Will Goodell face another media scrum in Canton? – NBCSports.com

Last year, Commissioner Roger Goodell encountered a mob of reporters in Canton who wanted answers regarding the manner in which he handled the two-game suspension imposed on former Ravens running back Ray Rice. This year, Goodell has yet to answer questions regarding the manner in which he handed the appeal of the four-game suspension imposed on Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.

Last year, the scrum got awkward, with at least one reporter nearly turning his recording device into an endoscope. This year, the situation hasn’t seemed to spark the same degree of public zeal outside of Boston — but the issue has become big enough in Boston that Boston reporters could create a scrum of their own.

And there are plenty of questions to answer, from the mischaracterization of Brady’s testimony to the decision not to require testimony from John Jastremski and Jim McNally to the league’s attempt to punish Brady under a policy never given to him to the NFL’s lack of knowledge regarding the natural deflation of footballs in cold weather to the league’s apparent campaign to spread misinformation early in the investigation to the league’s refusal to investigate its leaks to the league’s failure to correct the leaked misinformation although it has a habit of correcting misinformation to the irony of the decision not to hire Columbia to provide scientific expertise due to leaks to the league’s desire to keep the transcript of the Brady appeal hearing secret to whether Ted Wells was truly independent to other stuff I probably haven’t thought about or have forgotten about.

Unlike last year, Brady’s suspension currently is the subject of federal litigation. Which gives Goodell an easy out — he can say that he has been advised not to discuss the situation until the litigation ends.

Then again, Goodell was willing to address the Brady suspension publicly in May, even though it was the subject of internal NFL litigation.

But if we’ve learned one thing in the last week, it’s that internal NFL litigation over which a league-office employee presides isn’t real litigation. And until that changes, there will be plenty of real litigation over the outcome of internal NFL litigation.

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