By Marcus M. Stewart 

Even as the NFL wins the television ratings game by several touchdowns, it continues to be mired in a series of crises that share an underlying cause – a decision process motivated primarily by revenue and profit maximization.

Whether it is player concussions and health, performance-enhancing drugs, or arbitrariness with regard to recent domestic and child abuse sanctions, they are all linked to that mindset.

To be sure, the NFL supports a number of non-profit organizations serving important causes, many with a focus on children. But that is not enough. We have all witnessed the undoing of organizations that became too narrowly motivated by financial gain and a desire for image protection.

Those organizations, too, supported worthy causes and were celebrated for their philanthropy (e.g., Enron). Yet the NFL’s decisions and explanations associated with the most recent spate of physical-abuse, perpetrated on women and children, makes it clear that the greater societal good was not a core value informing the decision-making of league ownership and Commissioner Roger Goodell. This was painfully obvious as well during Goodell’s September press conference – an effort widely panned by some NFL players, fans, and well, just about everyone who watched, for being dispassionate and ringing dreadfully hollow.

Likewise, the league’s meting out of sanctions in cases such as that of Ray Rice was not about the welfare of children, women, or humankind. And it was not about justice. The league has made no secret of its goal to grow itself from $10 billion to $25 billion by 2027 – announced barely six months ago.

The change that the NFL must undertake relates to its core values and culture. This is an extremely difficult endeavor. Typically it takes substantial, or in some cases across-the-board, leadership turnover to successfully achieve culture change; an impossible tactic in the current NFL as league leadership is league ownership.

If maximization of revenue/profit remains the objective, then changes in the organization’s structure and hierarchy, revised player discipline protocols, and the like, will be ineffectual in fostering change – despite what Goodell spelled out at his press conference. League ownership and Goodell will need to determine what else they value, something upon which to base strategies and decisions when issues are encountered – and not only the big, ugly, violent legal infractions, but also the more mundane such as the Super Bowl halftime entertainment segment. Wait for it…going forward the half-time performers will have to pay to play, perhaps even including a portion of subsequent tour revenue.

The core values of the organization establish priorities and provide reference points with which to evaluate the appropriateness of decisions and courses of action. As long as revenue and profit maximization are the true guiding motivation among owners, Goodell, or someone similarly suited, will ultimately just be doing their bidding. Establishing a new organizational structure, putting new people in new positions, and creating new decision protocols will result in nothing more than inconvenient obstacles to navigate at best.

But can this league ownership imagine, or more important, fully commit to something other than a cause rooted in generating personal wealth? Could one stretch so far as to imagine the NFL taking on Anheuser Busch regarding its exploitation of women in its marketing efforts and seeming encouragement of alcohol consumption among minors? Or Nike regarding its exploitation of labor? Or Coca Cola and McDonalds regarding their contributions to a society of increasingly unhealthy people? Or Dunkin Donuts for its promotion of caffeinated beverages among adolescents? And use of Styrofoam cups to boot? It sounds absurd, but those are courses of action (though certainly not the only ones) commensurate with genuine concern for the welfare of humankind in general.

And that it sounds absurd speaks to the severity of the NFL’s challenge. To what other purpose might these 32 franchise owners commit their league?

Mark Cuban famously likened NFL ownership to pigs at the trough (“hoggy”) less than six months ago. With every unsavory event and report, and with every reactionary explanation and news conference the NFL puts out in an effort at damage control, we are seeing more clearly what the NFL is made of and what it is all about -- and it is hard to stomach.  More worrisome for the league is that it is also very hard to sustain.

Marcus M. Stewart, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Management Department at Bentley University.