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Tom Brady working for Fox and co-owning the Las Vegas Raiders is not a conflict of interest despite outrage over him juggling the two roles, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has claimed.
The iconic quarterback reignited the controversy surrounding his $375million deal with Fox last week when he was seen watching the Raiders' game against the Los Angeles Chargers from his team's coaching booth at Allegiant Stadium.
Given he is also a broadcaster, which now allows him to attend production meetings and pick up nuggets of information, NFL fans and execs alike have fumed that Brady is handing Las Vegas an unfair advantage.
Yet according to Goodell, teams are not obliged to disclose any information they believe could be exploited in those production meetings, which means there is no conflict of interest at play.
'Teams have the right to say whatever they want to. They don't have to disclose any information if they think it's a conflict of interest,' the NFL chief told CNBC's Alex Sherman.
'Teams don't need to say anything. Sometimes they don't say anything to somebody who's not [a minority owner]. We get a lot of former players that are in [broadcast meetings] that are close to their former teams. I think our teams are pretty smart about saying, "I'm not sharing something with him."
Tom Brady working for Fox is not a conflict of interest, says NFL commissioner Roger Goodell
Goodell explained how teams are not obliged to share any crucial information with Brady
'Where's the conflict?' he continued. 'He's not hanging around in the facilities. We don't allow that.'
When he acquired a minority stake in the Raiders last year, NFL chiefs imposed strict rules on Brady's role with Fox, including barring him from production meetings or visiting other teams' facilities.
Those restrictions have been loosened slightly this season, with the seven-time Super Bowl winner now present in production meetings. But he is still unable to attend team facilities.
Amid the fury over his apparent conflict of interest, Brady hit back at those claims in a bizarre rant on Wednesday; suggesting that anyone who believes he is breaking rules suffers from 'paranoia and distrust'.
'I love football. At its core it is a game of principles. And with all the success it has given me, I feel I have a moral and ethical duty to the sport; which is why the point where my roles in it intersect is not actually a point of conflict, despite what the paranoid and distrustful might believe,' he said in his latest 'The 199' newsletter. 'Rather, it’s the place from which my ethical duty emerges: to grow, evolve, and improve the game that has given me everything.'
Brady then added: 'I believe that if I do my job as a broadcaster the right way, as best as I know how to do it, with passion and openness, with a helpful, positive, optimistic mindset, the result will be more informed fans who grow to love football the way I do. Fans who understand the game better. Fans who come to identify, appreciate, and expect the kind of we-first team play that was a central part of my success as a player and a key factor in the joy I got out of the game.
The Raiders co-owner was seen watching their game in Vegas last week in the coaching booth
'If I can bring my knowledge and experience to bear inside the Raiders organization to ensure there’s one more team that does things the right way; and then I can apply it in the booth so millions of people know and enjoy what the right way looks like—then I will have lived up to the expectations I have for myself, and I will have done so in service of a much greater duty. One that I believe every person involved with pro football shares, whether they know it or not.'
Brady then ripped into the viewers accusing him of a conflict of interest once more, stressing that it 'shows you their worldview and how they operate'.
'When you live through uncertain and untrusting times like we are today, it is very easy to watch a person’s passions and profession intersect, and to believe you’re looking at some sort of dilemma. Because when you’re blinded by distrust, it’s hard to see anything other than self-interest,' the 48-year-old continued.
'People who are like that, particularly to a chronic, pathological degree, are telling on themselves. They’re showing you their worldview and how they operate. They’re admitting that they can only conceive of interests that are selfish; that they cannot imagine a person doing their job for reasons that are greater than themselves. (These kinds of people make horrible teammates, by the way.)
'But there are millions of great human beings out there whose actions are guided by a purpose greater than themselves, by duty and integrity.'
Brady (pictured with Las Vegas majority owner Mark Davis) has hit out at 'paranoid' viewers
Towards the end of the newsletter, Brady claimed there is 'a strange phenomenon that occurs when people judge the motivations of others or the meanings of things that they don’t fully understand.'
'They fill their gap in knowledge with worst-case scenario thinking and negative assumptions. There is rarely any benefit of the doubt. There is no discipline to “have no opinion,” as Marcus Aurelius would say, about things you don’t understand or can’t control, but trigger your emotions nonetheless. I don’t know what it is about judgmental people, but their judgments never seem to be positive or optimistic,' he argued.
'The solution to that problem, ironically, is the same for paranoia and distrust. It’s doing your job with integrity. It’s finding fulfillment in doing the best you can. It’s living up to the duty you have to yourself, to your employer, to your family, to the culture, to your fellow citizens. It’s educating yourself and filling your knowledge gaps not with assumptions and judgments, but with facts and figures.'
He also shared the newsletter on his Instagram story and wrote: '199 newsletter just went out! It's an important one I took my time writing!'
