Commissioner Tagliabue Press Conference – NFL League Meeting

Philadelphia, Pa., May 21, 2003

Good afternoon.  We covered a number of subjects.  Probably the three of the most interest would be at the breakfast this morning we had, as part of the Coaches Symposium, over two hours of discussion with owners, club presidents and 100-plus assistant coaches, coordinators and head coaches.  We had several different panels.  It was a very substantive breakfast meeting that started at 8 and went till after 10. 

The panels included Paul Fireman, the chairman/CEO of Reebok, and Gene Upshaw, who with Paul Fireman talked about our partnership and the Players’ Association partnership with Reebok.  Then we had a panel on youth football featuring Cedric Jones, who is now our league head of youth football, who played for the Patriots, and Dave Ogrean, the new executive director of our new youth football organization USA Football.  The final panel was on our diversity initiative.  It was chaired by Dan Rooney, included Ozzie Newsome, who’s on the Diversity Working Group, and three head coaches  -- John Fox, Bill Cowher and Herman Edwards -- and then two players representing Players’ Association Diversity Committee Troy Vincent and Mark Bruener.  That was a very thoughtful discussion about the head coach hiring process, the process of assistant coaches moving up the ladder to coordinator position and on into the mainstream of the interview process of head coaching and so forth. 

Then we did have a thorough discussion of the concept of expanding the playoffs.  The conclusion was that, as we anticipated two or three years ago, we need to get more information as to how the win-loss records turn out to be in the eight-division alignment and the new scheduling formula.  As you try to make judgments about the future playoffs, it’s hard to look back at a different environment with six divisions and a completely different scheduling formula.  This year there were no aberrations in terms of win-loss records, or the strength of the teams in the playoffs, which is something the Competition Committee pointed out in its report.  Everyone felt we need additional seasons under our belt before you can make definitive judgments about how the current system is working and the future of the playoffs.

Related to that there was a preliminary discussion about television and the playoffs.  Obviously we are in the middle of television contracts now.  We are in the sixth season now of the eight-year deals.  Each of the broadcast networks has certain rights relative to current postseason television.  There was not any inclination as to try and undo that or redo that until we have more seasons under our belt with the eight-division alignment.  Then ultimately Kansas City withdrew the resolution they presented. 

The final subject of interest was the presentation by Governor of Pennsylvania Ed Rendell and Mayor John Riley of Pottsville Pennsylvania., which raised an intriguing point in the history of the league – the 1925 NFL championship.  It has been disputed over a set of unusual circumstances.  The record books carry the Chicago Cardinals as the NFL champion in 1925.  At an earlier stage in that season, the Pottsville Maroons from northeastern Pennsylvania, which represented Pennsylvania in the NFL at the time with the Frankford franchise, had beaten Chicago 21-7.  That was such an early stage of the history of pro football that the Pottsville team, ownership and the town wanted to establish that they were not just the best pro team in America but they were the best football team in America.  So they challenged Notre Dame to a game and they beat a team of Notre Dame all-stars 9-7.  So that established Pottsville as having beaten the Chicago Cardinals and Notre Dame, which was quite an achievement at that time.  

Pottsville had played against the Giants at the Polo Grounds and other major games at that time.  The problem with the Pottsville victory over Notre Dame was that it was played in Philadelphia, which was the Frankford home territory.  The then-president of the league, Joe Carr, ruled that Pottsville playing a home game in Frankford’s home territory was such a severe violation of league rules that it was an outlaw game and Pottsville forfeited its victory and forfeited any claim to the championship.  So the Chicago Cardinals were declared league champs in 1925.

In 1963, representatives of Pennsylvania and Pottsville petitioned the league and Pete Rozelle appointed a committee to reassess the fairness of the 1925 championship race and the related decisions that had been made by the then-league president.  The governor and mayor supported by many football fans in the Pottsville area and Pennsylvania have asked us to reassess the situation on the basis that the punishment, which was the forfeiture of the games and of the championship, was not appropriate for the offense.   So we will be looking at that issue as we go forward.  That was the character of our meeting.

On possible playoff expansion…

What you can read into today’s action is the fact that until you see if there’s anything different from the past you don’t know what you are dealing with.  The one thing that was striking this year compared to the four preceding seasons was that we had more teams than ever vying for the playoffs in the last week of the season.  Probably twice as many as the average in the preceding four seasons – why is that?  Is that because it went to eight divisions?  Is that because we had a different scheduling formula?  Is that because we had a greater competitive balance in the league?  Who knows why that is?  When you are comparing one or two seasons with the track record of playoffs from 1970 till now, it’s hard to say on the basis of two seasons that you learned something that you didn’t learn in the past 32 seasons.  Once we have two seasons under our belt are we going to blow up some balloons and say we have some big, new conclusions?  I don’t think so.  It may take two, three, four, five, who knows.  Until you see something different you don’t know what you are looking at. 

And a related consideration are the television contracts.  We have a great track record on television.  We have tremendous audiences for our playoff games.  One of the ways you run a league is if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.  We made a couple of adjustments in the postseason recently in terms of the timeslots of the games – moving some games into primetime.  So there’s no urgency in terms of any immediate need to fix something that’s broken.  It’s definitely not broken; it’s the best in sports.

Follow up to the same question…

You are asking me to speculate on the future.  All I can say is that we have one season under our belt and it’s premature to make any decisions.

On the NFL’s future TV plans and following other sports to more cable distribution…

We don’t know.  That’s obviously a very important question facing all of sports.  One thing we do know is we have by far the strongest sports television programming.  That’s shown by the fact we have three broadcast networks carrying our games in addition to ESPN.  We have tremendous ratings.  Our ratings keep improving relative to other programming as the television audience gets flipped over a larger and larger number of channels.  We feel we have a unique opportunity to continue to be a major presence on broadcast television with mega audiences that can only be delivered on broadcast television.  On the other side of the coin, obviously, the ESPN programming has been well received – both game programming and shoulder programming.  With our Sunday night programming, most of the highest-rated cable programs are NFL Sunday night games.  So how we blend that in the future really is something we’re looking at.  We feel we can continue to have, far and away, the most significant and dominant presence in broadcast television.  Then we will use other forms of distribution – cable, satellite and NFL Network -- in supporting ways.  What the specifics of that will be in 2006, we do not know right now. 

On the Super Bowl being played in other northern cities besides New York and Washington…

Right now we’re focused on the idea of possible Super Bowls in New York and Washington.  To go behind that right now would be a big leap for the membership. 

On contention that playoff expansion would have passed in March…

To me it simply says beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  And sometime people don’t have very good information.  I mean in terms of where the membership is.  When we were in Phoenix, and shortly after Phoenix, it was perfectly clear to me that more than half the league was agnostic on the idea of changing the playoffs until we had more seasons under our belt.  The Competition Committee’s opinion in terms of changing at this time was not a surprise to me.

Comparing 2002 playoff expansion situation to the situation in 1990…

At this time there’s no reason to change.  We have the greatest programming in sports – in the stadium and on television.  We’re just coming off of a season where we had a record number of teams vying for the postseason in the final week of the season.  If we had more teams in the playoffs, statistically, we would’ve had less interest in the 17^th week of the 2002 season because more teams would’ve wrapped up their playoff spots.  What’s the argument for changing something that is not broken, when you are only beginning to learn about a possible new pattern of a won-loss records and division championships and so forth?

The other thing that I was well aware of and other owners were aware of, certainly the ones that were in the league in 1990, was that when we expanded in 1990 from five teams in each conference to six, for the first time in the history of the league the number of teams in the playoffs was above 40 percent.  Historically, it had been in the high 20s and mid-30s.  Roughly a third of the teams or fewer had been playoff qualifiers.  In 1990, part of the reason for the expansion was in anticipation of an increase of teams in the league.  We expanded it partly because we felt we would be expanding from 28 to 30 and maybe to 32.

We also, against that backdrop, increased the number of teams from five to six for a very specific set of reasons Pete Rozelle discussed with me.  Prior to 1990, the opening week of the playoffs had games only on one day – Sunday.  The next week you’d have Divisional Playoffs both Saturday and Sunday.  In addition, you didn’t have any divisional winners in the wild card playoffs prior to 1990.  So there was a big drop-off in the interest around the country because you went from tremendous closes to the regular season with a lot of teams competing for playoff spots, media attention, fan interest that was nationwide.  Then you went down to four teams that were just wild card teams playing two games on a Sunday.  Pete Rozelle had spoken to me.  I know he had brought it up with Art Modell and members of the Competition Committee chaired by Jim Finks at the time and I think Tex Schramm before that and the television committee.  But that was not a positive in terms of fan interest to go from the whole nation being excited to four wild card cities being involved in the first week of the playoffs.  So by going to a sixth team in each conference now you had a situation when divisional winners were playing on Wild Card weekend.  No. 6 played against No. 3, which was a divisional winner and No. 5 played against No. 4, which was two wild card teams.  So you brought better teams on to the field.  You put two division winners on the field and you created two days of television and you magnified the number of communities that were passionate about NFL football.

What we are looking at now is a very different proposal.  The current proposal would just add a lesser team to an already existing mix and, as the Competition Committee pointed out, perhaps create a severe competitive unfairness by only having one bye team.  Having No. 7 play against No. 2 is not in any way analogous in what we did in 1990.  The clear effects of what we did was put better teams on the field, two division winners, and create two days of excitement. 

On a team in LA…

I think the next step with both groups is to continue the dialogue and continue to try and move the process along.  Now you are going to start asking me questions that I don’t know the answers to because I just told you all I know.

There’s not meeting planned.  I haven’t made flight reservations; we’re not sending letters out tomorrow; and we don’t have an order with whose cities we are going to meet first.  We are just going to move the process along in a thoughtful way with both communities.

Long-term goals for the NFL Network…

We don’t have any expectation that it will involve the live broadcasting of games.  Will it involve the rebroadcasting of games after they’ve aired on another network: I don’t know.  We do expect, we got the resolution adopted in March, in the preseason at least the NFL Network would be a place where you could see all the preseason games on a non-conflicting basis.  In other words, if it was a Jets game in New York or a Bears game in Chicago, the affiliate would still have that game exclusive on a live basis.  The NFL Network would have it on a delayed basis.  The fan would be able to see all of the preseason games on some basis with the NFL Network.  I think our vision is what was stated yesterday by Steve Bornstein, Steve Sabol and Howard Katz -- to have a television network available 365 days a year that has the kind of unique, powerful programming that has made NFL Films the worldwide standard for television video and film of sports.  That includes the continued heavy use of Steve Sabol’s talents, the signature type coverage of the games and to supplement that with special programming and a primetime lineup and those types of things that fans get excited about, especially during the season.  The standard is to be as great in a network as NFL Films has been in all its areas of Emmy Award-winning programming. 

On the Detroit hiring situation…

It wasn’t discussed here.  Dan and I had some discussion of it, but in terms of a timetable,  I would think it would be some time in June. 

On how the national economy has impacted the NFL…

It’s a little hard to know.  I would assume that it has impacted everyone in sports a little bit in some way.  How do you quantify it?  It’s difficult to do.  Have teams been respectful of some increase in unemployment in a lot of cities and restrained ticket price increases?  Have businesses held back on spending?  It’s hard to know if you are trying to measure the absence of something rather than the presence of something.  But, I think our teams have tried to understand the nation has been through a difficult period of time, to understand that the fans who are the workers have been through a difficult period of time and to take that into account in the way they’ve done business.  In terms of television, our contracts are secure.  We might feel an impact when we renegotiate.  A lot of season ticket holders have been there for many years.  They are not going to walk away from season tickets because of a cyclical downturn in the economy.  And the same is true with other suite holders where they have long-term agreements.  Certainly we have all been sensitive that the economy in the last two or three years has been a lot different than it has been in the 90s. 

NFL Europe …

When we last discussed it the nation was going to war in Iraq and the big issue was security.  Happily, we have had very good fan support over there.  We’ve had no security incidents.  We have good players over there.  We didn’t discuss it here.  We will be discussing it in the summer and fall and to assess if the current structure of the league is the best way to continue with player development for NFL players and fan development in Europe.  Or is there some other model, for example, that might involve broader participation from European athletes.  The corollary of that might be you have lesser participation by NFL allocated players.  But at this point that’s a lot of theories not a lot of concrete ideas. 

Will the threat of terrorism have any impact on the game in Japan…

Not at this time. We’ve had our own internal level of orange ever since 9/11.  Milt Ahlerich spoke to me before our league meeting in March and emphasized now is not the time to let up on security.  He spoke to me after the government in Iraq fell and emphasized now is not the time to let up on security and I think that’s the attitude of our teams.  Everyone feels that the safety of the fans and the deterrent effect of security measures needs to continue to be in place and that’s where we are.  With respect to the American Bowl game, it’s one event that we have to protect and I’m confident that we can do that. 

Diversity initiative and a timetable…

You don’t have a timetable.  Your timetable is to do as much as possible in the shortest period of time.  We’ve got some initiatives underway this year, including the executive career development program we are running at Stanford Business School in late June.   Several of the coaches this morning emphasized that we live as everyone else does with the larger issues of race in our society and what we need to do is be leaders.  To put a timeline on how fast you can expect numbers to change doesn’t make sense - part of the emphasis this morning from the panelists, whether it was Herman Edwards, John Fox or Troy Vincent and Ozzie Newsome, was that the goal of the NFL in the area of coaching diversity and front office executive diversity should be modeled upon the search for playing talent.  Ozzie’s been saying from the beginning that the same kinds of intense evaluation of multiple candidates that goes into your decision of who’s going to be your first pick in the draft, that same type of intense evaluation of multiple candidates should apply to coaching and the selection of coaching and front office talent.  If the NFL can get there then that will be a critical measure of coaching success.  Ozzie Newsome has been emphasizing that from the very first meeting we had of the owners committee and the working committee we had last November through this spring and was strongly endorsed by John Fox, Herman Edwards, Troy Vincent, Mark Bruener that success in football is not based on color but on merit.  That’s true on the field and should be true in the coaching offices and the front office.  I think if we can get to that, that will be a measure and benchmark of success.

On playoff expansion and the TV networks…

We spoke to the networks.  Their reaction was the same as the Competition Committee’s -- let’s get some more seasons under our belt with the new divisional alignment and the new scheduling formula and see what happens.  The NFL postseason now is a great product and great television.  And if it’s not broke, do not try to find a fancy solution to a non-problem. 

On the Pottsville situation…

Several owners including Wellington Mara said that they would be pleased to work on the committee.  The Governor’s presentation, the Mayor’s presentation plus the film that tells the story of the Chicago-Pottsville dispute, which is an NFL Films historical piece, was very informative.  People recognize the passion of the fans not only in Pottsville but in Pennsylvania.  That should lead us to try to do something that’s positive recognition of those fans and the accomplishments of the Pottsville team.  As the Governor emphasized, one of the accomplishments was that football played by professionals could be as or more exciting than football developed in the college ranks, where it started in the Ivy League and then grew through the Midwest.  How we do that is something I’m going to look at.  Wellington Mara agreed that he’d like to be part of the process.  And we’d probably have Lamar Hunt involved as the conference president of the AFC, although Mr. Hunt pointed out he went to prep school in Pottstown and there may be some kinship between Pottstown and Pottsville and maybe he had a conflict of interest.  (Laughs).  The Governor’s point was on Pottsville and their role in the history of the game.  But it was broader, the Pennsylvania fans and Pennsylvania athletes have made a tremendous contribution not to just the Pennsylvania teams but with the Mike Ditkas, Joe Namaths and the Dan Marinos and the Joe Montanas, Pennsylvania football players and fans have made a tremendous contribution to the entire NFL.  We agreed we would take a look at it in that light.