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October 22, 2026

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At this week’s NFL owners meeting, commissioner Roger Goodell said the league is “comfortable” with Giants executive Steve Tisch participating in NFL-related activities despite his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Goodell was also unfazed by ongoing civil unrest in France, telling reporters the league is making “appropriate arrangements” ahead of Sunday’s Steelers-Saints game in Paris. But he wouldn’t comment on a report that Jay-Z will perform at the Super Bowl.

—Mark Maske

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Goodell Addresses Steve Tisch, Paris Concerns, NFL Officiating

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NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said Wednesday that the league is “comfortable” with Giants executive Steve Tisch participating in NFL-related activities as the team chooses.

Tisch, who is listed as the team’s EVP and chairman of the board, was on hand for the two-day meeting of the league’s team owners at a Manhattan hotel that concluded Wednesday, as Front Office Sports first reported Tuesday.

That’s after the league and Goodell said during Super Bowl week in February that the NFL would look into Tisch’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died in 2019.

“Everything we’ve looked at, we understand,” Goodell said at a news conference Wednesday. “I think we’re comfortable with him participating as the Giants suggest.”

Goodell was asked whether the NFL’s review of Tisch is ongoing.

“I think always we’ll look to see if there’s any new information,” he said. “We’ll look at it and we’ll evaluate that.”

Documents released by the Department of Justice in February showed that Tisch was in regular contact with Epstein. Email exchanges in the released documents showed Epstein connected Tisch with numerous women.

The NFL informed teams in March that Tisch and his siblings, Jonathan Tisch and Laurie Tisch, were transferring their remaining ownership shares into trusts for their children.

Carolyn Tisch Blodgett, Steve Tisch’s niece, said at last month’s FOS Asset Class event that those transfers were “done.” She is Laurie Tisch’s daughter and is a strategic advisor to the Tisch ownership group of the Giants.

Giants owner John Mara also attended this week’s meeting in New York.

So, too, did 49ers owner Jed York. His six-game suspension by the NFL for violating the personal conduct policy, imposed after York was arrested in Ohio in August in a prostitution-related case and pleaded no contest to two misdemeanors, ended Tuesday. The 49ers played their sixth game of the season Monday night.

“I think we went through a full process, obviously, to understand the facts, understand the issues, looked at it under the context of our personal conduct policy, which … applies to owners, commissioners, everybody else, players,” Goodell said Wednesday. “And it’s something that we feel strongly about. I think we need to represent ourselves and our organizations properly. We saw a violation and we dealt with it from a discipline standpoint. That’s concluded now and so he’ll be back representing the 49ers.”

Goodell Headed to Paris

Goodell said he was leaving soon for Paris for the Steelers-Saints game there Sunday. The NFL has said it is proceeding with the game as scheduled despite the recent civil unrest and violence in France.

“I think we’ll deal with that,” Goodell said. “We’re involved at the highest levels, both in France on a global basis [and] with our officials here in the United States, including I had a conversation with the secretary of state a couple days ago. So we’re continuing to make sure we have all the available information, make sure the appropriate steps are being made. We’re guests in the country. We’re going to be good guests. We’re going to do our thing. And I’m confident they’re going to do theirs. So we look forward to it. I’m leaving shortly to go [there] myself.”

The NFL will have a heightened security presence around the game, league executive Peter O’Reilly said Tuesday.

“Very high is my comfort level,” Goodell said Wednesday. “Again, we’ve made all the preparations. We’ve been in touch with the appropriate authorities. Protests are not unusual in France, as you know. And that’s something that we will be aware of and make sure that the appropriate arrangements are made.”

No Jay-Z Confirmation

Goodell did not confirm a report by Puck News that Jay-Z will be the Super Bowl halftime performer.

Jay-Z’s Roc Nation organizes the halftime show as part of its partnership with the NFL.

“I am not aware of a leak,” Goodell said. “I’ve been in the committee meetings. So I’m not sure it’s a leak. We haven’t announced anything. Until we do, we won’t make any comment on that.”

Deeper Look at Officiating

As some observers complain about the number of penalty flags being thrown during games this season, Goodell said he does not draw a correlation between the frequency of penalties and the quality of the officiating.

“Number of fouls can’t be an evaluation of officiating, necessarily, because we don’t commit the fouls, right?” Goodell said. “The officials are there to call the fouls. So I think when you evaluate officiating, you don’t look at it just in total number of fouls. I think that’s an inappropriate way to approach it. … So we look more deeply at: Are they properly called?”

Turning Soccer’s Moment Into Momentum

The 2026 World Cup brought unprecedented attention to soccer across North America, but for Major League Soccer, the bigger opportunity is what comes next as the league continues to sustain historically high fan demand. With record growth across attendance, viewership, social, digital engagement, player investment, and fan acquisition, MLS is entering its next chapter with momentum that extends well beyond the tournament.

For brands, that creates an opportunity to build lasting connections with a young, diverse, and increasingly engaged fan base. Chime is among those betting on that trajectory, using its MLS partnership to connect with fans through tentpole events, player-led storytelling, community activations and experiences designed to make the brand part of the culture surrounding the league.

Read the full article.

ONE BIG FIG

Capture the Flagg

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$13.26 million

That’s the combined estimated value of three Rookie NBA Debut Patch Autograph trading cards acquired by PrizePicks and now being made available through its digital pack-ripping business. The headliner is a Cooper Flagg card that last month sold for a record $8.04 million. The other two cards are Dylan Harper and Kon Knueppel, with estimated values of $2.88 million and $2.34 million, respectively.

Through PrizePicks Packs, users can try their luck at pulling any of the three cards, even with a $1 pack. The platform offers nine pricing tiers, ranging from $1 to $2,500, with higher-priced packs offering better odds of landing high-value cards. If a user wins the Flagg, Harper, or Knueppel cards, they can either have the physical cards shipped to their doorstep or sell them back to PrizePicks for fair market value.

DAILY SPORTS TRIVIA

Can you rank the top five NHL players by highest career plus/minus?

LOUD AND CLEAR

Trading Away Talent

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“[They] just believe they’re not going to be able to afford these players and so they try and extract as much value out of them as they can.”

—ESPN MLB insider Jeff Passan, in an interview with Front Office Sports’s Ryan Glasspiegel, referring to teams “like the Brewers or even like the Rays” trading soon-to-be free agents rather than re-signing them. Milwaukee, for instance, finds itself facing former ace Freddy Peralta in the World Series after trading him to the Mets in the offseason.

Passan believes this turnover strategy is frustrating to fans who want their teams to compete. “It’s not necessarily that the Dodgers and the Mets are specifically spending that much more money than everyone else.” But Passan thinks “both the Rays and the Brewers could have larger payrolls,” especially if a payroll floor were instituted as part of the league’s push for a salary cap. Those discussions will animate upcoming labor talks, with the MLB Players Association able to point to the success of lower-spending teams like Milwaukee and Tampa Bay as a reason against instituting a hard salary cap.