Roger Goodell Pretends He Might Allow Fans to Cyber-Boo Him During the Draft

PFT - The NFL draft won’t be the same NFL draft, in many ways. In one way, maybe it will be.

Even with the Commissioner announcing the picks from home, he could be continuing his tradition of hearing boos.

“I guess you’re going to have to show up and watch,” Roger Goodell told Peter King for his pre-draft Football Morning in America column. “But I will say this: It’s a big part of the draft. I personally love the engagement with our fans. That [booing] is included. For us, we had to think through, ‘How are we going to bring the fans into the event? How are we going to allow the boo to be a part of the event as it has been in the past?’”

As King explained last week, each pick will include a montage of 15 fans, who will interact with Goodell and/or react to the pick.

This is one of those moments where it's hard to decide what is the greater insult: The lie, or the fact that the liar thinks you don't know you're being lied to. So rather than choose, I'm going to split the baby and say both are insults to our collective intelligence. 

So Roger Goodell doesn't mind being booed? He's in on the gag, huh? Then how do you explain the NFL shoehorning this into the movie "Draft Day" in exchange for the league's cooperation? 

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Say what you will about barefoot midgets sneaking a magic ring into a volcano or space wizards throwing stuff at each other with telepathy, that is the most unbelievable scene in the history of cinema. But if the producers wanted to be able to use real NFL team names and officially licensed logos, the price of poker was to include this simulation of the fantasy playing out in Roger Goodell's brain.  

And why else would he have staged a photo op among these unsuspecting useful rubes?

Ginger Satan wants nothing more than to be accepted. He wants you to believe he's just one of the guys. A regular fan just like you and me and Joe Sixpack. And booing each other is just what friends do, right? We kid! It's all in good fun! He's the kid with a crippling, socially fatal case of cooties, who tries to laugh it off like he's a willing participant. Like he's eating in the kitchen with the lunch lady not because no one will let him sit at their table, but by his own choice. He's Michael Scott when Todd Packer left a turd on the rug in his office, trying to laugh it off as a great joke that comes from a place of love. 

This soulless, dry-mouthed, dead-eyed, Hall of Presidents automoton knows the truth. He's not in on the joke, he is the joke. People aren't booing him because they like him the way they do, say, a wrestling heel. They boo him because he's a contemptible, power-abusing despot who embodies everything that is terrible. And were he capable of human emotions, he'd feel terrible about it and try to change his ways. But it's a path of less resistance to just pretend to embrace it. If he allows actual draft fans to actually express what they actually think of him, I might develop a subatomic particle of respect for him. In fact, I volunteer my services. But it'll never happen. He's not man enough to allow it.