Tom Brady has decided to stop his Deflategate appeals. No current NFL player bludgeoned a girl friend / baby mamma the past several weeks. No retired NFL players reported post-concussion dementia recently. What can Commissioner Roger Goodell do to earn his $30,000,000 salary? Fear not…. nature and The NFL decry a vacuum. 
Roger The Commissioner is turning his attention to the HBO series – Ballers – starring “The Rock” which is poised to begin its 2nd season. Roger wishes current / former NFLers would NOT appear in cameo roles on the show. Their participation implying, one supposes, that the show too accurately depicts the NFL Lifestyle.
Goodell Concerned re: Ballers – LINK
Ballers is one of umpteen projects that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has going these days. D “TR” J is The #1 Movie Star on Earth based on some formula of his movies’ box-office success and the fees he commands to do them.
In any popularity contest between The Rock and Roger Goodall…. Roger finishes a distant third behind “anybody else”.
FWIW: Blondie and I like D”TR”J. We also like Jason Statham and his similar movie projects. That should not surprise longtime BobLee readers knowing my affinity for RoadHouse and all things Chuck Norris and Rambo-ish.
The former Miami Hurricane / WWE Superstar is a very likable Action Adventure Superstar. He basically plays himself, somewhat with tongue-in-cheek and he is usually the “good guy” vanquishing “bad guys”.
In Ballers D”TR”J plays a recently retired pro footballer trying to start a second career as a Financial Advisor to current players. The show is set in Miami and his former team is assumed to be The Dolphins but NFL marketing rules require a fictional name (The Porpoises??). The reason he retired earlier than he would have preferred was due to too many concussions. Roger likely doesn’t like THAT. 
Dwayne’s character doesn’t know diddly about investments so he has a partner who supposedly does who is the quintessential jock-sniffing weasel. Their MO is for Dwayne to “monetize his relationships” with the players to get them to let him and his jock-sniffing partner have their $$$$ to invest on their behalf…. at a generous fee for doing so of course.
Ballers is on HBO. In the world of cable TV marketing, being on HBO or on Showtime means a whole lot of “T”…. a whole lot of “A” …. and a extra whole lot of F-bombs.
NOTE: The popular Showtime show Ray Donovan – about a LA “fixer” / “knee capper” / “cleaner” – has reached the point in its dialogue that nouns are only used so F-bombs have something to modify. Conversations on Ray Donovan rival a Coach K time-out huddle down by 10 with a minute to play. Very “salty”.
Back to Ballers…. The premise is first / foremost a vehicle for Dwayne to be “The Rock” trying to fit into a Brooks Brothers XXXXL suit and do his eyebrow thingy. Second and equally foremost: A 30 minute Ballers episode is 27 minutes of….
Busty blonde bimbos in itty bitty bikinis on flashy boats and Lambos with lots of Mandingo warriors with their shirts off so all their bling can bling.
Everybody (but Dwayne) is sucking coke up their noses either thru rolled-up Benjamins or out of the navels of the busty bikined bimbos. No one in Ballers has the slightest redeeming attribute except, of course, The Rock because he is – The Rock.
Gee! I can’t imagine why all THAT image would concern Commissioner Roger, can you?
When I saw my first episode of Ballers (for column research purposes, of course) I immediately thought of the movies North Dallas Forty and Semi- 
Tough from the late 70s. Both were movie vehicles highlighting the overtly sybaritic, carnal hedonism pretty much everyone associates with pro sports, especially The NFL and NBA.
North Dallas Forty The Movie came from an expose book by former Cowboy Pete Gent. Semi-Tough was from a Dan Jenkins novel also using a fictional Cowboys team as its setting.
My old Mizzou buddy John “The Tooz” Matuszak was typecast as a giant roided-up wildman with absolutely no redeeming features. Nick Nolte played a wide receiver addicted to pain-killers trying to extend his career game-by-game.
Both of those movies showed pro football (i.e. The NFL) to be a cruel soulless wood-chipper that chews up and spits out players with no regard for anything but what can you do to help us WIN this week. Coaches were heartless jerks and owners even more so.
It was telling that in both NDF and Semi-Tough 90% of the “players” were white ?? This was the late 70s. Carnal hedonism was highlighted with aplenty of bikinied bimbos giggling and jiggling; but alcohol and pain-killers were the drugs of choice back then. I doubt then-Commissioner Pete Rozell was too thrilled with either movie.
In Ballers, ALL the players are Black…. The Rock, the nerdy jock-sniffing weasel, and the bikinied bimbo bunnies on the boats are not Black. All of the “players” (actors) are portrayed in “unflattering” fashion if one was a Commissioner. They are all cheating on their spouses, girl friends, baby mammas and cheerleaders with other spouses, girl friends, baby mammas and cheerleaders…. and an endless flow of strippers / groupies.
They are all cash poor because they throw away their big contracts on all the “toys” that, apparently, all black NFLers must have. Dwayne and the weasel try to grab “their share” of the $$$$ before it goes up their noses or to the bling jewelers, exotic car dealers / boat dealers and divorce lawyers. In Season One they were not too successful.
If there are any negative stereotypes of hedonistic black NFLers that are NOT depicted in Ballers, it is not because producer Mark Wahlberg wasn’t trying.
Other than Russell and The Mannings of course, The NFL Lifestyle as depicted on Ballers probably fits what fans expect…. and, I suppose, envy. What nitwit board monkey doesn’t dream of bimbos and bling? Is Roger’s disapproval of Ballers that it is TOO Realistic?
In The Real NFL there would be at least one white guy – Gronk – with the six bimbos in the hot tub.
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