On Friday, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell will face a collection of media far more extensive than he usually does at his annual pre-Super Bowl press conference. Although his September 19 emergence-from-hiding event attracted non-NFL media who would be far more inclined to ask unexpected, unusual, and/or utterly hostile questions, the midtown Manhattan gathering occurred with limited advance notice.
Everyone who has been paying attention to the NFL knows that the Friday before the Super Bowl always consists of a no-holds-barred (in theory) session, which like most press conferences becomes a shotgun approach that depends largely on which of the collected credentialed get an opportunity to introduce themselves and then to formulate a query. Inevitably, there will be far more potential questioners than there will be time to pose questions.
And so it becomes important for the league office employees who have custody of the microphones used to ask questions to the Commissioner to exercise extreme discretion when determining who gets one of them. It’s been part of the reality of the pre-Super Bowl press conference for years now; those walking around with the wireless talking sticks need to make good decisions about who gets the chance to hear themselves talking while spending way too many words formulating a question, dumbstruck by the power of finally getting a chance to be the one to speak.
So who will get the chance to ask questions? Will it be restricted to the familiar faces of folks who cover the NFL on a regular basis and who have an inherent desire not to alienate the Commissioner or the office over which he presides? Will the persons employed by NFL Media, whose paychecks the Commissioner signs, get two or three (or more) bites at the apple? And will anyone who looks like a potentially reckless agitator who may ask tough questions about #DeflateGate or the unexplored nuances of the Ray Rice case (such as the discrepancies between the memo the Commissioner sent to the owners after the in-elevator video emerged and the findings made by Robert Mueller) or anything else that may force the Commissioner to wade through waters he’d rather avoid altogether?
It’s a drama that won’t play out on camera. But the handling of the microphones will be a very real aspect of this and every pre-Super Bowl Commissioner press conference. The event will be only as informative (and compelling) as the questions allow, and the folks with the keys to the questioning castle likely will be inclined to allow only those questioners who will permit the Commissioner to dispense information he’s comfortable sharing.
