Checked out the Commissioner’s Address yesterday. Commissioner Roger Goodell’s story is a fascinating one.
If you haven’t done any extensive reading on him, you really should. How Monster.com or Careerbuilder.com haven’t used his life story as a commercial is beyond me. His first job out of law school?
A public relations intern with the Jets. Apparently, he sent the NFL thousands of handwritten letters throughout his twenties, expressing how much he’d like to work for the league. Some would go answered; some wouldn’t.
The kicker of the story is that when he finally rose through the ranks, and became Commissioner Tagliabue’s right hand man, he was handed a massive file by one of the NFL’s longtime employees. Just a massive manila folder. He takes it, skims through, and finds all his letters. Every last one.
Now he’s the Commissioner of the league.
I liked the way he handled the press conference. It wasn’t some pre-written speech with bullet points and stops for applause. There were no mentions of Iraq, either.
Rather, he just introduced himself, welcomed everyone to the Super Bowl, and then opened up the floor to the media for questions.
Rachel Nichols from ESPN asked about the Ted Johnson stuff; Chris Mortensen probed about the NFL veterans’ pensions; and a Japanese pop star inquired as to whether there’d be more Japanese players participating in the Super Bowl. The Commissioner handled each one with the same calm, patient demeanor, and gave a solid answer to each. He fielded roughly 20 questions on the day -- didn’t dodge any, and even peppered in some humor when asked about the Favre retirement.
