Lupica: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is right — he is sorry

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This is what we saw on Friday afternoon from Roger Goodell when he talked about how he had gotten so much wrong in the last month and how he was going to make things right in the National Football League:

We saw just another guy in sports trying to talk his way out of trouble.

This doesn’t mean Goodell was lying when he talked about how wrong he was with Ray Rice especially, how little he did to find out what really happened in that elevator in Atlantic City, an original suspension for Rice that was small enough to fit inside a shot glass. It does not mean Goodell isn’t sincerely looking to make things right in his league on domestic violence, and child abuse, and guns, and all the rest of it going forward.

Goodell clearly felt bad about everything that had brought him to this moment. Everybody feels bad when they get caught. What became more clear, crystal clear, the longer he talked on Friday afternoon was that he had gotten caught being the weakest commissioner in professional sports, that he is through being called the most powerful man in sports in this country.

Maybe Goodell was so busy suggesting he was some kind of victim of the NFL’s policy about personal conduct — one he helped write — that he neglected to mention the victims that brought him to that podium on Friday.

So the man who was once more than happy to pose on the cover of Time magazine as “The Enforcer” now talks about initiatives and the women he has hired and the committees he now needs to deal with domestic violence and all the rest of it in the National Football League. He says that a conduct committee will be in place by the Super Bowl, and acted as if we should give him the game ball for that.

“Our standards . . . must be clear, consistent and current,” Goodell said at one point, and you wondered why in the hell they already weren’t in the most powerful and profitable league in this country, why it took some grainy elevator video to slap Goodell and his owners upside their own thick heads.

You watched Goodell on Friday, watched him be as contrite as all the players he’s taken to the woodshed without impunity over his years as the NFL commissioner, and wondered why Adam Silver, the new NBA commissioner, a rookie commissioner, didn’t need to form committees when he kicked Donald Sterling, one of his owners, right out of his sport.

When Major League Baseball’s Bud Selig and Rob Manfred wanted to suspend a dozen guys last year, and drop a richly deserved hammer on a drug cheat like Alex Rodriguez, they didn’t talk about a conduct committee or wait around for law enforcement to throw the first punch against Anthony Bosch, drug pusher to the stars. They went right after Bosch with a lawsuit for interference and you know what happened in that moment? They became real enforcers, not people simply posing that way.

PATRICK SEMANSKY/APRay Rice and wife Janay Palmer at a news conference on May 23. Rice’s original suspension for striking then-fiancée Palmer was small enough to fit inside a shot glass.

It was a couple of years ago when an executive from one of the other major sports talked about the way Goodell was running around like a combination of attorney general, independent prosecutor — like the one the NFL has hired in former FBI chief Robert Mueller — and commander-in-chief of pro football all at once.

“Roger,” the man said, “is setting himself up for a big fall someday.”

That fall has come in his botched handling of the Ray Rice case, which still may eventually cost Goodell his job. He is still talking about how Rice’s testimony to him was “inconsistent” with the real events inside that elevator, even though it has been reported since that Rice was quite clear with both Goodell and the Ravens about what he did to Janay Palmer that night.

It would be ironic if Goodell eventually loses his job because Rice, a slug and a slugger, told the truth about what he did inside that elevator and Goodell is the one lying.

The man who was once called ‘The Enforcer’ has appeared weak in the face of domestic abuse scandals in the NFL.

But on a day that required strength, once and for all, from the NFL commissioner, Goodell looked weak. On a day that required that man to look big again, as big as he once was, like he was the biggest sports guy around, he looked as beaten as one of the victims who brought him to this moment.

He did set himself up for that kind of fall. He was paid a king’s ransom in salary last year, more than $40 million. How many times in the last couple of weeks have we talked about that? And now, when the league’s credibility is in such a low place with the American public — it reminds you of an old line from country music about how from the gutter to you is not up — his idea of decisive action is to form committees.

The NFL commissioner finally spoke up Friday, after hiding for more than a week. He stood up and showed up. And when he did, his press conference was one we have seen before, just from his own players, explaining how sorry they are.

Sorry, indeed.

“I disappointed myself, I disappointed the NFL, I disappointed the fans, our partners,” Goodell said.