NFL Commissioner Enters His Kangaroo Era

Roger Goodell marked the NFL’s arrival in Australia by putting on a kangaroo coat at the Netflix desk, because apparently taking American football to Melbourne required the commissioner to dress as the local wildlife.

Goodell was attending the Los Angeles Rams’ clash with the San Francisco 49ers on 10 September 2026, the NFL’s first regular-season game in Australia and the second game of the new season. Before play began, he joined Netflix’s pregame programme, where host Elle Duncan had prepared a small exercise in international relations.

Duncan reminded the commissioner that he had previously appeared on the streaming service wearing Santa Claus garb. Evidently this established a precedent: whenever Goodell comes near a Netflix set, there must be outerwear with a theme.

For Australia, the production team had moved on from Father Christmas to marsupials. Duncan introduced the garment as something designed “to represent the culture,” a phrase doing a heroic amount of work beneath the studio lights.

“This is our kangaroo coat that the MVP of today’s game will be wearing,” she told Goodell. “You get to christen it.”

And so the man in charge of America’s most powerful sports league put on the kangaroo jacket at the desk. It was a pregame scene pitched somewhere between corporate team-building and the final round of a village fête, with Goodell gamely accepting that this was now part of his official duties.

The appearance was captured in a clip posted on X by Awful Announcing, which described the scene rather more directly: “Roger Goodell puts on a kangaroo jacket at the Netflix desk for the NFL Melbourne game in Australia.” The accompanying football, kangaroo and Australian flag emojis supplied any remaining diplomatic context.

The costume was not merely a prop for the commissioner. According to Duncan, it had been earmarked for the game’s most valuable player, making Goodell its ceremonial first wearer rather than its permanent occupant.

After the christening, attention could return to the Rams and 49ers and the rather more conventional business of playing the historic regular-season fixture. The kangaroo coat, meanwhile, was due to make another appearance once an MVP had been chosen. The NFL had successfully opened a new international market, and all it had cost was one commissioner’s dignity and a very literal approach to Australia.