You’re NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. You’re one of the most mistrusted, least popular men in America. Thank goodness Donald Trump came along and took some of the heat off of you. The American public has no faith or confidence in you or your decision making capabilties. And to top it all off, you’re painted as one of the bad guys in the new Hollywood movie about the concussion crisis in your sport for failing to face what’s been right in front of you.
At least you’ve tried to mitigate the damage in that last department, though. Every opportunity you get, you use a lot of platitudes to talk about how serious player safety is and how concerned you are about the health of these modern day gladiators. (Of course, you’re also trying to suck even more life out of them by pushing things like 18 game schedules, but that can go under the rug too for the time being.) You also do everything you can to move as quickly as you can beyond the massive lawsuit settlement about this very topic.
All that said though, the business of the NFL has never been better. In spite of all your mismanagement when it comes to domestic violence or DeflateGate or anything else, you know deep down that the concussion issue is the biggest longterm threat to the NFL and the game of football. If you can just ride it out while the Concussion movie hits theaters, perhaps the storm will die down and you’ll be able to move on with your insanely high salary job that nobody walking planet Earth truly needs.
So what do you do when a Hall of Fame quarterback tells a concussion joke at a banquet? YOU LAUGH HYSTERICALLY ABOUT IT.
As Staubach says that he tipped Goodell off to the joke, “and he approved it,” you could see a tiny part of Goodell’s smile turn. Yes, Mr. Commissioner, this is going viral.
H/T SportsGrid
