This Is The NFL

If you thought NFL Commissioner Roger Goddell's Friday presser smelled faintly of dead squirrel, rubber cement and flop sweat, and that Rog himself had all the sincerity of Willard the Mitt making small talk with the help, this will not surprise you:

Roger Goodell was talking, but the words weren't his alone. "That speech was all Frank," says an associate of pollster Frank Luntz, lord of the dark arts of political messaging....  

As it happened, Luntz himself was watching the press conference, in his capacity as a Fox Sports 1 talking head (he moonlights as a Fox News commentator and analyst). Not long after the commissioner left the podium, Luntz gave his review.

"This," he puffered, "was language perfection."

...

And yet here was Luntz, wreathing Goodell's press conference in kudos and hosannas.  

"I'm supposed to be a professional," Luntz said on Fox Sports 1.  "I couldn't have done it as well as he did."

You are a professional, Frankie.  We're just haggling about the price.

Luntz is such conflicted whore that he and Howie Kurtz fight for the same street corner.