| Hey. It’s Matt. For lots of football fans, Roger Goodell is the only NFL Commissioner they’ve known, with the 65-year-old now in his 19th year at the helm of America’s most popular pro sport. But how well does anyone know him? Goodell has largely stayed in the background, rarely giving sit-down interviews and usually only speaking at league media events, including a press conference at the Super Bowl. So after he went on David Rubenstein’s show for Bloomberg TV, we had to dissect it for our readers. Here are some excerpts from an interview that will debut on Wednesday night. A couple personal tidbits about Goodell that I didn’t know: -
Goodell grew up just north of New York City in Bronxville, where in high school he was a three-sport star, including football. -
He wrote more that 50 letters to then-commissioner Pete Rozelle asking for a job, which turned into an NFL internship in 1982. -
The next season, he was a PR intern for the New York Jets and had an offer to stay…as a coach? “I was actually asked by one of the coaches, the defensive coordinator Joe Gardi, to stay and be an assistant coach. And I decided I wanted to go back to the NFL, even though I didn't really have an opportunity there. I was still an intern for another year and a half. I thought it was the right thing and what I wanted to do. Pete Rozelle was a hero of mine and I wanted to work for him.”  NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell on The David Rubenstein Show: Peer to Peer Conversations. Goodell, who joined the NFL’s PR department full-time in 1984, attends a lot of games, including hitting two in the same week. “Sometimes, I'll double up and do a Thursday game and a Sunday game, or a Sunday and a Monday game. That's happened.” Goodell reinforced that the NFL’s global aspirations are only growing. Expect the league to keep pushing overseas after having five international games this season. (Read our story on the league’s first trip to Brazil back in September.) “Our hope would be at some stage to get to 16 [international] games in the next few years. We think we can do that. I think it's an indication of the popularity of our game.” The NFL has already talked quite a bit about putting a team in another country, and we’re not talking about Canada. “Listen, we've talked an awful lot about it, and I think there are markets that could without question support an NFL franchise.” Goodell has thought about not just putting one team overseas, but a whole division. “We have 32 [teams] now. We think that's a really good number for the NFL. But also, we would probably look at it potentially as building out by divisions as opposed to individual teams. You have a lot of issues with a team that's in — say Europe — and having to travel over playing — games and teams going back over to Europe to play — I think the competitive issues still need to be worked out.” Adding an 18th game looks like it’s coming, with league staying at 20 total games by removing a preseason matchup. “18 is a potential. We would take a preseason game away. So we would keep within that 20-game framework. We actually started at 14 games and six preseason. We went to 16 and four, and now 17 and three. So 18 and two is a logical step.” We broke a lot of news last year about the NFL allowing private equity to take passive minority stakes in teams. There’s been some fan backlash on this move, but Goodell tried to ease those concerns. “I don't think we'll ever allow institutional [investors] in a controlling position, at least in the foreseeable future. Again, I think we feel very strongly about having a principal owner that is there operating the franchise, responsible for that, both in the club level, as well as the league level.” (Editor’s notes: Rubenstein is co-founder of the Carlyle Group, which is among the approved firms to purchase a stake in NFL clubs. And for the full interview, watch “The David Rubenstein Show: Peer to Peer Conversations” on Wednesday January 22 at 9:00pm in New York on Bloomberg Television.) | 
