ROGER DODGER
Goodell avoids tricky topics
When it was announced that Roger Goodell had moved his Super Bowl news conference from the traditional Friday morning to Wednesday afternoon, it was assumed the NFL commissioner simply wanted his annual pantsing to get less attention.
He needn’t have bothered. While it’s true reporters were busy with things mid-week they wouldn’t have been on Friday, when the teams themselves are no longer available, the questions were the type Goodell is by now quite used to combating. There were several on Tom Brady’s ball-deflation suspension — “we have a disagreement,” Goodell said — and a bunch on franchise movement regarding San Diego, St. Louis and Las Vegas. Goodell did his best to sound genuinely sad to be leaving the former two cities without mentioning that the motives for the relocations, and a pending one from Oakland, were about very rich people trying to become more rich.
Goodell also managed to keep a straight face when a planted question from a young girl about fitness was asked. Why yes, the commissioner said, the NFL believes very much in youth fitness. Thanks for asking.
None of this was surprising.
There was one moment, though, when the commissioner had a chance to say something significant, when he might have followed the lead of so many others in the sports world in recent days who have expressed concern about a new U.S. president leading a country that is uncommonly divided. Instead, he punted. One supposes this shouldn’t have been surprising, either.
Did the NFL have any thoughts on the temporary refugee travel ban, Goodell was asked.
“We are aware of the conversations that are going on and the divisions,” Goodell said. “As commissioner of the NFL, I’m singularly focused on the Super Bowl right now.”
And then this: “We have 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.)
“One of the things that we truly believe in our hearts is that the NFL really does bond communities together and it can be a bridge in that way,” Goodell said. “It unites people. We are going to see that this weekend with the Super Bowl: Millions of people are going to tune in and they are going to celebrate and they are going to forget about other things for at least a short period of time. They are going to focus on having fun and being entertained by the Super Bowl, and that’s something we’re proud of.”
So in response to one of the more difficult periods in recent memory, with the United States sealing its borders to people based on their place of birth, if not explicitly their religion, and with protests breaking out at airports and stories of children being detained and countless other 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 Patriots head 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 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 said it was just about a football game. It felt like he decided to be intentionally small — not unlike, these days, his country.
We have a unique position to have an event on Sunday that will bring the world together.