Roger Goodell who, for over a month has lived a life of media silence returned to public eye Friday afternoon making a prepared statement and then hearing roughly 40 minutes of questions on the recent surge of domestic violence cases in the NFL.
Saturday’s press conference was only the 3rdpublic appearance at all for Goodell since the Ray Rice scandal intensified last month. It was also the first conducted on such a scale as this. After weeks of absences from key NFL events such as the opening of the 49’ers new stadium and the highly advertised season premiere of Thursday Night Football, Goodell announced that he would be speaking Saturday and kicked off yet another media frenzy centered around the NFL.
Almost 100 reporters gathered in New York City as almost every national sports channel had television crews present to send live feeds back to their stations. Goodell first appeared behind the podium roughly 15 minutes after the scheduled start time and read a long apology to the victims of these recent cases of domestic violence.
“At our best, the NFL sets an example that makes a positive difference. Unfortunately, over the past few weeks, we have been seeing far too much of the NFL doing wrong. That starts with me,” he said. “I got it wrong in the handling of the Ray Rice matter, I got it wrong in the process that I went through and the decision that I reached.”
As expected, September’s Ray Rice/NFL/domestic violence scandal was the main focus to Goodell’s statement. Rice of course was first accused of domestic violence when TMZ published a video showing the Ravens running back dragging his fiancé out of a casino elevator back in February. However when a second video surfaced that showed Rice actually hitting his now wife in that elevator, the initial 2 game ban was upped to an indefinite banishment from football. In the court of public opinion however, it was all done too late as allegations of Goodell covering up the video when it was first sent to him began to tear into the reputation of the NFL. Goodell apologized for those insufficient handlings Saturday.
"The same mistakes can never be repeated," Goodell said early on in the statement. “We will do whatever is necessary to make sure our wrongs are righted. We will get our house in shape.”
That house includes the likes of Adrian Peterson who was arrested last weekend for child abuse and Carolina Panther’s DE – Greg Hardy – and Arizona Cardinals RB Johnathan Dwyer who are both on exemption lists for suspected or confirmed cases of domestic violence.
“We have seen that domestic violence is a broad thing. Whether through race or ethnicity, it affects all of us.” Goodell said late in his opening statement thus broadening the focus of the day beyond the Ray Rice situation. "These are problems we're committed to addressing. But we cannot solve them by ourselves."
As revealed prior to the conference, the NFL has sent detailed documents to all its teams detailing commands for variations on sensitivity training. Furthermore, its newly created committee on domestic violence was promised to not only collaborate with an FBI investigation into the NFL but work with players and teams going forward on curbing these problems in football.
Though the general consensus on Goodell’s statement is that it lacked sincerity and accountability from the commissioner, he did also address many of the bigger questions raised by this scandal.
“We can use the NFL to make better not only our league but also our society, limiting domestic violence and sexual assault.” Goodell said. “There is no reason we cannot be as transparent about these issues off the field as we are with player safety on the field.”
The NFL has taken action to try to solve these problems. The contributions to domestic and sexual violence hotlines instill a bond between the NFL and those causes while committees formed within the league look to prevent these problems in a more narrow subset of people. After all that has happened, the NFL is in a bad place publicity wise but they can get out of that bad place if they can convince people that they are not trying to buy their praise back.
The Goodell press conference was a start but was not the carrier of apologies accepted by fans, mainly due to a lingering hatred of Goodell and a more grounded observation that his words did not seem sincere .
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