The National Football League has hired a former White House press secretary in the Bill Clinton administration. Joe Lockhart was named today the league's new executive vice president of communications.

NBC Sports calls the hire "insulation for commissioner Roger Goodell."

The league announced that Joe Lockhart was joining the league as executive vice president of communications, and Cynthia Hogan was promoted to executive vice president of public policy and government affairs. ... Lockhart was White House press secretary and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton (that job gets capital letters) from 1998-2000. He's most recently been running a Washington-based commuications and government affairs firm, and fits with the league's expansion of influence in D.C. Hogan also has White House experience, working as deputy assistant to the President and counsel to the Vice President from 2009-13 in the Obama administration. Both the new titles report to the league's chief operating officer Tod Leiweke. That puts a layer of bureaucracy between Goodell and any unpopular decisions, and keeps him from having so much responsibility at the same time.

The move was praised by another former Bill Clinton White House press secretary, Jake Siewert.

"Good move by @NFL Welcome to NYC @joelockhart," Siewert, a Goldman Sachs official, said approvingly today on Twitter.