He would frequently have lunch with members of the staff, players and even the media, stopping to say hello or chat up whomever he came across. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell called Rooney “one of the finest men in the history of our game,” add. As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Gene Collier wrote later that year, Rooney was taken with Obama’s ability to connect with people. In that respect, he has returned to a very different league than the one he left in 2003.