Paul Tagliabue: Good afternoon. We’ve wrapped up the meeting. It’s been a very good meeting. It’s been a lot of work over four days. We’ve made some progress internally on the Collective Bargaining Agreement issues that we’re all facing. We had a very good and spirited Competition Committee discussion. We’ve had a couple of votes taken on some playing rules changes, particularly in the area of safety. The clubs voted to conditionally award the Super Bowl to New York in 2010. We’ve had some excellent meetings this morning with coaches and owners on player programs and some of the educational opportunities we’re offering to players. We’re doing a lot of things for current players to help them be good citizens and mature and to take advantage of opportunities after their football career that they can develop while they’re playing. We covered a lot of ground in a lot of different areas and needless to say, it’s nice to be done. I’ll take some questions.

PT: We had a lot of good discussion and a lot of good analysis. There are two or three different concepts that people are considering. We’re going to do further work on them. We’re going to have more committee meetings in April and then eventually a league meeting in Atlanta on April 19 to keep the progress going.

PT: There are different ways of funding some additional cost-sharing or revenue-sharing. There are ways of arriving at target levels in terms of what could be needed to ensure that all clubs can operate successfully within in the very strict demands of spending under the salary cap.

PT: I think there is a consensus that there is a need for some new mechanisms in the league to address the issue of cost-sharing or revenue-sharing. It’s not really giving people money willy-nilly, it’s giving people the revenues that they need to operate effectively within the salary cap, which pegs player costs to an average of all the teams in the league. We knew that in 1992 and we know it now. When you have an average, some teams are below the average, some teams are above the average. Now we have to address the issue of the teams that are below the average. You can either help address the issue by giving them some additional resources to spend at the levels that they have to spend to or you can take some of the costs which we pay on an equal basis today – like benefit costs – and have them pre-paid out of a fund. We have close to $500 million a year of benefit costs, pensions, 401K, deferred comp and a whole slew of benefits that players get in order to give them income over a number of years when they play in the NFL. That’s about $15 million per team that is paid equally by each team. If we could create a fund to pay some of that money, that would alleviate some of the financial burden on the lower-revenue clubs and help them get to where they need to be. There are a lot of different approaches out there and that’s what we’re discussing.

PT: On Monday we had four groups of people floating in one area and then we changed some concepts and had three different groups. It’s more about concepts than it is about any divide.

PT: No, I talked to Gene earlier this week and I don’t think they’re waiting to see how big the TV pot is. We’ve given a pretty good indication to him as to where we think the TV pot is going. He already knows where part of it is going and I think he’s satisfied that there will be very strong increases in revenue. We spoke earlier this week and we’ll be meeting in the near future.

PT: In terms of percentages, DGR was 88% of the total revenue the way it was defined. We’ve been talking about total football revenue being anywhere from 92% up to 97%. You’re always going to have some deducts for a variety of reasons. In percentages, that’s what we’re talking about. Certainly there will be continuing deducts for building stadiums and things like that. For the future, the biggest change, although it was a quirk in the original agreement, is that TV revenue went into the salary cap with every dollar going in as a full dollar but DirecTV dollars, because they went through NFL Enterprises and not through the league, went through as less than a full dollar, more like 84 cents on each dollar. It was a highly technical thing that was not anticipated. Going out into the future, that has got some real significance in terms of digital media and non-traditional forms of television. That’s been rectified and that’s a significant thing for everybody because it puts the agreement in sync with the future.

PT: That’s already in there. That’s irrelevant. I read in the newspapers that total revenue has to do with unshared revenue. Those are two different issues. The main thing that has to do with DGR and total football revenue is non-traditional TV and other electronic media, like wireless and things like that.

PT: Suite revenue goes into DGR right now. It will continue to go into whatever concept we have.

PT: Yes.

PT: We’re going to be making decisions on stadium sites. Stadiums are different than franchises, in case you hadn’t noticed.

PT: We’re going to make some decisions on the stadium process. We might eliminate some candidates. We might pick one. There are a number of different alternatives. I was in California for two days last week and we talked about a lot of different alternatives. We’re making progress and by the May meeting, we should be able to make some decisions that we weren’t in a position to make up to this point.

PT: Miami will be a candidate in May for the 2009 Super Bowl in competition with Tampa Bay, Houston and Atlanta.

PT: Miami’s concept, which is called the "Super Site" is a five to 25 year plan. We will not be voting on it in May.

PT: Basically what I said on Monday. The negotiations had exhausted themselves and that they were at a dead end but that the priority was to resume discussions and get an understanding of our common economics and to move forward. That’s where we are.

PT: A lot of people were impressed by it and intrigued by it. There was a lot of out-of-the-box thinking in terms of the importance of a permanent facility to make a game the Super Bowl. There were questions about the rotation between that type of a Super Site and other cities that would be hosting Super Bowl games. There were some questions about cost that were deferred for the future because it wasn’t a cost analysis, just a concept analysis. The Dolphins emphasized that there would be technology elements that could be included in other cities on a plug-in type basis. There was quite a bit on interest in it.

PT: No, Wayne Huizenga talked to me about this six or eight months ago and then I saw a preliminary presentation of this in Florida within the last month. His people were in New York last week and made another presentation to our staff. There are long presentations that take two hours and we had a shorter one this week, about 20-25 minutes.

PT: As I said the other day, it’s being worked on by the lawyers and other staff people.

PT: As I said at the Super Bowl about a variety of things, I am neither pessimistic nor optimistic because I don’t have a basis to be either pessimistic or optimistic.

PT: There is an obvious value to it. The Super Bowl is a premier sports event and whenever a facility can get a premier sports event, it’s enhanced value for the community that is partnered with one of our teams building a stadium. If you started with the Georgia Dome, where we put the game in 1994 and then they’ve had the summer Olympics and other mega-events go into that stadium - SEC Championship games, Olympic basketball finals and things like that. I think you’d have to say that the Super Bowl – like those other major events – is a big plus for the cities building these facilities. That is why there is so much interest in having the game rotate to places where there are new stadiums. And that’s not just the Dome facilities, but obviously the outdoor facilities in the more mild climates, like Jacksonville and others, it’s a big plus.

PT: We’ve discussed it with Gene quite a bit. We had gone over a list of players early in the year where there were multiple franchise tags in repeat years. The striking thing this year was that a large percentage of those players have signed contracts. Our staff did an analysis for me that showed where the repeat tags were. It was a situation where you had two or three key players who needed to be resigned to long-term contracts in close proximity to each other. The way the system works you may have to tag one player a couple years in a row while you sign another key player to a long-term deal and then at some point the second player falls in line and he gets a long-term deal. You have to really look at squad planning and the efforts teams are making to keep their key talent in place and evaluate any single situation in a somewhat broader context. I think that was true with Walter Jones, Orlando Pace and some of these other players.

PT: No. I think the Commissioner is more or less the unofficial chairman of all committees. The way I work with the committees is we try to have a strong chairman and then I can delegate a lot to our staff to work with the chairman. But when it comes to a meeting like this the chairman usually doubles back to me and says here is where I think the committee is, here is my thinking, I want to make sure I know your thinking before we go in front of the membership. We work together with shared responsibility, but the committee chairman provide great leadership and they have the time to talk to members on the committee on a frequent basis and of course they’re looking at it from a prospective of owners. I think our system really works quite well.

PT: Pretty much what I just described. I think that’s a bit different because it’s not a standing committee, it’s a working group and in that particular context I don’t think we have a chairman other than me, but Roger Goodell has been more or less effectively serving as our League liason. So if you want to say who the chairman is, it’s probably Roger or maybe Roger one week and Neil Glat the next week and Eric Grubman the next week, that’s a bit different.

PT: When we envisioned free agency a lot of it was an educated guess-timate. There were a lot of concerns because the National Football League had not had free agency under a salary cap – qualified free agency. But I would say yes, I think it has worked quite well in terms of the competitiveness of the teams. We expected that if everyone was spending within a relatively narrow band over time, that the game would be extremely competitive and teams would have the opportunity to be very competitive. We couldn’t assure that because there are so many variables; injuries, coaching etc. But it’s been so competitive. I think it’s exceeded many peoples expectations. The other side of the coin – the biggest concern – was that by forcing everyone to spend within a narrow band, would you be able to keep above average, superior teams together? Of course, if you go back five or six years ago that was a concern that you all wrote about and we had a lot of discussion with some of you and internally about whether that was a product of the salary cap, a product of the fact that some of the great quarterbacks had retired - Jim Kelly, Troy Aikman, Steve Young - and the next generation of top quarterbacks who could lead teams to multiple Super Bowls hadn’t yet stepped into their shoes. Now of course, the Patriots and Eagles have demonstrated, it not only produces a very competitive league across the 32 teams, but that repeat success is clearly possible when you have a strong team and a good organization that can keep it together, including the quarterback. I think we’re getting the best of both worlds out of this system right now.

PT: Yes, surely, we are looking hard. The NFL Network is a major area of potential growth for the league and we have the most successful league network that anyone has ever launched in the last 18 months, probably the most successful subscriber-supported network of any kind and maybe the most quickly distributed of any network, so that’s a major piece of expansion. Our Internet network is at record levels in terms of users. We’re looking to expand in the areas of wireless and other new technologies. We’re expanding overseas, the game in Mexico is part of that, NFL Europe, which launches next week. Our philosophy is to keep expanding and keep looking for new opportunities to be better, including youth football and everything else.

PT: On the outside chance that it didn’t go forward in New York we would have to revisit it. There is no plan in place other than to reevaluate and look at alternative cities. I think we’re pretty comfortable that where we are is very positive for New York and positive for the Super Bowl.

PT: It’s something that Pete Rozelle had policies on. We have a policy that we distribute tickets to our team employees, including players, and they are for their use not for resale. That’s technically not scalping, but is it a big issue? I don’t know. It’s an issue. I’ll let you know after I get my report on Mike Tice and some other things.

PT: No, those are among the scenarios that we have been talking about.

PT: Collectively we felt the Raiders were better than a 5-11 team and they had made significant strides in signing players this offseason that suggested they could be even stronger. But we were also looking for a match-up that could have national appeal and we felt New England, as the Super Bowl champs, and the Raiders, as a team with a history of success and a national following and obviously an appeal to the West Coast, could give the game national appeal. We also felt there was a freshness to that match-up that was preferable to going back to a divisional game, such as the Jets, or a game that we’ve before, such as Indianapolis at New England. A lot of factors went into it. Another factor was that this year, the teams in the eastern and western divisions are going to have a lot of cross-country travel because of the way the schedule formula is being applied this year. All of the teams in the NFC East and AFC West are going to be traveling cross-country. The Raiders have four east coast trips, plus a trip to Cleveland and we wanted to space them out. They are long trips and for competitive purposes we wanted to make it fair. By starting them on the east coast early we are able to stagger some of their cross-country trips. We are doing the same thing with other teams that will have cross-country trips on four occasions. So when you see the final schedule you will see real focus on the competitive issue of trying to balance long distance travel with a lot of things. We think it will be a terrific match-up with excitement and interest in a strong offense with deep threats going against New England’s defense and a variety of other things.

PT: A better way of asking the question would be: is there anything we haven’t explored? We’ve talked about ESPN on Monday night, other networks on Sunday night, ESPN on Sunday night, split packages on Monday night. We’ve talked about a lot of things.

PT: We made a presentation to the Competition Committee in Indianapolis at the Combine on flexible scheduling in late season and presented a concept that really would be geared to the opportunity for teams to play themselves into prime time. We would have a certain number of prime time games set, but there would be a certain number of openings, so that teams who performed extremely well unexpectedly would effectively be playing themselves into prime time. That would be exciting for the teams and exciting for the fans. Before we can go much further we need to know whether the broadcast package would be on Monday night as it is now because the flexible scheduling would be into the broadcast package. So if it’s from Sunday afternoon into Sunday night its one thing, if it’s Sunday afternoon to Monday night it’s another thing. We’ve got a lot of good concepts which the Competition Committee has endorsed, but before we can get down to another level of detail we really need to know where these packages will end up. In one way or another we’ll have Monday Night Football, it’s just a question of whether it will be on cable or broadcast television. There are some structural advantages to switching it to Sunday night in terms of 110 households, the Pacific coast time zone issue, people who are working on Monday, not working on Sunday; more people would have access to a broadcast on Sunday night at 6 o’clock on the Pacific coast than there are for a broadcast on Monday night.

PT: The tradition is a big factor and it’s a big plus and continuity is a plus, but the tradition began when there were three networks and 10 channels and now we have 1000, so at a certain point life changes. Even I’ve gotten older.

PT: I don’t think we have many Sunday night games in January. We take those things into account and spend a lot of time looking at where games were. Sometimes the choice is between Pittsburgh and New England, take your pick.

PT: I saw the challenge to come into a situation where there were problems - conflict with the players, litigation, very few new stadiums – and take some of the philosophies Pete Rozelle and the owners had applied in the 1960’s and 70’s and apply them to the 1990’s, which was geared towards expansion, the growth of television alternatives and to new stadiums. As I looked at the 80’s and compared them with the 60’s you could see that for whatever reason, what had been accomplished in the 60’s and 70’s began to flag in the 80’s. That might have just been the simple fact that the economy was bad in the 70’s and it carried over into the early 80’s with very high inflation and the transition from the Carter administration to the Regan administration. You could debate forever what the causes were. A lot of my thinking was to go back to the growth-oriented attitude that Pete Rozelle, Tex Schramm and others had when they created the merger of the AFL and NFL, took a 12 or 14 team league in 1960 up to a 26 team league in 1970, took no television on a national basis up to a three network contracts in 10 years, built a lot of new stadiums in a single decade and then try to apply that to the environment of the 90’s. I think we’ve been quite successful at doing that. Hopefully I’ve followed in his footsteps, but added some of my own fingerprints.

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