This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

For a guy who has spent a huge amount of time in the media spotlight, Roger Goodell has looked more like a deer in the headlights of late.

It's been sort of shocking that a man in his position with all those media advisers behind him could finally come out of hiding and conduct a press conference, only to have it turn into a trainwreck.

Goodell didn't just dodge many of the questions he was asked, he utterly ignored them. Asked specific questions about specific players, he responded with platitudes about new policies without coming close to getting specific himself.

The press conference cratered when a reporter from TMZ asked Goodell how it was possible that the NFL couldn't get the video of Ray Rice knocking out his then-fiancee when TMZ had gotten it with a single phone call. The NFL commissioner's response: "I don't know how you got the tape."

Maybe Goodell is just temperamentally incapable of dealing with the media. Maybe he's just too arrogant to understand that he can't browbeat the media — or the public — into simply accepting everything he says at face value.

I've only been in a room with Goodell once. I was one of those asking him questions a couple of months ago when he appeared at the Television Critics Association press tour to promote CBS' "Thursday Night Football."

My overwhelming impression of the NFL commissioner at the time was that he was condescending and evasive. Which didn't comes as a great surprise, because he was talking to a room full of journalists who cover TV but, for the most part, don't cover sports. (A few of us do, but not many.)

It was also a room full of people who had written about the PBS documentary "League of Denial: The NFL's Concussion Crisis" and knew more about the issue than Goodell would have liked.

The commissioner insisted that the NFL has worked hard "to make our game safer," adding, "The awareness we're bringing to concussions has been good for not only sports, but also armed services, our soldiers. So we're proud of the position we take in making sports safer."

How better to disarm your critics than to cloak yourself in patriotism? And, at the same time, ignore the information in "League of Denial" that there is no way to make helmets any safer when it comes to concussions?

Goodell then launched into a totally unrelated spiel about how kids and teens should not specialize in one sport but play multiple sports.

I thought it was just the All Powerful NFL Commissioner patronizing TV critics. I didn't realize that's how he deals with everyone.

At that infamous press conference last week, CNN/Turner Sports reporter Rachel Nichols asked Goodell how the investigation that the NFL commissioned former FBI director Robert Mueller to undertake could be independent, given that Mueller works for a law firm that has done extensive business with the NFL. A perfectly legitimate question.

Goodell went on the attack, insisting that Nichols was questioning Mueller's integrity and condescendingly talked about how there are a lot of law firms.

We learned three things from that press conference. First, Goodell genuinely doen't get it. Second, he's never going to resign.

And, third, that as long as he is the face of the NFL, there will be questions about the integrity of the league.

Scott D. Pierce covers TV for The Salt Lake Tribune. Email him at spierce@sltrib.com; follow him on Twitter @ScottDPierce.