WE HAVE A UNIQUE POSITION TO HAVE AN EVENT ON SUNDAY THAT WILL BRING THE WORLD TOGETHER.

a unique position to have an event on Sunday that will bring the world together. They will have an opportunity to be entertained, feel good about what we’re doing, and that’s something that we feel very proud of.”

Honestly, the gumption of this man.

Football will heal the world! If only we had thought of asking football to do it sooner, before things got so far off the rails.

Goodell was only echoing something he had said earlier, in response to a question from a reporter from Mexico, who had asked if the NFL might be able to build bridges with his country instead of, you know, “other things.” (That got a laugh.) and with protests breaking out at airports and stories of children being detained and countless other big businesses taking positions on the issue one way or the other, Goodell’s official NFL stance is: we are going to play a football game and that’ll help.

It is, at least, of a piece with the thoughts on the issue provided by other big NFL names this week.

Which is to say, no thoughts at all. New England coach Bill Belichick, a noted supporter of Donald Trump, was asked Monday about the president and the travel ban. “I’m focused on the Atlanta Falcons,” he said.

He was asked a followup. “I’m focused on Atlanta.” There was no third try.

Over at his own podium, Tom Brady, who had very much invited Trump-related scrutiny on himself during the election campaign with a Make America Great Again hat in his locker and a continued public support of someone he considers a friend, batted away Trump questions by insisting he wasn’t in Houston to talk politics and that he only wanted to focus on the “positive” aspects of the Super Bowl.

Those questions were conveniently left out of the transcripts provided by the NFL to the assembled media.

They were only ever intended to be partial transcripts, the NFL has said, which is fair, but it is quite a coincidence that all the Trump-related questions have been expunged from the record.

It is an odd thing to be visiting the United States at this point in time. There seem to be fresh controversies every few minutes and the news is awash with people who are either dumbstruck with grief or angry that others feel that way.

Is it too much to expect that the NFL, a global business that is trying to make inroads in Europe and Mexico, might have something to say about the upheaval at home? Brady and Belichick, at least, have the excuse of not wanting to create “distractions” during Super Bowl week.

Goodell, though, has no locker-room to disrupt. Asked about the issue of the day, he threw his arms around the NFL and it said it was just about a football game.

It felt like he decided to be intentionally small. Not unlike, these days, his country.