Craig Carton would love to interview NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, but the problem is that Carton isn’t going to play by the league’s rules for shaping the conversation.
On Monday’s edition of Carton & Roberts, Carton mentioned the fact that Goodell hadn’t appeared on WFAN airwaves in over a decade. Co-host Evan Roberts pointed out that the league usually limits what media appearances the commissioner makes.
“He doesn’t do a lot of interviews unless it’s NFL related, where you can kind of control what you’re being pushed on,” Roberts said.
Carton figured that Goodell typically will do a sit-down interview with each of the league’s media partners, but Roberts said the commissioner’s office wants to make sure Goodell is not caught off guard.
“There’s always gonna be restrictions on him. There just always is,” he said. “The league is partners with those networks. So they’re not gonna put Roger Goodell in a spot in which he’s getting pummeled with tough questions. He doesn’t put himself in that spot.”
Carton mentioned doing a commissioner’s summit with Gary Bettman, Adam Silver and Rob Manfred. He said he requested Goodell, and he was turned down because the preseason had already started and generally the NFL doesn’t want the commissioner in the spotlight when the focus should be on the games and the players.
Roberts responded that the league was just being protective of Goodell knowing full well that Carton would likely ask him some tough questions.
“It’s because you aren’t going to climb in his derriere and make sure you don’t push him on anything,” he said. “I’ve never seen Goodell pushed on anything. So when he does do these interviews, it’s usually like NFL Network’s putting him on.”
“Maybe if I start a podcast he’ll come on that,” Carton said.
Craig added that he wouldn’t agree to tipping his questions for the commissioner ahead of time or only sticking to certain topics. Evan said the unpredictability of a free-flowing interview wouldn’t be a good thing optically for Goodell.
“You also don’t know what it’s gonna lead to,” he said. “You don’t know what he says that’s gonna lead to a topic you never even thought that you’d talk about.”
Carton responded saying that’s why so many people are terrible at interviewing others, because they generate their list of questions and don’t actually listen to the conversation.
