During the marathon Super Bowl pregame show, Tom Brady spoke to NBC's Bob Costas for a direct interview about one of the more humiliating moments of his career. The President of the United States held a sit-down (well, stand-up in the White House kitchen) interview. But NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, the man in charge of this entire enterprise, the face of an organization that's taken more hits this past season than a Jacksonville quarterback, declined the opportunity to speak.
You don't need a road map to see the hypocrisy at work here. Goodell and the NFL expect Marshawn Lynch to sit for three different interviews during Super Bowl week alone, yet Goodell makes himself available for only one lone news conference on Friday afternoon, the point at which Super Bowl Week fatigue has set in.
Look, it's not like Goodell is suddenly going to admit to malfeasance in every element of the game, but still. In his "state of the game" address, Goodell claimed that he was "available to the media almost every day."
This furthers the perception that the NFL is doing all of us a favor by deigning to let us watch the Super Bowl, and that any questions you might have for Goodell are inappropriate and you should be ashamed of yourself for asking. That approach might have worked well enough a year ago, but after a season in which the NFL looked bewildered and incompetent at best, deliberately deceptive at worst, a little image management could've helped.
As for the other interviews: Obama offered up a bit of lightweight political chatter (but no prediction) in his interview. Brady seemed more than a little evasive about the deflate-gate controversy in his:
Say it with us, Tom: "No, I had nothing to do with any inflation or deflation of balls, and I am completely innocent of any and all allegations."
Bottom line, though, both agreed to speak. It's too bad Roger Goodell didn't understand it would've been a good idea for him to do the same.
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