Without further ado, here are a few leftovers from Thursday morning’s breakfast speech by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell that didn’t make it into either of the stories on the main site:
ON BRONCOS FANS: I don’t think there are better fans in the NFL — or in professional sports — than right here in Denver.
ON PAT BOWLEN: He has been, without a doubt, a mentor to me. We all know that we don’t get to places without a lot of people that support us, help us and provide guidance, and Pat has done that for the 25 years of my career. … He really has been a terrific mentor and friend and has provided a lot of leadership to me, and I know for a fact that I wouldn’t be standing before you today as Commissioner of the National Football League without Pat Bowlen.
ON RULES CHANGES IN GENERAL: We need to keep the game of football strong. We have to keep great competition on the field for you, the fans. We must be open to allowing changes in our game, to evolve and make the game exciting for those fans. That’s why we update our rules every year.
ON INSTANT REPLAY: We made instant replay permanent for the first time in the history of the NFL. It is now a permanent part of our game and it will be going forward. We will also be purchasing new equipment (high-definition viewing monitors) so that we can provide the best possible technology to make the best possible decisions.
ON OVERTIME: We debated the overtime rule, which I’m sure we could debate this morning. Everybody has a new perspective, and while we didn’t come to any changes, I expect sometime in the next couple of years, we’ll be making some tweaks to that system.
ON THE STATE OF THE SPORT: We want to make sure that football remains healthy on all levels. Just being healthy on the NFL level isn’t good enough for us. We really want to make sure that football is successful on the youth level, the high-school level, the college level, right up through the NFL — and it is; it’s never been healthier as a game and we spend an awful lot of time focusing on how we can make it healthier.
ON COMPETITIVE BALANCE: Every team has to have that equal chance to win and be successful, and while I’m sure that all of you would rather have the Broncos have a slight advantage, that’s not the way that we go into the season. We go into the season making sure that every team has that opportunity to hold up the Vince Lombardi Trophy at the end of the season, and a level playing field (on which to compete). That’s the only way fans love to watch NFL — by seeing their team have a hope coming into the season that they can get to the playoffs and win the big one.
ON VIEWING GAMES OVER THE INTERNET: The Internet is the future of media to some extent. We are all used to watching games on television, but even now we are showing our games on the Internet to an international audience. At some point, you’ll be watching games here in this country on NFL.com. I predict that going forward. It may be quite a ways down the road, because we want to keep our broadcast partners healthy, but that is the future of our world, and where people are consuming media, and we want to be where people are consuming media.
Tags: NFL, Roger Goodell