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Commissioner Tagliabue Interview Boomer Esiason: From league expansion to instant replay, the man who has had the final word on football for the past 14 years . . . My guest is NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue. Mr. Commissioner, thanks for being here. PT: Good to be here. Esiason: Record television rights, team expansion, new stadiums, labor peace, you’ve accomplished just about everything at the NFL. Is there one thing you’re more proud of than the others? PT: Probably the labor peace. It’s not just labor peace but having a positive relationship with the Players Association, getting them involved with us. And things like youth football, where you’ve been so involved. Those things create a partnership that goes way beyond the 1,800 players in the league into the sport in general. That’s been a big accomplishment. Esiason: Another accomplishment has been 18 either new or refurbished stadiums since you’ve taken over. You have a new one on the way in Arizona and there’s a lot of talk about whether there’s going to be a new stadium here in New York on the west side. I guess the Jets would play there. Do we have any update on that? PT: Not much. It’s mostly something that Woody Johnson and his team have been working on. The Giants are working with the sports authority over there on what would really be a dramatically renovated Giants Stadium. We stay involved, we help where we can, and we try to be positive. And of course the league’s been supporting those efforts with taking a little piece of television money and putting it in as a subsidy to the project, so we’re ready to do that. Esiason: I hope it happens. It’d be great for the Jets to have their own stadium. Clearly the NFL is the standard for all leagues. We’re talking about television, we’re talking about popularity, the internet is a big part of it . . . But you do have some issues that you’re dealing with and I want to get into a couple of those. Maurice Clarett, the young running back out of Ohio State, is suing the league to enter early. What are your feelings on him and his request to try to get into the league early? PT: Well, we have a policy. It’s a little more liberal than it was 15 or 20 years ago. It focuses on players being out of high school at least three years. We think that the proof is in the pudding. It’s worked very well. It’s been in place since the early 90’s. It’s helped players get the maturity, get the experience, the perspective that they need to play in what is obviously the most physical and demanding sport, in not just a physical sense, but in terms of teamwork and consistency and everything else. We think it’s positive for everyone and it should be upheld. Esiason: If it’s not upheld, is there a chance that there could be some special rule for this specific case for allowing him to play? PT: I don’t think so. We’ve looked at that to see whether there’s any circumstance that would have a clear principle behind it and allow Maurice Clarett to play but we don’t see that, and we think that it’s important to have a structure that everyone lives by. Esiason: I believe in it and hopefully that will be the case. The other day I was watching “Inside the NFL” on Ray Lewis. Probably the best defensive player in football for at least the last few years and certainly a unique personality. And they chronicled his journey from the accused to pitchman. And he’s doing a number of things for the NFL and their NFL Equipment. How do you feel about that when you have a player like Ray that has gone through what he has gone through and is now basically being a pitchman for the NFL? PT: As you say, Ray is one of the great defensive players in the league and probably before his career is over, he’ll demonstrate that he is one of the great defensive players of all time. He had some rough times there following the Super Bowl in Atlanta but he, I think, has vindicated himself. He is an excellent player on the field and off the field. In a sense, he deserves a second chance. We like to have policies which are tough and we don’t like to give people fourth, fifth and sixth chances, but I think Ray has earned everything that he’s got both on the field and in terms of pitching products. And his intensity is really quite extraordinary. When he says something, people tend to listen. Esiason: You talk about strict policies. The NFL does have a very good relationship with its Players Association. This whole thing with this new designer steroid . . . It’s out there and certainly the Olympic Committee is looking into it, looking into taking back some of the medals that some of our athletes quite possibly could have won. Do you feel like there are players that maybe have dabbled in this, and if they have and they do test positive, will you guys come down on them pretty hard? PT: We don’t know for certain. It’s something that we’ve been talking about with Gene Upshaw and his people. In fact, I’m sure I’ll be talking to him in the next several days about it again. There are a bunch of issues here. Number one is did people go into it knowingly or were they misled into it? Can you really look back where there have been some tests that might have been done and kept and others that were not kept? Does that create an element of inconsistency that you don’t want to have? I think the key point is going forward. We’ve always defined the prohibitive substances broadly. We’re going to continue doing that going forward. This is going to be strictly enforced. How we deal with this transition is something that we’re going to have to work through with the Players Association. Esiason: We just saw a little piece from the NFL Network. Why now? PT: We talked about this as early as 1994, almost ten years ago, when we did the first Sunday Ticket package. We always knew that when television got to the right point, we’d have our own network. It’s a long time between Sunday and the next Sunday for NFL fans. So this gives our avid fans a great way of seeing inside the game. As you know, players are so diverse, they’re so different, they do so many things, and yet many times they’re seen as one-dimensional. This gives us a chance to let everyone see how multi-dimensional these guys are, both on the field and off the field. Esiason: Speaking of multi-dimensional players, it’s interesting that your league fines Warren Sapp $50,000 and when he was fined that $50,000 you were saying that he was actually lucky to be playing because of some of his egregious errors and comments against the league. But then the same day you fine him, the NFL Network says they hired this guy to be a correspondent. How do you feel about that? PT: He was hired before the fine. What a football player does in one week, what he does ten weeks later, it’s going to be a product of emotion, a product of conflict, a product of trying to get into the other guys’ heads, in a Monday night game like Warren was doing with Indianapolis. So we feel that’s over here and what he’s going to do on television, what he’s going to do in the community, is a separate thing. If he starts to conflict with important policies that we have and embarrass everybody, including his teammates, that’s a different thing, but that’s not Warren Sapp. As you know, he’s a hell of a player on the field. Esiason: He is. He’s certainly an unbelievable personality. I’d probably say the best. Speaking of football and television, one of your TV partners, ESPN, is running a series called “Playmakers.” Now oddly enough, my colleague Deion Sanders says it’s the closest thing to real life football. I kind of find it a little bit absurd. I was never in a locker room quite like that. Your feelings on that particular program and the fact that it’s on ESPN, a place that you would think you would go to get legitimate sports coverage. PT: I’ve said to ESPN and I’ve said publicly I think it’s unworthy of what they do. They’ve established their credibility over so many years, decades now, by covering the sports, by covering the people in the sports, and giving it a balanced perspective. This is just a completely one-sided thing. So many players have spoken out. It trades in racial stereotypes. That’s the last thing we need in the NFL or in society in general for that matter. Esiason: Talking about all the good things that are happening. Let’s talk about expansion to L.A. Jerry Jones, the unofficial spokesman for the NFL, I don’t know how you feel about that, says there’s going to be a team in L.A. It might come from the south, the San Diego Chargers, or it might come from the east, the Minnesota Vikings, as those teams are struggling to get new stadiums in those cities. Is there any truth about what Jerry has said about those teams relocating to L.A.? PT: Maybe in Jerry’s mind there is, but I think that both teams are working really hard to get stadiums done where they are. A big part of our policy, a big part of our success, is having fans keep their teams. Whenever we haven’t been able to accomplish that, it’s been a major disruption. So the biggest thing about L.A. is to get a stadium done and then to get a team there that the public will buy into and a team that can succeed in that area. How we can do that, whether it’s a relocated team, a 33rd team by expansion, we really haven’t talked about that. You know it takes 24 people, not one, to make decisions in the NFL. Esiason: Well I think you’re a pretty important one, although I know Jerry’s an important one too. There are so many things that you’ve accomplished in the 14 years that you have taken over as Commissioner since Pete Rozelle left and passed away. How much longer do you want to do this? How much longer do you want to put up with all this? PT: I’ve been so busy I haven’t really had a chance to think about that. It’s fun, and more than fun, it really is a privilege to be the spokesperson, the representative, to walk behind the leaders of the past, to walk with the leaders of the present, coaches, owners, players, to be a spokesperson for them. So as long as I am finding it satisfying, as long as my health is good, and as long as my wife will put up with me, I’ll keep doing it. Esiason: It’s an honor having you here. You’ve been great ever since I met you and you’ve done a lot for the players in the league and I appreciate it. |