SAN FRANCISCO — Roger Goodell apparently has been on some very dangerous couches.
The embattled NFL commissioner touched on several topics in his annual Super Bowl news conference Friday, but they all took a backseat after Goodell equated the dangers of youth tackle football to the “risk in sitting on your couch.”
Goodell’s outlandish comparison, which quickly went viral, was in response to a question from The Post about whether he still recommends tackle football for teens and preteens after the deaths of at least seven high school players this past season from injuries in practice or games.
While calling the deaths “tragic,” Goodell said he still treasures his own high school football career and still believes the positives of the sport for young people outweigh the negatives.
“If I had a son, I would love to have him play the game of football,” Goodell said, raising his voice as he spoke. “I’d love to have him play the game of football because of the values you get. There’s risk in life. There’s risk in sitting on the couch.
“What we want to do is to get people active. We want them to experience the game of football, because the game of football will teach you the values … of discipline, teamwork, perseverance. Those are values and those are skills that will lead you through life, and I believe football is the best to teach that.”
Other notable moments from Goodell’s hour-long session:
- Surprisingly, Goodell would not commit to reinstating Tom Brady’s four-game Deflategate suspension if a federal appeals court rules for the NFL when the league’s appeal is heard next month.
“I am not focused on it right now,” Goodell said. “I am not going to speculate on what we are going to do. We’ll let the outcome be dictated by the appeals court. When it happens, we’ll deal with it then.”
- The Pro Bowl format and perhaps the game itself could be in trouble after Goodell said he was “disappointed” by the sloppy affair last Sunday in Honolulu.
“We may have to think about that differently than we have in the past,” Goodell said. “It is not the kind of game that I think we want to continue to have in its current format based on what we saw last week.”
- Goodell said the NFL isn’t pursuing its own investigation into a report last month that Peyton Manning received human growth hormone — a banned substance in the league — through shipments to his wife.
“If we feel that [an independent probe is] necessary at some point, we may do that,” Goodell said. “At this point, we don’t.”
- Goodell announced that the Raiders and Texans will play a Nov. 21 regular-season game in Mexico City on “Monday Night Football.”
It will be the first Monday night NFL game ever played outside the U.S., as well as the league’s first regular-season game in Mexico since the Cardinals beat the 49ers in Mexico City in 2005.
- Goodell said the NFL has no plans to allow the use of medical marijuana by players.
- The NFL already has sold out all three games scheduled for London this fall (including the Giants-Rams matchup), prompting Goodell to say that eventually putting a team there “is a realistic possibility.”