While nuance and 21st century thinking are about as complementary as the ingredients in a serving of lobster ice cream, two seemingly contradictory statements can still be true at the same exact time. On the one hand, Roger Goodell’s plan to rewrite some, if not all, of the NFL’s legacy media contracts before the 2026-27 season kicks off is clearly not coming to fruition; on the other, to say that the league misinterpreted the power of its own leverage is about as daft as putting hunks of giant seabugs in your waffle cone.
Last week, Fox Corp. executive chair and CEO Lachlan Murdoch announced his company would “not be making any amendments to our existing contractual relationship [with the NFL], which extends through the completion of the 2029 season.” In other words, informal conversations between Fox and the NFL had been going on over the last few months, but Murdoch wanted investors to understand that the broadcast flagship intended to wait until the league’s official opt-out clause kicked in after the 2029-30 campaign, rather than get way out ahead of that deadline with a much pricier extension.
As much as it’s feasible that a parallel universe exists in which Fox and the NFL might want to go their separate ways, we happen to reside in a reality where that is not the case. Weird things happen all the time—the Knicks win the NBA title, Mainers blend the meat of clawed crustaceans into their dairy desserts, etc.—but in the particular existential construct we inhabit, there’s a teeny-tiny probability that either partner would come away from a split in better shape than before.
