The schedule release makes for strange bedfellows.
For the NFL and Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, they’ve apparently found common ground after more than a decade of hostility.
Only two days after the 10-year anniversary of Portnoy’s arrest for staging a sit-in at the lobby of the league office in protest of the Tom Brady #Deflategate suspension, Portnoy presented the Patriots’ 2025 schedule as an “emergency press conference.”
The arrest resulted in a banishment of Portnoy and other Barstool personalities from league events. Portnoy commissioned a popular T-shirt featuring Commissioner Roger Goodell in a clown nose. Four years later, Portnoy was physically ejected from Super Bowl LIII in Atlanta.
Three years later, the Portnoy complaint made its way to Goodell’s Congressional testimony regarding workplace issues with the Commanders organization. Goodell claimed to have no knowledge of the issue.
Now, the league has no comment on Portnoy’s presence in the Patriots’ video. Even though Portnoy makes direct reference to the Goodell clown-nose shirt during his comments.
It remains to be seen whether this ends the league’s ban on Barstool. Based on Goodell’s 2022 comment and the league declining comment after the Patriots’ video, it looks like the league is declaring ignorance and retreating.
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