Every Day Is Sunday
How Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell Turned the NFL into a Cultural & Economic Juggernaut
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times Notable Book of 2025 - One of Barnes & Noble's Best Sports Books of 2025
From veteran New York Times Business & NFL reporter, Ken Belson, a deeply-reported account of how the NFL’s Commissioner, Roger Goodell, and its two most powerful owners, Jerry Jones & Robert Kraft, turned the league into a cultural phenomenon.
On February 11, 2024, NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, & the league’s two most powerful owners, Jerry Jones & Robert Kraft, looked down at the spectacle before them. What they saw was the sport’s championship game, the Super Bowl—now a de facto national holiday—being played in a shiny new $2B stadium, home to the first franchise based in Las Vegas, after the league’s embrace of nationwide gambling. The moment was over 30 years in the making. As one of Goodell's colleagues said: “Roger doesn’t view the other leagues as competition. He wants to be mentioned with Disney and the Vatican, these massive institutions.”
In Every Day is Sunday, Ken Belson traces the evolution of the league from “one of the four US professional sports,” to the superpower it is today. Belson illustrates how the league’s rise coincided with the arrival of Jones & Kraft in the early 90’s. He provides an inside look on how these two men reshaped the league, taking readers into the secretive owner’s meeting, how they decided Goodell was the right man to place as Commissioner, and how the three built, wielded, and held on to their collective power.
Perfect for fans of The Dynasty and Big Game, Belson provides a unique peek behind the curtain of how America’s favorite sport achieved its status—and how these three men let nothing stand in their way.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
New York Times reporter Belson (Hello Kitty) offers a candid history of how NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft turned the NFL into an immensely profitable institution. The NFL brought in $23 billion in 2024, Belson notes, making it "essentially a Fortune 500 company masquerading as a sports League." Today, NFL games attract huge television audiences, the Super Bowl is a "de facto national holiday," and the teams play in billion-dollar stadiums. None of this was inevitable, Belson argues. The NFL was relatively small until the 1990s, when sponsorships and television packages shot up revenue. Jones and Kraft, who bought their teams in 1989 and 1994, respectively, were eager for success and built the Cowboys and Patriots into two of sports' most valuable franchises through aggressively marketing. In 2006, they backed Goodell to be the next commissioner, who went on to cut record-setting deals with networks and sponsors. Belson adeptly analyzes controversies during Goodell's tenure, including a class action lawsuit from thousands of players alleging the NFL lied about the risks of repeated hits to the head. He skewers the league's response, writing that the NFL was "at its most bloodless, sidestepping a major controversy by throwing money at the problem." This eye-opening report bares all.
