NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell gets ‘Rickrolled’ by Chris Kluwe

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell answered questions from fans via Reddit on Monday. Pretty uneventful affair, with nothing notable happening, until a fan with the screen name “Loate” asked a question.

“Dear Commissioner. I was curious about what you thought on the role of traumatic injury in the NFL, and the dichotomy between making the game safer versus giving the fans the hard hits and satiated bloodlust they so clearly desire. It seems to me that a lot of the popularity of the game boils down to the fact that there is that risk of injury, so I guess what I’m essentially asking is how are you going to balance that going forward without people feeling like you’re never going to give them up, or never going to let them down?”

It turns out, “Loate” was actually Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe in disguise, and he used the Reddit forum to ask a question and ‘Rickroll’ the commissioner at the same time.

And of course, Goodell didn’t get the allusion to Rick Astley in the question.

His answer: “The game of football has always been tough and always will be. Even before the NFL was founded, President Teddy Roosevelt called the college presidents in to make sure that the safety issues of the game were addressed since there had been 17 deaths in 1905 alone. From there came the first and ten, forward pass and the inception of the NCAA. Since then, the game has flourished while sticking to the fundamentals of fair and competitive football. Our football coaches and executives wanted to bring the game back to the fundamentals of tackling and blocking. We have seen some of the best NFL football in our history during this season’s playoffs. Hope we finish with another great one on Sunday.”

I’m sorry, I fell asleep halfway through that.

Kluwe asked a follow-up question that went unanswered: “Fair enough. I have a follow up question then. When a football is sailing through the air, whether it be a punt or a field goal, does it sound more like ‘wooooooosh’? Or is it a shorter flight and thus more like ‘whoosh’?”

Sadly, we may never know.

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