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Commissioner Tagliabue’s
Press Conference We had a long day of committee meetings yesterday. This morning I presented our midseason report, which has become traditional at this fall league meeting. It covers both the football side of the game, the scoring, productivity, margins, officiating and so forth, and then we gave a midseason business report, which has to do with attendance, television blackout lifts and factors such as that. Then we had some discussion from our Business Ventures Committee about the future of our for-profit businesses. We had a television report this afternoon on the NFL Network that will be launched next Tuesday night. We had some discussion on a report by the Diversity Committee, chaired by Dan Rooney, relative to both head coach hiring and front office hiring, including continuing opportunities for executives to participate in career development seminars and programs such as we had at Stanford last June. So we had a good, full day. A lot of it was reports. Tomorrow we have the three presentations from Arizona, Washington and Tampa Bay relative to the Super Bowl, and obviously we will have a vote on that. On the preseason schedule: PT: We had quite a bit of discussion, I did personally along with some of our staff, with owners between our league meeting in Washington on September 17 and today. And as I said on several other occasions, there seems to be a pretty clear sentiment that the current four preseason games, 16 regular-season games serves us very well. We have the best sports product out there, very, very competitive and a good balance between getting ready to play the season and the regular season itself. So there is no reason to reinvent the wheel. On the NFL in Los Angeles: PT: We did report to our five owners who are on our Los Angeles Working Group. Last week we had a conference call with them. We gave a short report to the Finance Committee yesterday, which is 10 owners, in terms of where we are in our discussions and studies with Carson, the L.A. Coliseum and the Rose Bowl. If we have time tomorrow, we will give a short report on that to the rest of the membership. On first-half trends of the 2003 season: PT: I don’t think you see any trends yet. Basically it has been a very strong season in terms of the things we like to see in games: closeness of games, overtime games, games being resolved late with big plays, touchdowns relative to field goals, the ability of offenses to move the ball and things like that. In the first three weeks of the season we were down somewhat. I think you all could see that by looking at the games and looking at the scores. There were quite a few false start penalties in a number of the early games and that dampens offensive productivity for obvious reasons. In the next five weeks that changed rather dramatically. So, scoring is very strong and the game is very strong right now as it was last year. Last year, many people felt it was the most competitive season ever, and right now it’s continuing in that same fashion. On the number of penalties so far this season: PT: I think it’s a one-per-game increase over last year. And a lot of that is factoring the false starts in the first three weeks, which is not a discretionary thing with the officials. If a guy moves, he moves and you’ve got to call it. You can’t say, “Well, I’ll ignore that one because it didn’t seem like a big deal.” On overtime and a possible change to the current format: PT: I think there will be the same level of interest as there was last year. People are not swayed by where we are after eight weeks. People are concerned about the overall fairness of the overtime and the continuing significance of the kickoff and first possession versus second possession. So the answer is yes, there will be a lot of interest in continuing to look at alternatives when we get to the March meeting. On Warren Sapp’s hiring by NFL Network and his critical comments about the NFL: PT: Warren was hired before his free-speech episode and he can say what he wants to say. We are making our network decisions based upon judgments on who can be interesting in terms of television. We wanted to have independence. What more can you say. What more should you say about a subject that’s at the margin of my daily life. On whether the NFL will help out the San Diego Chargers with their losses due to the fires: PT: We don’t know yet. We have insurance that will cover some of the losses, and so if there is a need to deal with that I’m sure we will address it as a league. On whether the 2009 Super Bowl will be awarded at this meeting: PT: No. On where things stand with the possible return of the NFL to Los Angeles: PT: In May, some of the focus was on Carson and the Rose Bowl. At that time we knew enough about both projects that we felt we should start spending some money to keep the ball rolling and make certain that environmental reviews and construction reviews proceeded and we didn’t waste time in those areas, and that’s being done. In addition, the Los Angeles Coliseum has become part of the process. Each one of the projects has a somewhat different timeline, and some of the timelines may be expandable. It’s in the nature of construction evaluations and environmental reviews. We feel that by our March meeting there may be an opportunity to make some more decisions, but that’s not certain. It may be May; it may be October next year. But we think right now that there can be some more decisions about paths to take and alternatives to choose among in terms of further development work between March and October next year. We didn’t have that understanding last May. On NFL Europe: PT: We did discuss the status of our decisions on NFL Europe with committees when we met in New York in mid-October. We reviewed with the Business Ventures Committee and the Finance Committee two weeks ago. That was about 20 owners in total, what we were thinking about in Europe about possibly folding one or more teams and starting teams in additional markets to concentrate our resources in a somewhat tighter circle, with Barcelona being outside the perimeter of that circle. On the logistics of moving the MNF game to Arizona due to the fires and the recognition of those who made it possible: PT: I know there is tremendous appreciation starting with the Chargers and the Dolphins, and with me and my office, for what the Cardinals did and what ASU did. That was really tremendous and under very difficult circumstances, particularly for Dean Spanos and Marty Schottenheimer and those people whose staffs, players, coaches and others are dealing with these tragic events. Whether that will carry over in one way or another to the Super Bowl vote, I couldn’t tell you. I described yesterday for a couple of our committees and again today that the fact was we really had six hours to make some decisions on Sunday between 3:00 in the afternoon and 9:00 at night basically. About an hour to two hours into that process I spoke to Mike Bidwill. We also spoke to the 49ers and the Raiders. Mike was in the middle of a game against the 49ers as you all know. Despite the fact that they had their own game underway, he started to talk to people there within his own organization about the possibility of having another game Monday night. Mike had a lot of input in terms of the decision to make the game free to the public and to fill the stadium and to encourage the public to make charitable contributions to wildfire relief in Southern California, to get his players out to do that. He immediately spoke to his players after their own game on Sunday night about being part of that charitable effort. So he did a lot of things that were very important. He also told me he had just returned home from his college reunion, hadn’t had much sleep before Sunday night, didn’t get any sleep on Sunday night, and he got a real good round of ovation for what he did under very difficult circumstances, as did Dean Spanos and Eddie Jones and Wayne Huizenga and the Dolphins organization. It was all part of the same recognition. On the need to relocate future Chargers games: PT: We are aware of what the schedule is and we have time to deal with that. The answer is we know we might have to have a contingency plan. What the plan might be, we haven’t started to figure out yet. I know they play the Bears on the road this week, and then we’ll be looking at the future schedule. If it’s a divisional game then there might be some alternatives, especially if it’s the first divisional game. If it’s not a divisional game then there are fewer alternatives, but we’ll look at them. On the newly discovered steroid THG: PT: From my perspective, the basic situation is that Harold [Henderson] and Gene Upshaw have been discussing this intensively and they’ll continue to do that. This particular category of steroids has been on our prohibited list for quite some time. So Harold and Gene will work through this in a way that will strike a fair balance. On the sense of urgency the L.A. opportunity creates in Minnesota about the Vikings: PT: I don’t think that Los Angeles should create the sense of urgency. To take the Vikings as one example, and there are others, I think that the sense of urgency really exists because of what’s been done around the rest of the league and the opportunity to do something that is very positive for sports in that community. Just to continue with the Vikings as an example, obviously they are competing in a division where three other teams now have a new stadium. They are in a stadium which I think everyone recognizes is outdated and inadequate in terms of the high quality of fan service that you can give your fans in a new stadium. Lambeau Field, the new Soldier Field and Ford Field are three dramatic examples of what you can do when you have more space and how it can become a day-long experience for the fans and not just a three-hour in-game experience. I’ve had some discussions with the Governor going back and I think everyone understands that there is an opportunity there. You don’t need L.A. to create that sense of urgency. |