We’ve seen NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell interviewed in a variety of contexts and settings. In a new video interview with William C. Rhoden of the New York Times, Goodell faces questioning in a Harlem barber shop.
The topics range include Goodell’s contention that the game has been safer and still more exciting, the proper techniques for tackling, and plenty of other things.
As to tackling, the league’s effort to change the culture of hitting would seem to require more of an effort to ensure that proper techniques are taught at the lower levels of the sport. It’s not enough for Goodell to simply opine (as he does in the video) that it’s “not good advice” for a youth coach to tell a player to hit the ball carrier in the arm with a helmet. The NFL must engage in comprehensive and meaningful efforts to ensure that coaches at the youth level understand the preferred style of hitting and teach it to the future generations of NFL players.
Anyway, the six-minute video is worth watching. And we rarely say that about any non-NBC video.