We already knew that Roger Goodell could deliver a speech with the requisite gravitas.
Every year at the Super Bowl, continuing a tradition established by his predecessors Pete Rozelle and Paul Tagliabue, the commissioner of the National Football League offers a state of the game address, and then answers a few questions from the floor.
They are tame affairs, whatever controversies the league might be facing tamped down by the hype of the championship game, and in that context Goodell has always managed to look and sound the way an NFL commissioner is supposed to look and sound – presidential, in control, the master of the most successful sports entertainment business on the planet, above the fray.
On Friday afternoon, at least after he got to the end of his script, Goodell didn’t sound like that at all.
Instead, he sounded like someone trying to baffle an audience with buzzwords and BS who was not nearly up to the task.
To be fair, these are unique times for the NFL – albeit unique times that to a significant degree are Goodell’s creation.
But with a specific and obvious mandate — to calm the waters and push back criticism of his handling of the Ray Rice affair and subsequent scandals, to placate sponsors, reassure fans, and especially create a diversion until focus naturally returns to the product on the field – Goodell seemed way over his head.
He still can’t explain how it is that Rice received only a two game suspension following the release of the first video showing him dragging his unconscious girlfriend out of an elevator. He still can’t explain how TMZ was able to obtain the second video, showing Rice knocking his girlfriend out with a punch, but the NFL’s crack investigative unit failed to do so.
He denies unequivocally the AP report that a copy of the second video was in fact received and viewed by someone at the league office – which lined up with reports by NFL "insiders" over the summer. He says law enforcement officials refused to turn it over to the league, and can’t explain why police have said there were no requests to see it.
He says there was something "incomplete" in the way Rice initially described the incident when questioned by the league – though the Rice camp says that’s not true, never mind the fact that the assault was detailed in the criminal charges filed against Rice, and those details were reported by at least one NFL "insider" over the summer.
Nothing in Goodell’s press conference performance will erase suspicions of a Nixonian cover up. In fact, his attempt to explain away the apparent conflict of interest in having former FBI director Robert Mueller – who works for a law firm with long and deep ties to the NFL – handling the "independent" investigation, was eerily reminiscent of Tricky Dick.
And nothing in Goodell’s press conference performance explained his tin ear when it comes to domestic violence, especially compared to the uncompromising heavy hand the commissioner has taken on a wide range of other issues, from Bountygate, to recreational drug use, to uniform code violations.
Instead, Goodell threw out the kind of stuff politicians do when they want to rag the puck, lull their audience into a stupor, push uncomfortable matters to the back burner, and wait for attention to naturally shift elsewhere. When in doubt, strike a committee or establish a commission.
The same words kept coming up over and over again: "panel of experts;" "policy and procedures;" "fair process."
Feel your eyelids getting heavy? That’s the idea.
Goodell did apologize for making a mistake – singular – in handing out Rice’s original suspension, though he clearly believes he deserves a mulligan. And he seemed not at all concerned that he might be losing the support of his employers, the 32 NFL owners, or that league sponsors might be ready to take their money elsewhere.
Truth is, on the latter points, he might be right.
Had the second video never been made public, Ray Rice would be back playing football right now, there would be little or no public protest, and the other domestic violence cases involving NFL players would have been largely ignored by the press and the fans, as they have been in the past (though the Adrian Peterson child abuse charges, given his superstar status, given the horrific photos, would surely not have disappeared so easily…).
We’ll see what happens now. Roger Goodell was hoping to close the Ray Rice file yesterday. Instead, it remains wide open, with its key questions unanswered, and with the NFL shield tarnished, if not dented. The question hanging in the air is whether the outrage, and the desire to know the truth, will still be there after a few more kickoffs.
The NFL is betting it won’t be – and winning or losing that gamble will determine whether Goodell is still around to make his Super Bowl speech next February.