Can anyone tell me when the American people ratified the NFL as a governing entity?
If the NFL has not been ratified as a legal government then they can't search you, period. This applies to all businesses and private entities.
That’s simply not the law. You might wish it to be the case and might advocate for the change in the law, but it isn’t the settled law as of the moment nor of the past 200 years.
See eg; United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113 (1984); The right of the people to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures proscribes only governmental action; it is wholly inapplicable “to a search or seizure, even an unreasonable one, effected by a private individual not acting as an agent of the Government . . .” Walter v. United States, 477 U.S. 649, 662 (1980).
See also: See, e.g., United States v. Hall, 142 F.3d 988, 993 (7th Cir. 1998); United States v. Barth, 26 F. Supp. 2d 929, 932-35 (W.D. Tex. 1998); Commonwealth v. Sodomsky, 2007 PA Super. 369, 939 A.2d 363, 368; People v. Phillips, 805 N.E.2d 667, 673-74 (Ill. App. 2004); United States v. Hall, 142 F.3d 988, 993 (7th Cir. 1998); State v. Horton, 962 So.2d 459, 463-464 (La. App. 2007).