Goodell Shys Away From Questions About Deflategate In “State Of League” Address

As part of his annual "State of the League" address yesterday, during Super Bowl week, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell answered some media questions. When CSNNE's Tom E. Curran got his hand on a mic and posed a Deflategate-based question to the league's highest power, Goodell did what he does best; skirt around the issue.Here's a look at the exact question and answer exchange between Curran and Goodell:

Q: Earlier this week, you said during your "spot checks" that no violations of the PSI rule were found. What actually constitutes a violation? Did you find anything under 12.5? And in the spirit of getting better, doesn't this whole thing demand some transparency in terms of what the numbers were and what the standards will be going forward? Thank you.

A: Tom (Curran), a couple things. One, as you know, at the beginning of the season, we made changes to our protocols, of how we were going to manage the footballs. That's how they were going to be managed in the moment -- taken into the stadium to right after the game. We have implemented that. As part of that, and it happens in most of our game operations areas -- we conduct random checks. We make sure that clubs understand that we will look at that type of procedure and make sure there are no violations of that. We did that, on a very limited basis. We don't disclose all the specifics on that, because it's meant as a deterrent. If you tell everybody how many times you're checking, and which games you're checking, it's not much of a deterrent. It's a deterrent when they think that game may be being checked. It's also important that the data that was collected in that was not data for research. It was data that was collected just to see if there was a violation. Our people never found a violation. There was a never an accusation of a violation by any other club. And so, we're comfortable that this policy, this rule, was followed by our clubs. We do this across the board in our game operations. There are many areas of our game operations that requires that type of thing.

Goodell also refused to say whether or not he would immediately uphold New England Patriots' quarterback Tom Brady's four game suspension, if the league wins its appeal of the court ruling on Deflategate.

Instead of standing by his original suspension, Goodell said he was "not going to speculate what we will do pending the outcome [of the case]."

These answers, again, reflect the fact that Goodell is an inadequate leader of the league. His inability to directly answer questions about league rules and procedures and his lack of willingness to stand by his rulings in previous cases show that he is spineless and simply a poor excuse for a commissioner.