PHOENIX — Roger Goodell danced his way through 26 questions in little more than a half-hour at the commissioner’s annual Super Bowl press conference Friday and, when he was done, we had learned …

Not much.

Goodell acknowledged it had been a tough year of “humility and learning” for his handling of multiple crises, including the Ray Rice domestic violence case, but he said he does not foresee any circumstance under which he might resign or be fired.

“We’ve all done a lot of soul-searching, starting with yours truly,” Goodell said. “We’ve made enormous progress.”

But domestic violence was old news, from several months ago, and, perhaps not surprisingly in an era of 140-character tweets and shortened attention spans, there were more questions about “Deflate-gate” than any other topic.

Seven questions touched the issue of the air pressure in the footballs in the AFC Championship Game, and about all we learned was that the investigation will be “thorough and fair” and that “we want the truth.”

“We’re a league of rules,” Goodell said, “and we’re going to enforce those rules. Whether a competitive advantage was actually gained or not is secondary in my mind to whether those rules were violated.”

Goodell danced around the point, however, when someone reminded him that, following the New Orleans “Bountygate” case a few years ago, he said the league could take action without the kind of conclusive proof a court case might require. Several times, he repeated a variation of “we want the truth.”

“What we want to do is make sure that we find that truth,” Goodell said. “If there are violations of the rules, we take them seriously.”

OK. But consider this next response.

A questioner reminded Goodell that he said, “Ignorance is no excuse,” when he suspended Saints coach Sean Payton for a season in that New Orleans case despite no evidence he was involved in the bounty scheme. At the time, Goodell said Payton, as the coach, was ultimately responsible for what his players and assistants did.

Yet, asked if the same standard would apply to Bill Belichick in the Patriots case if malfeasance is found, Goodell sidestepped and said, “We don’t know enough to know who was responsible or if even there was an infraction.”

Now, no one is saying Goodell would go easy on Belichick, who was slapped down pretty good in the “Spygate” matter several years ago.

But a reasonable response would have been to ask: What difference does it make who was responsible if the investigation determines the footballs were tampered with? A reasonable question would be: How could Payton have been responsible for what his underlings did, but Belichick not be responsible for his? And we repeat the caveat: if something is found.

Which circles us right back to the “we want the truth” line.

Well, here’s the truth: If you expected anything more than Goodell had to offer, well, your expectations were more inflated than the footballs in that AFC Championship Game.

Look, CEOs don’t do anything before they have to, particularly when we’re talking about what they might see as intrusive questions into the way they conduct their business. And, make no mistake about it, with this commissioner, business comes first.

Goodell had plenty of chances to drive that point home during the session, saying that Buffalo and San Diego needed new stadiums but that, “We want all of our franchises to stay in their current markets,” that London still has “great potential” for the league, that he wants to see games played in Mexico in the future, and that he thinks $25 billion in annual revenue remains a “practical goal” for the NFL.

With the average ticket price for the Super Bowl exceeding $10,000 in the scalper market, Goodell said, “I think that shows the incredible fan demand.”

And, for the NFL, that is the bottom line. No matter all the bad-news headlines of the last year, the league retains its enormous popularity, its teams continue printing money, and the commissioner will continue to blow more hot air at this annual event than supposedly was in the AFC footballs.

Ira Miller is an award-winning sportswriter who has covered the National Football League for more than three decades and is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Selection Committee. He is a national columnist for The Sports Xchange.