Commissioner Tagliabue with Jarrett Bell of USA Today, 9/9/03

Jarrett Bell:  In Week One the NFL had its usual upsets.  What were your impressions of the first week?

PT: I was able to attend three games, and we had some great football, some upsets, some comebacks, and some strong individual and team performances.  Fifteen of the sixteen games were sold out.  We had very strong television audiences.  And four of our games were decided in the last thirty seconds, so that continues to build on the momentum that we had last season.

JB: Not starting the season on Labor Day, do you think that’s here to stay, that type of format?

PT:  We think the Thursday night kickoff is working very well.  It’s given us greater awareness of the start of the entire season the following Sunday and Monday.  We’ll continue to have it and explore different formats.  It worked well in Times Square and in the nation’s capital, and I’m sure we’ll consider other cities, such as Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and similar major markets.

JB:  What about those Houston Texans, an expansion team that wins in Miami?  Do you feel good about the progress that your newest team is making right now?

PT:  We think so.  They’re undefeated on the opening weekend, 2-0.  They’ve got a good program.  They’ve got terrific leadership at the top with Bob McNair and the football operations with Charlie Casserly and Dom Capers.  So everyone feels that they’re going to be a competitive football team and a great host for the Super Bowl.

JB: Going into the season there is a lot of talk around the league about the preseason being too long.  You’ve heard a wide range of arguments.  What are your thoughts on what realistically might happen with preseason and the scheduling, and if a change is even warranted?

PT: The first thing is obvious that the strength of the regular season and the strength of the performances of the teams right from the beginning of the season shows that the current structure of the preseason and the offseason is very effective.  It’s been revamped in the past five years and is working very well.  So a number of clubs will not have any interest in change.  Other clubs feel that it has worked so well that perhaps we can continue to evolve it and end up with fewer preseason games.  But there is no consensus at all.  I sent the clubs a memo on Monday telling them that we’ll discuss this in-depth at our league meeting in late-October and decide whether we want to do a comprehensive study.

JB: What did you think as a fan of the game when you saw Michael Vick and Chad Pennington get hurt?  Did you have any particular thoughts about that?

PT:  You always cringe at seeing a player hurt. But Gale Sayers got hurt and football players have been getting hurt for six decades.  So it’s part of the game.  It’s a very physical game.  As Chuck Noll used to say, it’s a collision sport, not a contact sport, and those kinds of things will happen at any time of the year. 

We’ve made a lot of progress with the evolution of the fields, both the grass fields in the single-purpose stadiums and the artificial turf.  Medical care is better than ever.  So everything is being done including research on injuries and equipment evolution.  But the game is always going to involve some injuries.  It’s not like basketball, my old sport.

JB: There’s been a lot of talk in the past weeks about Maurice Clarett as he explores what may be next for him.  I know how you feel about underclassmen eyeing the NFL.  Would you make an exception for Clarett or any other player?

PT: It would be good if he could find an alternative in college football.  That would be the wisest thing and probably the most productive thing that he could do.  We would defend our rule.  We discussed it with the Players Association and everyone shares the judgment that it has been working well for everyone in the sport, particularly the players, who don’t come out of college prematurely and forfeit opportunities that they might otherwise if we didn’t have the rule.

JB: If you didn’t have the rule would you expect that, a lot like the NBA, there would be a lot of kids trying to come in early.

PT: No, we’re totally different from the NBA.  The nature of our league is totally different, the maturity level, the experience level, the physical prowess that it takes to play in the NFL is totally different from the NBA.  The character of the sport is different.  It’s more of a team sport, not an individual sport.  There isn’t any comparison between us and the NBA and that is one of the reasons the rule has been so widely accepted in the NFL and seen as being very sensible.

JB: Can you give us an update on the Rose Bowl as a viable NFL facility?

PT: We’re working on a daily basis with the Rose Bowl and Carson and evaluating other sites in the Los Angeles area as well.  With both the Rose Bowl and Carson, we’re at a stage of in-depth review and development of stadium projects that is far more comprehensive than we have ever previously achieved.  So we’re making progress and we’re going to continue to work at it.

JB:  What makes this progress more comprehensive?

PT:  Everything that it takes to make a stadium a reality: comprehensive engineering analysis, environmental analysis, constructability on the sites, potential financing arrangements, lease arrangements, and so forth.  All of those things are very complicated and in the past we’ve scratched the surface.  Now we’re into it in great depth and that’s critical to making something a reality.

JB:  I recall around the time that Houston became the thirty-second team you said that you didn’t see expansion happening in your tenure as Commissioner.  With all the talk about L.A., have you changed, or do you look at L.A. as a site for some other franchise to move?

PT:  For a year or more we’ve been saying that when the clubs expanded to 32 there was a strong feeling among the membership that that would be it for quite a few years.  However, owners have told me that if the most sensible solution to putting a team back in Los Angeles was expansion, then they would make that an exception and give the Los Angeles market serious consideration for an expansion team. So we have both options open to us just as we did in Cleveland, where we also worked with the city and the local authorities to build a stadium.

JB:  Last week’s kickoff in Washington, on the Mall, and following up on the Time Square festivities last year, did that do anything in Washington to help the city attract a Super Bowl?

PT:  Both events were strong reaffirmations of the uniqueness of New York and Washington as venues for great sporting events.  New York made it clear that it could be a tremendous host with the right stadium.  In Washington, we developed very strong working relationships with the Defense Department in order to honor the military, with the National Park Service, with the District of Columbia government, with local law enforcement on the security aspects.  So both cities reaffirmed what you would expect, that they could be great venues for an event such as the Super Bowl, and we’ll be considering that at the league meeting in late October.

JB:  What other cities are up for the next handful of Super Bowls?

PT:  We’re expecting to ratify Miami as the host for the 2007 Super Bowl at our league meeting next week in Washington.  And then in late October we’ll be considering New York, Washington, Arizona and Tampa Bay as the lead candidates for the 2008 game. 

JB: Also at next week’s meeting you’re going to talk about NFL Europe.  What’s your recommendation?

PT: NFL Europe has been an effective element of our overall player development and evaluation programs.  It’s been a good introduction to our game for European fans.  It’s been a tool for starting to develop non-U.S. playing talent.  It will give the NFL Network some live-game programming in the spring.  It is strongly supported by the Players Association, which views it as a very efficient player development and player evaluation operation.  So it should be continued, and I suspect that there will be a consensus on that.

JB: How confident are you that the things you have done during the offseason will make things go a little smoother for your officiating crews?

PT: Officiating is like the weather.  People are always talking about it.  Sometimes there are bright, sunny days.  Sometimes there are rainy days.  But the nature of our game is such that it is a tremendous challenge to be officiated 100% perfect, just as it’s a challenge to have 100% good weather.  So we think we have a great program in place, good leadership, and instant replay is working well and does not overly impede the pace of the game.  We had a handful of issues last year.  I suspect we’ll have a handful this year.  But the program is in a very good state and draws strength from the experience that the men get officiating in NFL Europe, which gives us a unique training ground.

JB:  Grading the officiating crews as a group rather than as individuals, what do you think that will do?

PT:  It’s just an evolutionary thing.  It’s not going to transform officiating in either direction.  But it’s an important evolution that really reflects the fact that we don’t have any weak crews right now.  We’ve got great depth with officials working in collegiate football as well as in NFL Europe, and the judgment was made that evaluating the crews as a group was appropriate, and it seems to be supported by the officials themselves.

JB: You fined Matt Millen $200,000 for violating the minority hiring practice.  Do you feel that the message has been sent strongly enough for NFL teams to adhere to that policy and that the amount of the fine has gotten the attention and will help in the next hiring cycle, having people proceed to the letter of the policy.

PT:  The key thing is the policy, which makes it very important for clubs to enable minority candidates to compete for the head coaching job through a competitive interview process.  It’s very similar to what we do in the NFL when we hire players, when we draft players, when we build football teams.  Every job is open on a competitive basis.  No position on the field is handed to one individual without competition.  Matt made a commitment to that kind of process in mid-December, understood the process, and then, less than six weeks later, didn’t meet the commitment.  Much has been made of his supposed efforts to interview candidates.  But it is very clear to those of us who looked at the record that the efforts he made were very flawed and inadequate.  So it’s not very complicated.  He made a commitment and he didn’t meet it.

JB: Why do you need a television network for the NFL?

PT:  It basically stems from the size and diversity of our fan base and the range of interest and passion among the different segments of our fan base.  We have over 100 million individuals watching our games on weekends on four networks.  Of those four networks, only ESPN continues that day-to-day coverage.  The other broadcast networks give great coverage but they’re not twenty-four seven, and we feel that a twenty-four seven network can supplement everyday of the week what the networks do so great on the weekend and what ESPN does so well every week.

It will give the fans greater access to our teams and our players, not only in terms of what they’re doing on the field with game planning and preparation, but also what they’re doing off the field in the community.  So it will just be a terrific supplement and a great fan service.

JB:  The flexible schedule has been talked about for a couple of years.  Will you be looking any closer at what happens down the stretch and look at how it affects Monday night and some of the other slots, and maybe even consider making that schedule more flexible in the future?

PT:  That’s another subject that’s like the weather.  Some people like it hot, some people like it cold.  Going forward, a bigger issue is not flexible scheduling, it’s how we allocate our product.  Do we continue to have the largest number of our games in the one o’clock Sunday timeslot or do we move some additional games to the four o’clock timeslot, or do we schedule more games in primetime on Sunday night and Monday night?  If we did that, would we have earlier primetime games in the Eastern time zone and maybe have some other games that would start later in the Pacific time zone.  Those are really the critical issues going forward, and they far transcend the issue of flexible scheduling.

JB: Would it not be feasible to switch a game time as opposed to having an option of maybe two or three primetime games from the beginning of the season?

PT:  No, most of it has to do with contractual commitments we have to the networks and the convenience of the fans.  We have limited alternatives given our contractual commitments and we don’t want to disrupt unnecessarily fan expectations as to when games are going to be played.  The real issue is not making short-term changes in the middle of the season.  As you look a decade ahead, the real issue is can we schedule our games in different time periods to better serve fans in terms of what they are doing with their time on Sundays, Sunday nights and, late in the season, on Saturday. 

We’ve clearly been responsive to the fans in terms of moving some of the playoff games later in the day.  It’s enabled more fans to watch the games.  And if we can make other changes in the start times of games and how many games start in particular time slots that would be good for the fans, that’s the real challenge.

JB: Having seen Lambeau Field and Lincoln Financial Field over the weekend, what were your impressions of those two facilities?

PT:  They’re both outstanding.  Lambeau Field captures the history of the Lombardi days and the bowl and benches.  And the Hall of Fame there is the best I’ve seen as a team Hall of Fame, the additional seating, the additional space in the building.  They added about one million square feet of space in the building.  All of that adds up to a terrific new field.  Lincoln Financial Field speaks for itself.  We all saw it Monday night.  It’s a great stadium for legendary fans, and now the Eagles’ goal is to have some legendary teams in the stadium. 

We’re going to be honored next week at the National Building Museum in Washington for all the new stadiums that teams have been able to put together, including domes such as Ford Field in downtown Detroit, and open-air fields such as Lincoln Financial and Lambeau Field.  So it’s being recognized, not just inside the league but outside the league, that these are outstanding facilities contributing importantly to communities.

JB:  If you look at your tenure as Commissioner, just in terms of the stadium reconstruction that has taken place, you’ve got to feel pretty good that that has happened, don’t you?

PT:  The stadiums have been a big plus, but I’d say the biggest thing we have accomplished in the last ten years is the Collective Bargaining Agreement that continues to make the quality of the game on the field so strong and enables so many teams to have a competitive shot at winning the division and moving deeper into the playoffs.  That’s been the biggest accomplishment.  Without the game on the field, the new stadiums wouldn’t represent what they do represent.

JB:  When you talk about competitive balance and you get to December and there are like 22 teams left in the running, that’s exactly what you want, isn’t it?

PT: Absolutely.  We strive to have great football from week one.  We know from past seasons that performance is going to be cyclical, teams are going to peak at different times of the year, and players are going to develop on different timelines.  We saw Chad Pennington and Michael Vick develop very quickly last year.  Patrick Ramsey seems to have made a lot of progress.  We saw Tom Brady several years ago come in and unexpectedly lead his team to the Super Bowl.  Kurt Warner prior to that.  So anyone who thinks they can sit here today and identify the Super Bowl teams or the MVP must have some spiritual powers that I don’t have.