Commissioner Paul Tagliabue – 12/8/02 – Raymond James Stadium

On the season:
“I think it has been a tremendously competitive season.  A lot of great divisional races left, obviously.  But I think that most people feel that the bigger thing is the great young talent in the league.  And Michael Vick is the buzz right now, but if you look around the league, there are a great number of young, outstanding players, and they are a big part of the story.  It’s a competition with fresh faces and in New York we can see that with Chad Pennington and Santana Moss.  All around the league, the Donte Stallworths and other players are matched up with veterans like Jerry Rice, Tim Brown, Drew Bledsoe, so it’s just been a phenomenal season.  It’s one of the reasons I’m here.  I’ll be in Miami tomorrow night to celebrate the 30^th anniversary of the Dolphins undefeated team and of course they are working hard to get to the playoffs in the AFC East, so it’s just another example of every game meaning something.”

On the ban of Ephedrine:
“The ban is going to stay in place.  You probably saw this week that the United States Armed Forces banned ephedrine, and one of the companies that makes supplements with ephedrine announced that they will stop production.  Gene (Upshaw) has never said to me, or publicly, that he had any questions about the ban.  The only issue is the extent of discipline, and the procedures we follow leading up to discipline, which is something we already talked to Gene about along with Harold Henderson. We will talk about it again after the season.”
 

On fineable hits on the field:
“These are policies we have had and they have been looked at in tremendous depth.  We sent out to all the coaching staffs, about a month ago, the report of the competition committee from the mid-90’s.  It went into the responsibility of the coaches to make sure that the games are played safely. This policy is the result of some very in-depth analysis.  We had two suspensions early in the season, which in a sense, were coincidental because the players who were suspended had repeat offenses.  So to that extent it looked like we upgraded the discipline.  Yes, the fines have increased, but so have the players’ salaries, so we are trying to have some proportionality between the fines and the salaries.  Actually, if you look at it, the fines have dropped compared to the way the players salaries have grown.”

On Warren Sapp’s hit:
“I’m not the director of officiating, Mike Pereira is.  He and Larry Upson determined that it was a legal hit and that’s what it was.  That’s the position of the National Football League.”

On overtime rules:
“I don’t think the current rules are unfair, and more importantly our membership doesn’t think so.  The overtime rules have been discussed for a long time. There has been recognition that in our league, as in college football, you can win by having the ball and you can win when you’re on defense.  Up until this year the statistics were very consistent.  I think it was something like 52-48 on who won in overtime compared to who received the ball on the opening kickoff.  And I don’t anticipate that’s going to change. If you receive, you still have to move the ball.  You run the risk of fumbling the kickoff, you run the risk of the defense getting the ball on a turnover deep in your own territory. So that’s been the philosophy of the committee: games are won on both offense and defense, you can win with or without the offense having the ball. Last week, I think we had three overtimes, and none of them were resolved on the first possession, so that’s another part of the thinking.  The committee will look at alternatives, I’m sure.  In the past they have looked at an alternative such as, on the first possession, you win in sudden death if you score a touchdown, but if you kick a field goal, then the other team will have one shot at the ball.  I’m sure that alternative will come up for reconsideration and I’m sure others will as well.  But at this point I don’t see any great sentiment to changing the rule.  That could change in March, but I don’t see it happening now.”

On realignment:
“I think everybody is positive about realignment and the scheduling format.  I hear more from fans about the scheduling formula.  The fact that, today, we have Denver playing in New York, the fact that teams will be playing everybody in the league on a recurring basis.  I think the fans are excited about that, season ticket holders are, and that’s been a positive.  I think realignment is working pretty well, the way we expected, in terms of how many games you have to win to win a division, and what wild card teams are going to have to do to qualify as wild card teams.  Here, of course, some people felt that this NFC South was going to be an easy division and the NFC North was going to be the hard division, but that’s turned out to be the opposite. That’s something that will happen every year or every cycle of years in the NFL.” 

On minority hirings:
“We have the owner committee on diversity and we also have a club executives group, which Richard McKay is on.  Ray Anderson, from the Falcons, also is on and Arthur Blank is one of the owners on the committee.  We have had a lot of discussions, a number of meetings, I think we are making very good progress.  The club executives have been indispensable because they have shown the owners how thorough they are in evaluating coaching talent and front-office talent.  Dan Rooney has been very active as the chairman.  He and I met on Monday and Tuesday last week, along with Bill Walsh and Dennis Green, so we have been reaching out to people beyond the committee.  So I think we will have a very good report for the owners later this month.”

On stadium in San Diego:
“I’ve had meetings with representatives of both the mayor and the Chargers. I’m familiar with what the Task Force is doing out there and we will have to just wait and see.  Hopefully they can get something done.”

On decision of letting Los Angeles possibly host a Super Bowl:
“It was really the fact that our Super Bowl host committee and myself felt that Los Angeles has proven to be a great place for the Super Bowl and we should continue to view it that way, provided that the right stadium was there.  We then had discussion with the Rose Bowl people and they talked to us about their renovation plans. So as we said at the (October) league meeting, we will give serious consideration to playing a game at the Rose Bowl, if there are significant renovations to the stadium.  I’m going to the Rose Bowl game this year just to get up close and personal with the stadium (Rose Bowl).  So we are going to keep it under active consideration.”