Sen. Charles Goodell and his son, Roger, in 1970.
Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESSOn any given day in 1970, New Yorkers may have run into an 11-year-old boy canvassing the city’s streets. He stuck out his hand and anyone enamored enough to stop got the same pitch.
“I’m Senator Goodell’s son. Please vote for my father.”
Charles Goodell’s reelection campaign would become transformative for that freckled boy. Roger Goodell watched up close as his father and role model, a Republican senator, was ousted because he placed his moral convictions ahead of his political ones. Charles Goodell bucked his party and came out against the Vietnam War.
For 50 years, that moment has hung over the NFL commissioner, who for so long had never been willing to risk his job in that same way.
Inside Goodell’s office, there’s a framed copy of the bill his father—who once led protests, marching alongside the likes of Coretta Scott King—introduced to defund the war. But just two years ago, Roger Goodell tried to stamp out protests inside the NFL, endorsing a short-lived policy that would have banned players from kneeling during the national anthem to call attention to police brutality.
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing, however, people who knew his father say they heard a surprising voice: Charles Goodell’s.
Charles Goodell, marches with Coretta Scott King, center, in Washington. Goodell is to the left of King in the photo.
Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty ImagesIn a league town hall recently, amid national protests against systemic racism and thunderous blowback within his own ranks, Roger Goodell emotionally told employees that the cries for change reminded him of the Vietnam War demonstrations.
Hours later, he released a video admitting the NFL should have listened to its players earlier on the topic of racism and saying that he supports players’ rights to peacefully protest. The pivot put the head of America’s most popular sport at direct odds with America’s president—a position his father might have related to.
“He’s living up to the courage that his father had,” said Pete McCloskey, a former antiwar Republican congressman. “His father had guts.”
“He’d be very proud that Roger took a stand to do what he believed was the right thing to do,” said Tim Goodell, one of the commissioner’s brothers.
Charles Goodell’s views evolved, too. A lawyer and veteran of the Navy and Air Force, Goodell was elected to Congress in 1959, representing some of western New York. He was part of the House that unanimously passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, and he was seen as a bright and up-and-coming Republican leader. When Robert Kennedy was killed in 1968, New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller appointed Goodell to the seat.
That’s also when his ideology went through a major shift. Suddenly, he represented the entire state, replacing a Democrat who was widely popular. People who knew “Charlie” say his thoughts on the war changed the more he met with college students, activists and civil rights leaders.
One of Charles Goodell’s former congressional interns said he would speak to his staff about his concerns over the country’s direction. That same intern soon left the Republican party. Her name was Hillary Clinton. “He was very open to all of these issues,” Clinton once said of her former boss.
But as he began to speak out against the war, one other thing changed: Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968 and there was intense pressure for Goodell to back the war. The Republican party treated joining the antiwar movement as betrayal. Goodell and Mark Hatfield, from Oregon, were the two Republican senators prominently willing to risk that.
Goodell’s break produced a war of words with the White House. Spiro Agnew, Nixon’s vice president, remarked that Charles Goodell was the “Christine Jorgensen of the Republican party”—a reference to a transgender woman who received widespread attention at the time as the recipient of an early sex change operation.
“Agnew’s point, I suppose, was Goodell’s political change was tantamount to that,” said Robert Sachs, a former aide to the senator. “He wasn’t intimidated.”
Charles Goodell deeply entrenched himself in the antiwar cause nevertheless. And the antiwar movement embraced him as a sign that the movement could gain a wider backing. He marched arm-in-arm with King and was invited to give a key address at the second Moratorium to End the Vietnam War in 1969.
“It was very important to not make it a partisan issue, to have as broad of a coalition as possible,” said Sam Brown, one of the march’s organizers. “So Goodell was a really important voice.”
Using that voice had a deep cost: his job. In the 1970 election, party leaders backed Conservative Party candidate James Buckley. Goodell’s children flew to New York on weekends to hang posters and campaign. But Goodell and Democrat Richard Ottinger split the liberal vote. Buckley won with only 39%.
Roger Goodell, age 11, with Charles Goodell during a news conference at the Drake Hotel in New York in 1970.
Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESSThe effect on his children was complicated. “To see the thousands of people marching down Pennsylvania Avenue with us was pretty powerful,” said Tim Goodell. “But it was also very difficult to see your father being attacked by the president and vice president of the United States.”
Charles Goodell later helped lead Gerald Ford’s committee to grant clemency for draft evaders. Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, also hired him as his defense lawyer. Charles Goodell died in 1987. Roger Goodell, who declined to comment for this article, once described his father’s legacy as: “Having the courage to stick to his principles and do what’s right regardless of the consequences.”
The debate Charles Goodell faced half a century ago isn’t so different from the one Roger faces today. Criticizing the war was equated to being unpatriotic. The same debate has polarized NFL player protests during the national anthem against systemic racism.
When Colin Kaepernick launched the movement in 2016, the league tried to quell it. Critics such as President Trump loudly assailed them as disrespectful. Goodell repeatedly said the league cares about the issues but players should stand to honor the flag.
“The current dispute over the national anthem is threatening to erode the unifying power of our game, and is now dividing us, and our players, from many fans across the country,” Goodell wrote in a 2017 memo to owners. “We need to move past this controversy.”
The following offseason, NFL owners approved a rule that would mandate players on the field to stand—with Goodell saying “we believe today’s decision will keep our focus on the game”—only for the policy to get nixed before it was ever implemented.
Roger Goodell speaks to the media during a news conference prior to Super Bowl LIV.
Photo: Cliff Hawkins/Getty ImagesBut the entire national conversation changed in the wake of Floyd’s killing. Goodell’s video—which was generated without the approval of league owners, people familiar with the matter said—found him finally backing the players’ right to protest.
Critics noted that he didn’t mention Kaepernick, who has gone unemployed since the year he started the movement and settled a grievance that alleged the NFL and its teams colluded to keep him unsigned over his political views. Goodell, in an ESPN special Monday, said he would support a team if it were to sign Kaepernick. Meanwhile, some owners have come out and said they would support their players if they choose to kneel and the league committed $250 million over the next 10 years to combat systemic racism.
And Goodell’s new rhetoric now positions him at the center of this national debate in an election year—on the other side, this time, of President Trump, who has resumed tweeting his criticism of kneeling.
His reversal may cause complications. It could also help him resolve familial ones. When Roger Goodell graduated from college, in 1981, he wrote a letter to his father. “If there’s one thing I want to accomplish in life, besides being commissioner of the NFL, it is to make you proud of me,” it said.
“Feel your own pressure,” Charles Goodell wrote back. “Your own is sufficient.”
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Write to Andrew Beaton at andrew.beaton@wsj.com
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