AMERICA AT LARGE:Recent history has disabused American fans of the comfortable fiction that sports commissioners are independent-minded, writes GEORGE KIMBALL

ON MONDAY afternoon, in a federal courtroom in Minneapolis, US district judge Susan Richard Nelson bitch-slapped the National Football League and its owners when she issued an injunction ordering an immediate end to the labour dispute that had paralysed the league for the past seven weeks.

Coming as it did on the eve of the annual NFL draft, which gets under way in New York this evening, Nelson’s ruling seemingly paved the way for a return to business-as-usual, although in practice it was anything but that. In several cities, players reporting to team headquarters were told that weight rooms and other conditioning facilities were closed.

Although a directive from the commissioner’s office advised that “if a player comes to the facility, he will be treated courteously and with respect”, the league privately circulated an advisory urging coaches to avoid contact with any players who did show up.

Lawyers representing the owners had requested an expedited stay of the injunction, and simultaneously sought relief from the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that Nelson had exceeded her jurisdiction.

The former is unlikely to make much headway, since Judge Nelson will rule on the motion, probably as early as today, and is unlikely to grant a stay freezing her own order. And since the appellate process will probably take until at least late summer, the question of how free-agent signings and the opening of training camps will be affected remains unresolved.

You sort of have to wonder what it is about the word “immediate” that seems ambiguous to the owners, who appeared to spend the first 48 hours of the injunction thumbing their noses at the judge. They seem to be justifying their foot-dragging recalcitrance on their requested stay of the order, but as one players’ association spokesman pointed out yesterday, “just because you’ve requested a stay doesn’t mean there is a stay”.

But the landmark ruling did have at least two immediate consequences.

One is that public sentiment, which had for the past seven weeks consisted largely of “a plague on both their houses”, saw a wholesale shift to support of the players’ position. For sports fans who had been largely confused by the NFLPA’s decertification tactic and bamboozled by the doublespeak offered up by the NFL hierarchy, the good guys and the bad guys had now identified themselves.

The other immediate effect was that Commissioner Roger Goodell dropped all pretence of serving as an honest broker in the dispute and revealed himself as little more than an apologistic lackey for the owners.

In an interview with ESPN, Goodell, at times appearing to be on the verge of tears, dissembled about those who would “attack the essence of what made our game so successful . . . As commissioner, I need to do everything I can to protect the game for our fans.”

Like what? Not playing the 2011 season?

Recent history has disabused American fans of the comfortable fiction that sports commissioners are independent-minded men determined to act in the best interests of the game they are charged with overseeing, although that was precisely the brief of the first man to hold such a position – Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who took office back in 1921.

At the time baseball was reeling from a crisis of confidence. Gamblers had bribed players to arrange the outcome of the 1919 World Series, and the integrity of the entire sport was at an all-time low. Landis demanded, and was granted, unprecedented power to rule as he saw fit, and acted as judge, jury and executioner in a draconian reign.

Eight Chicago players he deemed complicit in the “Black Sox” scandal were barred for life, as were several other subsequent transgressors over the course of his 24-year administration.

His iron-fisted rule was sort of the Roaring Twenties version of the autocracy exemplified today by Fifa Reichsführer Sepp Blatter.

Landis had come to national prominence for a landmark trust-busting ruling in which he cut Standard Oil down to size, and he is so revered today for his allegedly even-handed administration of justice that few seem to recall he was also the federal judge who presided over Jack Johnson’s conviction under the Mann Act, or that he, almost single-handedly, successfully resisted the integration of the sport over which he presided for a quarter of a century. The Dodgers signed Jackie Robinson less than a year after Landis’ death.

Landis’ successors as commissioner have been out-of-work politicians (former Sen AB “Happy” Chandler), retired military heroes (Lt Gen William “Spike” Eckert), baseball PR men (Ford Frick) and even the former president of Yale University, A Bartlett Giamatti, who died within a year of assuming office.

Over the past quarter-century, the baseball owners twice banded together to drive from office commissioners who exhibited independent streaks, and 20 years ago they abandoned any pretence of integrity by handing the office to one of their own. For the first several years of his administration, Bud Selig served as “acting commissioner” while simultaneously owning the Milwaukee Brewers. (Hey, for a couple of years, Kenesaw Mountain Landis continued to moonlight on the federal bench while he was commissioner.)

Selig eventually sold his interest in the Brewers and accepted the full-time commissionership, for which he is paid some €11 million a year.

Not once has he taken a position that would undermine the confidence of his former colleagues.

The NFL never seriously concerned itself with the appearance of impropriety in determining its commissioners. The first two were former sportswriters who had crossed over to the dark side by taking public relations jobs with member teams (the Eagles’ Bert Bell and the Rams’ Pete Rozelle), and the last two have been league lawyers promoted from within the ranks, Paul Tagliabue and Goodell.

But given the chaos attending today’s labour situation (and with the shadow of a threatened NFL-style lockout looming for the National Basketball Association – about 10 seconds after this year’s play-offs have concluded), it would seem the need is more crying than ever for a return to the template of a strong, independent commissioner, beholden to neither labour nor management.

The long-term solution shouldn’t rest on trying to bludgeon an owners’ stooge like Goodell into obeying a court order from the likes of Judge Susan Richard Nelson, but in appointing someone like Susan Richard Nelson – and perhaps even Susan Richard Nelson herself – to be NFL Commissioner.