PT - We had a good couple of days of meetings, yesterday with the committees and today with the membership. We covered quite a bit of a ground. I would say the major areas discussed were the collective bargaining negotiations with the Players Association. We had some discussion of television contracts, but most of the television discussion focused on the NFL Network, whose first anniversary is November 5^th. We had some discussion and a report by Art Shell on the on-field competition; the officiating issues, injury matters and other such subjects. We had a report on Los Angeles and on future Super Bowls. We expect to be selecting the site of at least one future Super Bowl at our meeting next May, maybe two. That would be the Super Bowls for 2009 and possibly 2010. And then we had an update on NFL International and NFL Europe.

Q – How would you assess the Los Angeles situation?

PT – I guess what I would say is that all four sites are making progress. We are on somewhat different timelines with respect to each site, but our goal is still to be in a position by next May to have some definitive agreements that we could present to the membership and start making some decisions about the timing of the placement of a team and completion of the construction of a stadium or completion of a renovation.

Q – Do you consider Anaheim in Orange County to be interchangeable with L.A. County?

PT – The last poll I did was in L.A. when I was out there about six months ago and I ran into four fans, each one of the four was in favor of a different location and they had different opinions as to what was L.A. and what was not L.A. I think obviously Los Angeles is Los Angeles and Orange County is Orange County. But that having been said, New York City is New York City and New Jersey is New Jersey, but we have two New York teams playing in New Jersey. Our goal is to get a team back in that area. Certainly the specific location of the stadium is a major consideration and each of these four sites is more readily accessible to different parts of the greater L.A. area. It’s one of the intriguing things about the choice we have to make. The Rose Bowl is directionally in one area, the Coliseum is very central, Carson is further south in a different location, but readily accessible through the highway system, and Anaheim is still another location. Our goal is to get an outstanding stadium in a location that works well for the fans and have a team there that is a strong representative team. The point you raise is – is Anaheim and Orange County the equivalent of the Coliseum or the Rose Bowl or Carson in terms of location and service to the L.A. fan base? That is something we are going to have to discuss as we go forward and I’m sure different owners will have different opinions. That was born out during the period when the Raiders where in the Coliseum and the Rams were in Anaheim, so that’s kind of a value judgment or a qualitative judgment. I don’t think you can really quantify it by looking at a map and measuring the miles. I think it’s more of a value judgment.

Q – In terms of Orange County and L.A., would ownership be looking at the same corporate community?

PT – I don’t know what an ownership group is going to look at. One area is directionally north, one area is more central, one area is further south and one area is considerably further south. I think you have to be realistic in terms of the distance people will travel to a game and I think you have to recognize that with businesses as well as individuals, the closer they are to the stadium, the more likely they are to find that to be convenient for themselves, for their customers and for their employees. So each stadium potentially has a different center of gravity in terms of suite holders, ticket buyers, season ticket buyers and so forth. But that’s true in every city. It’s true in the bay area with the Raiders and the 49ers. It’s true in New York with the Jets and the Giants – some of the fan base tends to be historic to the Jets and Long Island, some of the fan base of the Giants tends to be historic to the Bronx and Westchester County and some of the fan base is common in New Jersey, which is where the stadium is. It’s a mixture of factors. People will tell you some of the fan base for the Jets is pick-up trucks and some of the fan base for the Giants is SUV’s. I don’t know. It seems to me the parking lot looks pretty much the same.

Q – Is there a point of no return in terms of the 2008 deadline?

PT – I am not hung up on 2008. I don’t know where 2008 comes from. The only thing I know definitive about 2008 is that it’s the next Presidential election after next Tuesday. I’ve said 2008 and hopefully we can get there by 2008. We’re trying to make a decision by next May, then what will drive it after that will be the construction timeline or the renovation timeline and other things. As I said earlier I think each stadium has its own set of issues, so depending on what choice we make, we could be looking at 24 months of planning and construction in one location, we could be looking at a longer timeline in another location and conceivably you could be looking at a shorter timeline if you went to certain types of contractual arrangements. We’ve had stadiums built in 20 months. But I think the major thing here is that we want to have a signature stadium in a signature location and we want to get it right. We want the stadium to be really good for the fans and to be a place that can host Super Bowls, so that’s going to impact how quickly it could be built, how quickly the parking arrangements can be put in place and, whether it’s for 2008 or 2009. In part it is specific to the project.

Q – Yesterday you said you disagreed with Gene Upshaw’s characterization of the league in terms of the haves and the have-nots. Can you elaborate?

PT – To me that’s an oversimplification. First of all, some of the so-called haves, one of the things they do have is a lot of debt - because they had to build their own stadiums. So to say there are haves and have-nots, and this was discussed with Gene (Upshaw), some of the so-called haves, including for example the New England Patriots, one of the things they have is a lot of debt because they had to build the stadium from their own family resources - the Kraft family. So to finance the stadium yourself you are going to end up with a lot of annual construction costs, amortizing interest and construction cost, which goes to the bank, it doesn’t go to the owner - it pays off the debt. The other thing when you talk about haves and have-nots in sports, frequently the conversation centers on having talent and not having talent and I think there is a pretty wide agreement right now that the current system is giving good balance and access to talent. Two of the smaller market teams in older stadiums, just to take two more examples, happen to be the Minnesota Vikings and the Indianapolis Colts. They have two of the most outstanding quarterbacks in the game, they have outstanding teams and they are very, very competitive. So from a football standpoint or the standpoint of athletic talent, they are have teams. So to say there are haves and have-nots and one-fourth of the league is haves and three-fourths of the league is have-nots, it’s a short-hand. I know Gene uses it as a short-hand. I think we have some major differences with the Players Association in terms of revenues and growing revenues. A significant amount of the revenue growth at the local level involves big components of cost. In order to have apparel shops and to do what the Packers do with Green Bay Packers apparel in their stadium shops, there is a lot of expense that goes with that. So if the cash register rings up a $200 sale, you might have $125 worth of cost in terms of the apparel itself, the real estate, the staff and so forth, so its not $200 worth of revenue, its $75 worth of revenue. A lot of the local unshared revenue is that type of revenue, so it’s really not revenue that should go into the salary cap. That’s one issue.

The biggest issue is that the biggest change in NFL economics that has taken place since this agreement was negotiated in the early ‘90s is the enormous private investment by teams and team owners and by the league – through our G3 program – in new stadiums. It’s multiples of billions of ongoing cost; paying off the debt, maintaining the stadiums, operating the stadiums, setting aside reserves for future maintenance, capital maintenance. Another big element that is new is the cost of practice facilities. We all can look back at practice facilities in the early ‘90s and find some pretty rudimentary practice facilities. If you went to the Philadelphia Eagles practice facility in the early ‘90s you opened up the chain link fence and walked onto the practice field. Today you have the Novacare Center. More and more of the practice facilities are geared to a year-round training program and more and more of the practice facilities have multiple fields; field turf, artificial turf, natural turf, bubbles, domes – all of that costs money. It’s good for the players, it’s good for the game, but it costs money. So those cost factors are very real. Those are big expenditures.

So yes, revenue has increased and we are not here complaining about revenue growth, but we also need to be realistic that a lot of that revenue growth has taken a private investment to accomplish. It is going to take private investment in Los Angeles, everyone knows that. The days when a team could walk into a publicly financed stadium which was shared with baseball and have no stadium costs, those are relatively few and far between in terms of the new buildings. So when Carolina shows up as a high revenue team, but it was built with PSLs purchased by the fans and represents a lot of debt of the Richardson family, you have to be realistic in understanding what Carolina is, in terms of its ability to bear any significant increased player costs. Coaching costs have escalated too, and a lot of other costs.

Q – Do you anticipate this being a strident negotiation with Gene Upshaw?

PT – I don’t know about strident. I think we’ve known each other for long enough to be able to talk to each other without raising our voices, especially if you’ve got a sore throat. I don’t think we’re going to be shouting at each other, but I’m sure there are going to be some very sharp differences, some very sharp differences about the underlying economics, very sharp differences about how you define meaningful revenue and how you take account of expense. Gene and his other representatives have made it clear that they are looking at a new economic model and our people are willing, the owners and the teams are willing, to look at a new economic model too, but our new economic model is going to be new in very different ways from the way theirs is going to be new.

Q – What is the importance of getting this resolved before you get into the uncapped year?

PT – We structured the original agreement to avoid 11^th hour role playing and temper tantrums and we created an agreement that has the uncapped year with free agency after six. It is kind of a poisoned pill concept. The presumption was that the salary cap is important to the teams and free agency is important to the players. Free agency after four years was important to the players, if you get to an uncapped year in free agency after six years for the players, hopefully that’s an incentive to get something done. Plus, we’ve had a history of being able to push our television agreements out in reliance on labor peace and I think we’ll get there. But it’s not going to be done because Gene Upshaw and I have a good relationship or because we like each other. It’s going to be because we sit down and do some hard work and make some compromises and reach a consensus.

Q – Is that poison pill more lethal for the owners than the players?

A – I don’t think so. If there’s a year where there’s no more free agency because every player has to wait two more years until he gets to free agency, maybe he can live with it. Maybe he can live very well without a salary cap. If everyone is expecting to be a free agent in 2006 after four years and all of the sudden they have to wait until 2008 there’s not going to be a lot of bidding on a lot of players. That’s the concept. If there’s no cap and there’s no bidding then there’s no problem. If there’s no cap and there is bidding then there is an issue. That is the reason we are trying to get an extension.

Q – Is it at all conceivable that a Super Bowl would be played in L.A. before a team is relocated or created there?

PT – L.A. was part of the discussion on future Super Bowl sites. There was no discussion either with the membership or with the committee of the possibility of playing a game in a stadium before a team was up and running. We could discuss that in the future conceivably, but it didn’t come up at this particular meeting.

Q – What were the other sites that were discussed?

PT – We had a list of about 16 or 18 cities that have an interest in Super Bowls. Some of them are cities that have stadiums that are suitable and some of them are cities that have had recent Super Bowls, such as Houston and Tampa, and some of them are cities that are hoping to get stadiums that would be suitable places for Super Bowls. That includes L.A., that includes Dallas, Kansas City, San Francisco, New York. Washington already has a suitable stadium. We had a long list and I told the owners that for a $25 fee you can get your name added to the list and we’ll use that to fund our Christmas party.

Q – Is there any possibility of playing a Super Bowl in a city that doesn’t have a large, state-of-the-art stadium?

A – I wouldn’t think so. I mean just the reality is that there are so many state-of-the-art stadiums out there, if you’re going to make a decision to play it, from a fan perspective you want to play it in a state-of-the-art stadium and many of those stadiums, such as the one in Houston, such as the one in Jacksonville, such as the one here in Detroit, have been partially paid for with public funds and one of our practices has been to play stadiums in those kinds of cities to help be a catalyst to what Mayor Kilpatrick described last night here in Detroit: the new football stadium, plus the new baseball stadium, plus General Motors’ commitment downtown, plus the city’s commitment to housing and the renaissance of downtown Detroit. All of that is positive and its one reason to play the Super Bowl in a good state-of-the-art stadium where we, the NFL, are benefiting from part of those public investments.

Q – The perception on injuries is that they are much higher -

PT – The raw numbers on injuries? It’s lower actually than last year.

Q – But the public perception is that they are much higher. What do you plan to do about that?

PT – We don’t make decisions based on perceptions. We make decisions based on reality. The report that they gave is that injuries are down. Injuries that have affected players for up to two weeks are down and longer, more serious injuries that affect a player for six weeks are down, compared to last year. I think they looked at a dozen categories of injuries: fractures, hips, necks, thighs, knees, ankles, and in 10 of the 12 categories injuries were down this year vs. last year. Injured Reserve is up and we had some discussion on why it would be up when injuries are down. My own feeling is that it’s the impulse in football to have more players – the more players you have available, the more comfortable you feel. Injured Reserve is probably higher this year because on average there is a little bit more cap room. Some clubs have players on Injured Reserve with so-called split contracts, where they get one salary if they’re active and a different salary if they’re inactive and probably there are some more people on Injured Reserve because there’s more flexibility with the expanded practice squad. So you can afford to put a player on Injured Reserve because you have a deeper practice squad than you did last year. The assumption when we did the cap was that some of the old issues of stashing players on Injured Reserve would be effectively regulated by the cap. That may not be true. Maybe there are stashing issues and competitive issues that need to be revisited. That was one of the points that Rich McKay made to the membership.

Q – Are the IR numbers an anomaly?

PT – I don’t think it’s an anomaly. If you listen to the coaches at the annual meeting all they want is more players. So the fact that we have more players is what coaches want. It’s true of coaches in the NFL, coaches in college football and coaches of Pop Warner. Coaches at every level want more players and they want the flexibility to select the best and the healthiest in a contact sport.

Q – Can you give us an update on the television negotiations? Do you think the NFL Network will start to carry games?

PT – We are in discussions with all the networks and we have been for some time and we’re going to continue those. One of the possibilities is that the NFL Network could carry some live NFL games. We’re looking hard at the possibility of having an additional late-season package of games. It would kind of be a run-up to the playoffs type package in primetime beginning Thanksgiving night - Thursdays and Saturdays through the end of the season. It’s conceivable that the NFL Network could carry some of those games. There are probably four or five other alternatives as well that will be explored later this year and into next year as to where that kind of a package might best fit into the television landscape.

Q – What do you believe Gene Upshaw’s greatest strengths are? Why do you believe you have such a good relationship with each other?

PT - First of all, he’s a hard nosed realist. He has a deep understanding of the collective bargaining process. He’s been involved since the early ‘80s. He was active as a player. He was active as an officer in the Players Association. He’s been the executive director, he’s active on the AFL-CIO’s executive council – so he’s a hard nosed realist who represents his people well. At the same time he knows that collective bargaining is a process of mature give-and-take and it has to do with the reality of the economics of the business and what’s in the mutual best interest of the employers and, in this context, of players. I think the agreement we stuck in the early ‘90s was balanced then in terms of free agency and the salary cap and the needs of the game. And I think that’s been born out by the competitive vigor and vitality we have in the league, which has produced a situation where over 90 percent of our games are sold out. And we have a league where – we’ve seen it in recent years – where teams can come back from being deep in the pack and get to the head of the pack and we see it every week. We saw it on Monday night with the Bengals, who finished very strong last year under Marvin Lewis and are struggling a little bit this year. They get their prime-time platform and come in and beat the Broncos. I think people understand that it’s a good system in terms of the product. It gives players the opportunity to play – we don’t have talented athletes sitting on the bench behind other talented athletes.

Part of it is who Gene is and what his character is. Part of it is his emersion in the collective bargaining process and part of it is his understanding of the game at a Hall of Fame level. But another thing is – I was reading recently about some other industry that was successful in resolving issues at the collective bargaining table. The two negotiators said that the biggest thing was reliability; that if someone said they could get it done with their constituency, they could get it done. Hopefully I have credibility with the owners. They don’t like what we recommend all of the time, but usually we are pretty good at selling our ideas and I think he has the same respect on the player side. So we can reach agreements and we don’t have to deal with the mistrust that develops when you say you’re going to be able to do something and you are unable to do it.

Q – Can you discuss Larry Ellison as a potential owner in L.A. and discuss who else has expressed interest?

PT – Larry Ellison is someone I’ve spoken with on several occasions. I met with him recently. He met with our staff earlier in June when I was unable to be there. I think he has a good, serious, well-grounded interest in being part of the ownership mix in Los Angeles if that should ever be a possibility. A number of other people have spoken to me about possible ownership in Los Angeles, but they’ve requested that their identity for the moment be their own personal matter.

Q – Could you be more specific about how many people have expressed interest?

PT – Quite a few. Most of them are still alive.