PT: As the leagues have grown bigger and as the context of sports has changed, I would say that it has become more strategic and policy-oriented. Secondly, I think there is a greater emphasis on external relationships, external partnerships. And the third thing is that they include global and international relationships, and not just relationships within the United States. I think those are probably the three major changes.

On the other hand, I think there is a lot of continuity. Pre-1989, before I came on board, in terms of the mix of stewardship of the game on one hand and the business issues on the other hand, if you look at the evolution of the NFL in the early-60s, in Pete Rozelle’s decade, there were major league companies that were formed, NFL Films, NFL Properties, and a major league role in television, with the 1961 television statute that congress passed and then the first national television contract with CBS and the NFL. So I think there is a lot of continuity, but there is evolution as well. In terms of specific changes, probably the biggest one that occurred between Rozelle and me was the decision by the owners when I took over to put the commissioner in charge of labor relations with the Players Association. I think that was the biggest specific change in terms of our own governance structure. It’s critical. I think Pete was recognizing at the end of his tenure that it had been a mistake for him to withdraw himself from a direct role in the relationship with the players.

PT: I think that contention in labor relations grows out of the policies that you pursue and how you approach labor relations. To some degree, there was an institutional reason for some of the litigation in the 60s, 70s and 80s because there needed to be a clarification of how the labor laws applied and the scope of the anti-trust exemption from the labor laws. So, some of the litigation was inevitable. Some of it was not. I think we have been the beneficiaries of the clarification of the relationship between labor and anti-trust, and the fact that the labor laws control and there is very little scope, if any, for anti-trust law regulation of the labor management issues in sports.

So, I think some of it was personality-based or policy-based. Some of it was institutional, in the sense that there was a need for a clarification of how the anti-trust laws fit on top of the labor law regime. And that included the Curt Flood case in baseball and the John Mackey case in the NFL and some of the ensuing litigation. But by the time you got to the 80s, it had deteriorated to the point that, with the long strike in ‘82 and the replacement games in ’87, it had gone beyond the institutional issues to issues of policy and confrontation.

PT: The commissioner has always had control of all committees other than the labor committee. That was the only exception. It was well-intentioned in the beginning, but I think in the end it turned out to be misguided because eventually, by not being in charge of the relationship with the Players Association, you lose control over all of those aspects of the player-employment relationship, which determines the quality of the product. To the extent our system has worked well, to the extent the NBA system has worked well to produce great football or great basketball, that’s a critical part of the commissioner’s responsibility, which is to be the steward of the game. If you’re out of the labor relationship, then you lose control of that piece of it. So I think from that perspective, the decisions made in the early-to-mid-70s to have the commissioner be a third party to the labor management relationship, rather than a direct party to the relationship, turned out to be misguided.

PT: I think the athletes clearly have improved. This is something that we discussed last week. The performance levels of the athletes have just continued to grow as it has become a year-round occupation and people are training on a year-round basis. There is a greater degree of specialization in the game. Anything you do full-time should be better than anything you do part-time. And as it has become a full-time game, I think it has become better and better because the athletes are better and better. I think that is across the spectrum of athletics, from the Olympics to individual sports, to the league sports. People are poll-vaulting higher and long-jumping longer and running the 100 meters faster, so that gets translated into the other sports as well in terms of performance.

PT: I had been involved first when some of the "street" drugs came in and Rozelle disciplined people in the early to mid-70s. And then in the early 80s it was clear that performance-enhancing drugs needed to be addressed, and I was involved with Pete Rozelle in formulating a policy that he put in place in 1986. It wasn’t too long before I became commissioner that I was in court down here defending his first suspensions of players under the performance-enhancing drug policy. So it was clear that it was needed, and once the technology was available to do the testing and the science had developed to the point where you could effectively test, I think the NFL was very pro-active, beginning with Rozelle. Then, once I had the chance to discuss it with Gene Upshaw, I think he bought in very quickly, and I think our Players Association and the attitude of the Players Association supported that there is no place for performance-enhancing drugs in the locker room any more than there is a place for a health hazard in any other work place. That attitude of our Players Association has been a very positive contributor to the success of our program, because they have viewed it as a health risk in the locker room, just as there are other health risks in other places of employment, whether it be a coal mine or a steel mill or anything else. That attitude has been very positive for us, and it continues to be positive because they have viewed every new evolution, whether it is designer steroids or human growth hormone, they have viewed it as a health issue and have been proactive with us in trying to get rid of it or address it.

PT: The things that worry you most are the things you don’t know about. So until you know about it, you can’t jump on it. There are clearly going to be things that we don’t know about. How do you put an institution in place to find out about them as quickly as you can is a big issue, and that’s one of the reasons we have funded the new lab out in Utah. Just to invest in science and invest in testing technology is the most you can do to stay ahead of the curve, or try to stay abreast with the curve. Some of the other issues, whether it is long-term issues of gene doping or short-term issues of human growth hormone and how it might be used or abused, those are also issues.

PT: I think that our competition is all entertainment. Certainly all entertainment which appeals to our core audience, which is people that are interested not just in sports but physical activity, whether it is climbing mountains, skiing, back-packing. I think that if you look at the major segments of our audience, any entertainment that is directed to those major segments is competition for us. That includes both men and women, and in terms of the age spectrum, that covers a very large part of the spectrum since our audience covers a large part of the spectrum. I think it has always been clear that leisure-time activity is the competition for league sports.

PT: Television includes lots of leisure-time activity. Do we compete with a soap opera? At the margin, yes. Do we compete with other action-oriented sports television programming, non-television programming, video games? I wouldn’t say it is the entire spectrum of television. Do we compete with news? Probably not except in the margin. There are things that you compete with at the margin, but there is countless television programming that is at the core of the competition. It goes way beyond television. We’ve got a million people a week in our stadiums, and it’s not the same million every week. It starts with the fact that every week different teams are home and different teams are away. So if you look at the totality of season ticket holders and regular people going to stadiums, it’s at least a couple of million. And that in turn has a ripple effect within families and groups of friends. So there are lots of leisure-time activities, way beyond television, that competes with NFL football.

PT: Absolutely. When baseball is playing the playoffs and the World Series, it is perfectly clear that they are competition. They take viewers away, at least when they are having strong series. And at those times of the year when we overlap, there is clearly a flow of viewers from one sport to another. The same is true of college basketball at this time of the year and the beginning of baseball and the NBA. There is certainly competition amongst all the sports when the seasons overlap.

PT: NASCAR is basically a year-round competitor at this point. They’re on in the fall and they are on in the spring.

PT: I don’t think it is the television networks. The television networks are responding to interest. The teams and the league and the Players Association are the ultimate arbiters of the league’s success because they are the ones who ultimately make the decisions about what makes the product strong and competitive across the board or weak and not as deep as you might want it. Those are the people who ultimately determine the quality of the product, the strength of the game and the appeal of the athletes both on the field and off the field in the community. We frequently say that the twin pillars of our sport are football and the community. So, the strength of the NFL and the NFL teams on the field and in the communities is determined by the teams, the league, the players and the Players Association. Television just responds to where the fan interest is. They are the ultimate meter raters. They don’t drive our success. They mirror and portray the quality of our product, but they don’t determine out success.

PT: That’s an effect, it’s not a cause. They wouldn’t give us the $17 billion if we didn’t have a good product with a very deep and passionate fan base. Certainly, one of the effects of having the great product and the great fan base is that you generate revenue from the networks, but they cannot sit back and say, "Soccer is great, so we’re going to give soccer $17 billion," or "The NHL is great, so we’re going to give them $17 billion." They are responding to fan interest and advertising interest and sponsor interest, and in our case, the interest of the general public. Because it‘s clear that once you get into the stretch run leading up to the playoffs, the playoffs themselves and then the Super Bowl, the audience gets bigger and bigger, and people are in the NFL audience who don’t typically few themselves as NFL fans or sports fans, but they get interested in that part of the season. That is certainly reflected in the size of the television audience for the Super Bowl and Championship Games, as it just keeps growing and growing beyond the large group of people who view themselves as sports fans.

That’s one of the big, big pluses of our renewing our contracts with CBS and FOX for the broadcast coverage of our games. It brings us to 110 million households every weekend, where most of the other sports have made the decision to consign themselves to cable, which is 30 million fewer homes in terms of total universe and it doesn’t have the potential sweep that broadcast television has.

PT: I think our television revenue is going to grow from about $2.2 billion a year to somewhere north of $3.5 billion a year, so players’ salaries are going to continue to grow rather dramatically for the next six years, that’s for sure. In the 12 years of this agreement, I think they’ve grown from $35-40 million per team to over $100 million per team. We’re the first sports league anywhere in history to have player payrolls in excess of $100 million, which is where we are for this upcoming 2005 season. Total player costs per club will be at over $102 million dollars.

PT: So this year we are at $102.5. So that is pretty tremendous growth in a dozen years, and it will clearly continue with the television contracts we’ve already got, with CBS, FOX and DirecTV, and the ones we will be negotiating with ESPN and the others.

PT: As I said, it is going to be a 50-75% increase under this next series of contracts compared with the last series of contracts. That’s pretty dramatic continued growth. I think the significant thing is that it’s not just going to be television, it’s going to be other digital media, wireless communications. So, I think as technology expands the ways that people can connect with sports and receive sports entertainment, the potential for continued growth and revenues to high-quality sports providers is very, very strong.

PT: Probably some of all of the above. But I think it is going to continue to focus on television. I’m one of those people who think that the computer is a lean-forward experience and the television is a lean-backward experience, and has more to do with the nature of the activity and the source of the satisfaction and source of the entertainment than the piece of equipment. When people are working and people are engaged and being creative themselves in writing and communicating, then they’ll be leaning forward at something that is called a computer or PDA or whatever. When people are leaning back to be entertained, it may be the same physical piece of equipment, but it is going to be programmed differently and it’s going to be different type of interaction with the screen and with the entertainment. You know, the technology may merge, the piece of hardware may merge and become consolidated, but the software that controls it and the output of the piece of equipment is going to be very, very different.

PT: It’s been terrific. This year was the culmination of a long road to success, but there was a lot of success along the way. The Eagles were a short step from where the Bills were in terms of being in multiple Super Bowls in a short period of time. To get where Buffalo got in the late-80s and early-90s, in terms of Super Bowl participation, and where the Eagles got the last five years, having the best won-lost record, having success right up to the Conference Championship Game, I think that is a big, big accomplishment. It’s a tribute to Jeff and the people he has brought in, and the way they have been able to identify talent, whether it has been in the front office or at the coaching level, that fits Jeff’s own unique template and his own set of expectations. So, I think it’s a real tribute to the way he’s run the team. Young coach, young front office, young owner. They’ve had a lot of success.

PT: Yes, because generally we have had a policy of not playing Super Bowls in northern cities in open-air stadiums. And I think we will continue the policy of generally not doing that.

PT: And they haven’t gotten one yet, which is a reflection of the general policy. It was the general desire to have the game in more moderate climates or in dome stadiums if it is in the north. It was more that, plus the competition for the game that was presented by Arizona, the specific game that Washington was competing for, than any short-coming in any aspect of the Redskins or the areas presentation for the Super Bowl. I think they will eventually get one, but there still is that policy preference among a lot of owners for the warmer climates and to limit it to domes in the northern climates.

PT: Yes, there are a lot of owners I talk to on almost every issue. Different people at different times. For 9/11, we discussed it with a very wide group of owners along with Gene Upshaw, who was talking to the players. Depending on the subject and the issue, I could speak to any one of 20-25 different owners. If it has to do with something that is a current issue that we’ve had to address in the past, I might go back and speak to people who have been in the league when we addressed the issue before, Ralph Wilson, Bud Adams, Wellington Mara. If it’s on a lot of other issues, I speak with our committee chairman. We tend to have six or seven key chairman of our standing committees. Wayne Weaver, Jerry Richardson, Dan Rooney, Tom Benson, Bob Kraft, Pat Bowlen, for the most part they have been chairing our standing committees in recent years. So I always discuss key issues and decisions with them. And then in turn, we involve the committees as we need to.

PT: I’ll let the owners and the other people figure that one out. They keep extending my contract, so I guess they have at least a mild degree of satisfaction.

PT: I’m going to keep doing it as long as I think I can do the job better than anybody else. At some point, there needs to be a 28-year old person with a vision to 2050. At some point, there needs to be someone who will be here for another 20 years and that will be time for a transition. But when it is, I don’t really know at this point.

PT: The answer is no, and if the answer was yes, I wouldn’t tell you who it was. I think the key thing is institutional. It’s not about me, it’s about the institution and it’s about having someone as the commissioner, as the chief executive, who understands that it’s his or her responsibility to make the thing work for another 15-20 years. I think all organizations have to view their chief executive in that way. It’s not about the individual, it’s about the institution, and it’s about having someone at the steering wheel who feels a sense of creativity and has a vision and a sense of responsibility about the long-term future. Certainly I have that currently and have had it since 1989, but at some point someone else will have to have that.

PT: Very rarely.

PT: There doesn’t seem to be a big need to talk to them. I can’t remember when I’ve spoken to any one of the three. I might speak to them once every six months. In David Stern’s case, I might talk to him once every three or four months, because I’ve known him for almost 40 years. In the case of the others, if we talk every six months, it’s probably a lot.

PT: The main thought I had is that our union gets a lot of the credit for being as focused as it was going back to the late-80s and early-90s on the fact that this was a health hazard and a health risk and a competitive issue among the players. And they had to get rid of it. I think Gene Upshaw’s experience as a player and as the head of the Players Association through the 80s gave him both the understanding of the issue and the authority, both moral and otherwise, to address the issue aggressively, to work with me, and to get ahead of the curve. I think that is where we are at. My focus was on where we are relative to the issue and the fact that we have to stay ahead of it and not become complacent just because we think we have done well up until now. It’s dynamic, the issue could be dramatically changing science, if you get into genetic engineering. So we need to stay in close touch with the experts, with the scientists and with the most specialized and knowledgeable people in the field, and make sure we are doing everything we can do to make sure we do not have an issue.