Goodell Says NFL Is 'Comfortable' With Steve Tisch's Giants Role After Epstein Review

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said Wednesday, Oct. 21, that the league is comfortable with Steve Tisch continuing his work with the New York Giants.

"Everything we've looked at we understand," Goodell said at a news conference after the league's two-day fall owners meeting at a Manhattan hotel. "I think we're comfortable with him participating as the Giants suggest."

Tisch is listed as the team's executive vice president and chairman of the board. He attended the meeting alongside Giants president and CEO John Mara, as Front Office Sports first reported Tuesday.

What the Epstein documents showed

Documents released by the Justice Department earlier this year showed Tisch was in regular contact with Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died in 2019. The email exchanges showed Epstein connecting Tisch with numerous women.

Tisch addressed it in a public statement. "We had a brief association where we exchanged emails about adult women, and in addition, we discussed movies, philanthropy, and investments," he said. "I did not take him up on any of his invitations and never went to his island." He added that Epstein was "a terrible person" and said he deeply regrets the association.

Subsequent press reporting raised questions about whether Epstein was arranging dates for Tisch and whether Tisch used his film industry influence in some exchange of favors. Those remain questions. Goodell has said repeatedly that the league has no evidence of wrongdoing by Tisch.

The ownership transfers

Tisch and his siblings, Jonathan and Laurie Tisch, asked the league in March to move their remaining 23.1% direct stake in the Giants into trusts for their children. Earlier partial transfers were completed in 2023 and 2024. The final transfer was done by September. Carolyn Tisch Blodgett, Laurie Tisch's daughter and a strategic advisor to the Tisch ownership group, said last month that the transfers were "done."

Goodell pointed to those moves in March. The Tisch family members, he said, "did some transactions as part of their estate planning and are no longer owners."

That is accurate as far as direct equity goes. It does not mean Tisch left the building. He sat in the Giants' draft room in April, has been at games, and was in the room with representatives of all 32 teams this week.

The critics

Mike Florio of NBC Sports sees the equity transfer as cosmetic. In his words, Tisch "supposedly has given up his ownership interest in the Giants. He's still acting as if he partially owns the team." Florio wrote that there is "no evidence" the NFL has tried to gather evidence of wrongdoing, and that the league "likely won't" do anything further. He called it possible the league "simply hoped to run out the clock."

A Fox News column took a harsher line, calling the sequence a "Jedi mind trick" and arguing that Tisch's regret over the Epstein association "seems not quite so meaningful anymore" now that he is back at league events.

The league's position runs the other way. Goodell says the NFL looked at the facts, found nothing it considers disqualifying, and left the Giants to decide how Tisch participates. Tisch's own stated position is that he exchanged emails with Epstein, never visited the island, and regrets the connection. No source cited here shows a charge against Tisch or a league finding of misconduct.

The Jed York comparison

The same meeting brought back San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York. The NFL suspended him for six games under its personal conduct policy after he was arrested in Ohio in August in a prostitution-related case and pleaded no contest to two misdemeanors. His suspension ended Tuesday, after the 49ers played their sixth game Monday night.

"We saw a violation and we dealt with it from a discipline standpoint," Goodell said of York. He noted the policy "applies to owners, commissioners, everybody else, players."

The cases differ on the facts. York was arrested and pleaded no contest. Tisch has not been charged with anything, and the question with him is what his emails with Epstein mean, not whether the league applied a penalty.

What comes next

Asked whether the NFL's review of Tisch is ongoing, Goodell gave no yes or no. "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."

That leaves the matter open on one condition. If further Epstein-related material naming Tisch emerges, the league says it will look again. The NFL has not said whether it has interviewed Tisch or collected documents of its own, and no source shows it has.