Today, the National Football League is a multi-billion-dollar enterprise that generates year-round media coverage. Last year, 72 of the top 100 most-watched U.S. television broadcasts were NFL games. But that has not always been the case. 

In his new book, “Every Day Is Sunday: How Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell turned the NFL into a Cultural & Economic Juggernaut,” New York Times business reporter Ken Belson explores the history of the modern NFL. The following is an edited transcript of his conversation with “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal. 

Kai Ryssdal: Could we just start with a with a fairly simple proposition, I suppose, for those Americans who aren't tuned into the NFL and aware of it and fans of football: Why does the NFL matter to, like, the wider American economy?

Ken Belson: Well, the NFL has kind of an outsized influence. It's roughly $23 billion-a-year as a business, somewhere in the order of 75 of the most watched television shows are football games every year. Their reach into our culture has broadened with the spread of gambling. So they are becoming a 365-day-a-year enterprise. The (NFL) commissioner, Roger Goodell, he often, I have a colleague of his quoted in the book who said he's not worried about the NBA or major league baseball, he sees the NFL as Disney and the Vatican.

Ryssdal: That's quite a reach — I'm just saying.

Belson: Yeah, well, it's a family-friendly media company, which also happens to be a cultural institution.

Ryssdal: The thing about it, just to get down to sort of business model brass tacks, is that the NFL has a supply chain problem, right? There's only X number of games, and because it is such a physical game, it's not going to be able to expand too much more. Of course, you know, there used to be 12, back when I was a kid. Now it's, you know, the season is 18 weeks. How are they maximizing the product with this sort of necessary restriction on the number of times that these guys can play?

Belson: Yeah, it's an interesting dilemma they face. I mean, the regular season is pretty much crammed into the fourth quarter of the year. At the same time, they do have a supply chain problem insofar as the way that people are coming up through the pipeline. The concussion crisis, for instance, has turned a lot of parents away from putting their sons in tackle football at 6 years old, or 8, 10, 12 years old. So there are issues that they face, and that's one of the reasons they're looking overseas for new fans.

Ryssdal: I want to talk for a second about that concussion crisis, CTE, and what that has meant for players, for the players’ families. It has been and still is an enormous challenge for the league — it's a public relations problem — and you point out that they've kind of dealt with it not unlike Big Tobacco has dealt with some of its problems.

Belson: Yeah, the league made a lot of missteps early on. Paul Tagliabue was quoted as saying, that this was a ‘pack journalism’ problem, but, you know, he set up a committee to study the issue, and that committee, back in the ‘90s, was putting out junk research. That's the overlap with the tobacco industry. But when Roger Goodell came in, he realized this was more than an image problem; this was an existential problem. So I have, in one of the chapters, I cite quite a few documents that were uncovered in depositions where you can actually see how the NFL pivoted around 2010-11, trying to change the narrative. ‘Let's get safer helmets. Let's teach kids how to tackle safely. Let's put some neurologists on the sidelines. Let's improve the concussion protocols.’ And in large part, a lot of the media moved on, even though the game itself hasn't changed fundamentally, the marketing around it has, I guess I would say, improved.

Ryssdal: Just to sort of keep going on this point, and it's really important not to minimize this. There's a race problem with the NFL as well, right? There's the whole Colin Kaepernick thing, and the rules literally were changed so that you can't kneel during the national anthem. Black players have been compensated at lower rates for their CTE issues. I mean, it's not like this is a benign issue that the NFL has.

Belson: Yeah, the NFL has struggled with this in various ways over the years, and this goes back many years. You know, the basic fact is, roughly 70% of the players in the NFL are players of color, and 70% of the fans are white. So when you had the kneeling issue, it brought strong reactions, including from the President. The NFL has tried to pivot around this in Trump 2.0. They invited the President to the Super Bowl this year, but yes, it's been a constant problem. You referenced race-norming. There was a case brought during COVID by some former players, Black players, who discovered that their claims for dementia were denied, and they claimed that Black players were discriminated against. The NFL ultimately changed its rules, and many of those players subsequently received cash awards. 

Ryssdal: You've been covering the NFL now for 15 years you said, before we turned on the microphone. My question is, are you still a fan of the game? Do you? I mean, yes, you have to cover it and all this. But do you like to watch the games?

Belson: That's an interesting question. A lot of sports reporters will tell you they “just root for a good game,” just to have something interesting to write about. You know, it's a bit of a guilty pleasure. I've unfortunately — or fortunately, depending on your point of view — sat with some of these players who are just incredibly diminished, and their families are left taking care of them. It's a violent game, let's face it, and they're doing it for our entertainment. They get paid for it, of course, but there's something sort of sadly poetic about how some of these guys end up and and that's hard to shake, to be honest with you.