One of my worst habits is adopting insider industry parlance when speaking to professionals in different walks of life and using it incorrectly. When there’s a doctor around, I have the strange urge to say the words blunt force trauma and, more regularly than I’d like to admit, I toss out the phrase habeas corpus around my lawyer friends (“gimme that corpse,” as the attorneys say). So, it surprises me that I cannot immediately summon a business-y jargon-snacking term to describe what Roger Goodell was doing this week when he told a German media outlet that “I have no doubt” there will be “NFL teams [plural]” outside of the United States.
Help me out here. I’m looking for a word that stretches beyond the confines of naked ploy for leverage. It has to also mean this is not true and is a bit hollow in nature and strategic for some reason other than what we can fully grasp at this moment.
