As NFL commissioner Roger Goodell tried to put the deflate-gate saga behind him, a new controversy stared him in the face, and he handled it with all the deft of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.
Two of the dozens of questions Goodell faced over a 45-minute span at his annual state of the league address focused on President Donald Trump and his recent ban of immigrants from seven Muslim-majority nations, and the most powerful man in American sports had nothing to offer on the subject.
First came a question from New York Times writer Ken Belson about Trump’s executive order, which bars visitors from predominantly Muslim nations Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, with exceptions made for persecuted people of minority religions.