Reading from scripts is part of Goodell’s job. He is the representative of the league’s thirty-two owners, and he serves as their mouthpiece. The owners do not seem to mind that Goodell’s delivery is wooden, or that the league has stumbled from controversy to controversy during his tenure, or that he is unpopular enough with the public that he is routinely booed during the N.F.L. draft. They don’t mind, clearly, because Goodell has been good for business: in 2018 the league generated around sixteen billion dollars in total revenue