most powerful commissioner in sports. The strength of the MLBPA undermines Selig’s power a certain extent, and the payroll differences between teams hinders his ability in uniting the owners sometimes.
4. Gary Bettman, NHL
Bettman’s tenure has been more criticized than any of the other three commissioners. His sport has suffered through a lot of issues throughout his reign, including the first cancellation of an entire season in a North American major professional sports league.
The 2004-05 lockout may define his tenure. His battles with former NHL Players Association boss Bob Goodenow lasted that entire year, and the lost season almost sank the NHL. A TV deal with Comcast-owned Versus network for $200M was good for the league financially, but it has certainly taken away some mainstream media coverage—particularly from ESPN.
But I'll say this for Bettman—he won the war with Goodenow, and the revenue sharing in place is helping out league parity. He also piloted Buffalo, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles through bankruptcies and back to viability, and franchise values as a whole have increased.
For example, the Edmonton Oilers, a struggling franchise in perhaps the NHL’s smallest market, were sold for $200 million dollars this year. When he became commissioner in 1993, the Ottawa Senators and Florida Panthers cost $50 million dollars as expansion teams. Even with inflation, it’s a very impressive increase.
On the ice, Bettman implemented many changes to try to make the game more appealing to casual fans by opening up the ice for more scoring. After the lockout, the format of the ice changed and a shootout was implemented as a way to conclude games. As a result of the rule changes, the ensuing '05-'06 season was the highest scoring in NHL history.
Bettman’s tenure is perhaps the hardest to evaluate of the four commissioners. On one hand, he’s been very successful financially, as revenue and ticket prices are up, and attendance is stable. On the other hand, many hardcore hockey fans have felt alienated by his initiatives—especially the shootout.
The southern movement of teams into markets such as Dallas, Phoenix, and Atlanta has also been a point of contention among many NHL fans. Many NHL fans wonder how southern markets can continue to get NHL teams while Canada’s number of NHL teams has dwindled to just six.
While some fans are happy that the scoring is back in the NHL, other fans feel the new rules—such as eliminating the instigator rule and moving the nets out from the end boards—have further hurt the game.
Despite the current television deal, the league has turned into a formidable business. But as the league has made more in revenue, the fans have gotten the raw end of the deal in some ways, with a lower-quality game that is much more expensive to watch.
He’s been a good commissioner to the owners, but the players and fans are not nearly as pleased with his tenure. Their displeasure, combined with the NHL’s lower comparative status, makes Bettman the least powerful commissioner of the four major sports.
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3 months ago
Which of the four commissioners for the Big Four of mainstream American sports is the most powerful? To be honest, I think this is an easy question. The answer is David Stern. Stern has absolute power. The players union in the NBA is a joke. Stern assesses whatever standards he wants and his media blitzes are so effective that potential scandals like the Tim Donaughy referee scandal gets squashed like a bug.
Bud Selig for years was looking up at Donald Fehr, the head of the MLB Player's Union. In many ways, Fehr has more power and latitude than Selig. Bettman and Goodell have the ability to assume more power than they have but have chosen not to pursue those routes.
Overall, this is a good topic of discussion in analyzing the commissioners and their tenures.
Here is a question I would like to ask: Which commissioner has the most stable tenure? This answer in my view is also easy. The answer is Roger Goodell because the effective leadership of Goodell's predecessor, Paul Tagliabue, has provided Goodell the cover he needs at the start of a commissioner's tenure to not seek extra authority than is necessary.
Here is another question I raise: Which commissioner has the most unstable tenure? David Stern is unpopular among players, fans, referees, and owners. Plus, sportswriters have characterized his tenure as having been harmful to the NBA.
Again, I digress. What do you all think? Great article, Mackenzie!
3 months ago
Thanks for the great comment. Goodell is #1 for me mainly because the NFL is the most powerful league. The leagues go like NFL-MLB-NBA-NHL, but I decided that Stern was more powerful than Selig.
3 months ago
great article, mackenzie. i love the analysis you did, picking apart each of the commissioners. and i'm glad to see that at least YOU still consider hockey one of the four major sports lol
from 3 months ago
When I was a kid (well, not long ago), it was one of the four major sports. Just because there's no more NHL 2Night on ESPN doesn't mean it's no longer a major sport, haha.
The NHL is clearly at a level below the other three sports, but it's clearly a level above every other team sport, so I still include it.
3 months ago
Interesting article, but you must have the most enormous gap between #1 and #2 if you're ranking David Stern 2nd. You completely overlooked the refereeing issues that have been a problem for the NBA more than ever, as well as the complete lack of responsibility he takes for the league's foul ups, not limited to relocation, officiating, and the mass exodus of unproven college players leaving for the NBA thinking they're ready and they're not. Honestly, Goodell is probably the only commissioner who still deserves to be holding his job right now.
from 3 months ago
I disagree with that. Goodell is #1, but he hasn't been around that long. Stern's been around forever, and he's clearly the face of the NBA. Stern isn't perfect, obviously, no commissioner is, but he commands his sport around with a great deal of authority, moreso than Selig or Bettman.
3 months ago
Interesting take on an interesting article. I agree with your rankings however, you completely avoided the steroids issue in baseball. I know it probably would have created more controversy and probably taken away from the what the article was originally meant to be. However, this has been a huge focus in baseball for at least the last 5-6 years.
Maybe Bud Selig's handling of the whole situation may drop him in the rankings, maybe not. In my view, it does because he allowed all of it on his watch in order to get the sport back into what it is today. However, that comes with a hefty price that cannot be overlooked.
Good read though. I enjoyed it.
from 3 months ago
I probably could have touched a little bit more on the steroids issue, but it's all hearsay. Maybe Selig knew a lot and turned a blind eye, maybe he knew nothing, or maybe he had suspicions but didn't have the power to act on them. I think it's the third option. And that's why I did drop him to third. The MLBPA is so strong that it's hard for Selig to do things like that, even as commissioner.
3 months ago
Outstanding and unbiased analysis. It's hard to put each in perspective compared to the others, but I agree with your rankings. Goodell is king, all the rest can sit down.
3 months ago
I definitely think this is the correct order, well done.
3 months ago
Good job. Its something different from the 100 Brett Favre articles.
3 months ago
decent english grammer in this article.
although you were a bit disingenuous about David Stern. Especially regarding the Piston-Pacer Brawl...in terms of the bias and prejudice used against Black players. And also, you were a bit disingenuous on how the NBA used that incident to move quicker in changing it's Face, Appeal, and on-court rules, to cater to us *slower, less-athletic* Caucasoid players/fans in seeking to purge it's inner-city, ghetto appeal.
Also, in keeping with the site's *peculiar culture* of giving Caucasoid players a pass;
you failed to mention the NHL's mishandling of Todd Bertuzzi (who should still be in Prison, as we write, if Caucasoids ever got what we deserved), Klee, or Vaananen for that matter. And let us not forget, the ultimate beneficiary of *the privileges of White-skin* in how, you dropped the ball on mentioning the Leagues' gross-mishandling of Dany Heatley, who's drunken stuper cost a teammate his Life.
And where's Heatley today?
ohhhhhhhh, just...Still skating around, getting paid, on Bettman's watch.
Therefore ----oh yey! way to go Mackenzie! This article was...definitely bleacherreport.com texture, thru&thru!
from 3 months ago
you made a comment about his grammar but misspelled the word..
3 months ago
I sure did, Bob, as I commended his "grammer" while not doing so for my own.
??So, don't lose 'fokus' here, Bob??
You no what I meen?
Since you definitely are one, who stands out, for *peculiarly* posting/giving Caucasoid players 'a pass' for their dead-weight productivity and unbecoming behavior...you no what I meen?
Kind of like you *peculiarly* did here, in order to focus on how I spelled grammar...hmmm
from 3 months ago
Dude, your strange.
from 3 months ago
Good Lord you are annoying. You're like the angry child produced by Scoop Jackson and Jemille Hill. NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT RACE.
from 3 months ago
Ok genius, first off, I believe the word you are looking for is "caucasion" not "caucasoid", next, a majority of professional athletes, with the exception of hockey and baseball players (white hockey/baseball players get ripped to shreds by the way in the media and on this site a lot), are black, so logic would seem to dictate that most negative comments directed towards athletes would be towards black athletes, as are most of the positive ones.
Please do us all a favor and stop making mountains out of molehills, this article had absolutely nothing to do with "caucasoid" players, it dealt with the commisioners. Guys like Vitaly Potapenko and Robert Swift suck, and they are in your words "dead weight caucasoid players" but mentioning them when they have nothing to do with a given topic is absurd and pointless.
David Stern was always an old school guy but that does not make him a rascist and the fact that Heatley was involved in a car accident should not revoke his ability to make a living on the ice idiot. If anything, you are the rascist here because you are clearly functioning under the stereotype that white (and some non-white after looking at Shaun Ahmad's article) writers are rascist. I will admit, I've seen people call black players who didn't deserve the label "thugs" and that is rascist but you are extremely over-sensitive.
3 months ago
While the NFL is the most popular and thus, most powerful, league in the US, Basketball is far more popular than all three sports worldwide. That means that David Stern is probably the most powerful commissioner. His decisions affect the playing of thousands, if not millions, of foreign players whose ultimate goal is to play in the NBA. There are not that as many people growing up in countries like Lithuania, the Congo, Puerto Rico, or China who want to play the other sports as much as they want to play basketball.
from 3 months ago
If you want to look at it in an international perspective, you have a point, Stern might be #1. Argentines don't dream of being in the NFL. Still, in the USA, where I focused this article, the NFL is so far ahead that it's hard for anyone but Goodell to be #1.
3 months ago
It's sad how Bettman is deluded thinking that the NHL can thrive and become as popular as the other three leagues with him at the helm. When he takes the sport away from the fans that really understand the game in Canada, they the sport is going to not get as much coverage. When you put teams where there are fans that don't know what the sport is, then you're not aiming to be a successful league.
Bettman needs to go. And fast.
3 months ago
T.J.
Why do you consider becoming "strange" for a change, and focus MORE on Caucasoid player's shortcomings, than you do, on Black player's shortcomings...you would be definitely be "strangely" out of the line with the current posting culture you help exude here at bleacherreport.com
3 months ago
Can we edit the list and put the commish of the WWE, MLS, World Lawn Bowling League, National Model Air Plane Racing Association and the commissioner of the World Strongest Man Competition all ahead of Gary Bettman!
I absolutely hate this guy and give him no credit. There is no way he should still have a job! He has done nothing but ruin our game.
That's just my 3 cents.
3 months ago
It may be too early to tell, but Roger Goodell seems to me not up to the job. he does not know how to handle situations. His inability to come to final conclusions and stand behind his decisions allows stories to linger for days, weeks, months. His personal conduct policy is not working, as NFL players are getting in trouble at the same rate as before. Also, take Pacman Jones, instead of issuing a punishment for an off the field act, Goodell chooses to use this open ended punishment, that allows the negative story to stay in the news for months. I think Stern's arrogance is his downfall, but he yields absolute power in the NBA. You saw Goodell get pushed around during Spygate, something that never would have happened to Stern. Selig is a joke and he finishes third only by default.
from 3 months ago
It's too early to say anything about Goodell's personal conduct policy. It takes some time to figure out what kind of impact it will have. Most of these guys getting in trouble were already in the league before Goodell, and his threats have already helped cause the Bengals release Odell Thurman and Chris Henry, the Titans trade Pacman, and the Bears dump Tank Johnson and Cedric Benson. If the players won't clean up their own acts, hopefully the teams will stop giving them jobs.
3 months ago
Great article with great points. I was going to write a similar article but have the complete opposite rankings - mine was going to have a different spin, not based completely on power, but on effectiveness, and why I think Bettman is #1 not by anything he has done, but by the actions of the commissioners and the other leagues.
3 months ago
One other comment which I meant to put in my comment above. In terms of popularity and revenue generators, its the NFL, NCAA Football, NASCAR, then NCAA basketball, and they dwarf the rest by a lot. It may be time to include other sports in the "big" category
from 3 months ago
I don't want to include college sports because the players don't get paid. NASCAR could count, but since I don't watch it, and I don't know enough about it to really write about it to be honest. Plus, it doesn't seem to be as much of a team sport. I understand that people work on the car, people work in the pits, people drive the car, and people tell the driver what to do, so there is a lot of a team aspect, but it's still completely different than these four sports.
from 3 months ago
thats cool, good points
3 months ago
Bettman is the worst by far!!!
http://www.FireBettman.com
3 months ago
Great stuff! Really enjoyed it!
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