Commissioner Tagliabue Interview with Mike Francesa on WFAN (7/30/97)

Q: Is this the Eastern swing on the tour of NFL training camps?

A: This is the Eastern Long Island swing on a training camp tour that started in Wisconsin last week.... I ended up in Green Bay; I started over in Minnesota with the Vikings and than right nearby are the Chiefs in River Falls, Wisconsin. The Saints are in La Crosse, so I was able to hit four camps in three days, and I spent a lot of time with the coaches and the players.

Q: Is this a "meet the media and the players" trip? Do you do both on the same day?

A: Yes, I meet the coaches, coaching staffs, players, and the game officials, who were out there working with the clubs and the media. Wherever I go, I spend some time with the fans which we’ll do later here with the Jet fans.

Q: What’s the message for the players right now? What is the dialogue between you and the players right now?

A: Well, my message to them is it’s up to you to be smart, or to be dumb. If you’re smart you can have a great career in the NFL and accomplish a lot on the field, you can accomplish a lot off the field. You can have a great career afterwards like Carl Banks and some of the other players are having. Now if you’re dumb, if you let the wrong people mislead you...you end up having problems. It's in your hands....But we had a rookie seminar this year for the first time. All the drafted rookies came into Chicago and we had a three-day program for them. I think it had a big impact and helps them to be mature and helps them relate to the fans.

Q: Do you like the way the NFL is set up right now as far as integrating rookies into the league financially?

A: No. I think it’s a problem area we’ve been discussing it with the Players Association. I saw Gene Upshaw, the head of the NFLPA, on Friday out at Canton, we were out there for the induction for Wellington Mara, Don Shula, Mike Webster, Mike Haynes, and we need to address it. You know too much money is going to a couple of top picks. The number one guy tends to get a disproportionate amount of money plus we have got the hold-out problem now. We were supposed to solve that problem with this rookie pool. A lot of money was supposed to be cleared that’s available for rookies to sign early, get into camp early. But Kansas City tight end Tony Gonzalez is not there, Green Bay, offensive tackle Ross Verbas is not there. That’s a problem.

Q: As far as the way the salary cap is working right now, are you fairly content with how the spirit, the rule, the way things are working among the teams with the cap right now? Are you happy with the way it’s being orchestrated?

A: Well, we’re happy with the game on the field. The cap was a really new system. Anytime you’re doing something that's new, you've got some concerns, but the game on the field has remained great, the competition is as fair and as strong than ever. But we have some issues about signing bonuses, guaranteed contracts, high revenue vs. low revenue teams. I think we’ll work those out over time and continue to have labor peace.

Q: Do you feel among the owners right now, there is always going to be that division between the guys who got in early and the guys who have debt service to pay to their franchises. Do you see the void between those two groups lessening or growing?

A: Yes, I think there is much more of a "we’re in this together" type attitude right now. You always have new owners, some of the so-called old guys today were the new guys in the ‘70s. Once you make it clear to people that they have to work together, they do so and we have a planning committee now that includes Jerry Jones, John Mara, Bob Kraft, Dan Rooney. We have a real cross section of the league working together for the league and that’s a real positive thing.

Q: Is the Jerry Jones Dallas Cowboy stuff all settled? As far as team going out on their own with product endorsement?

A: Yes, I think it’s settled and certainly for ‘97, it’s settled. We’re working to see whether we should make some changes in some of those areas but we now have the wrap-around deals for the whole league. He’s part of those deals with some of the big licensees, and you know the business keeps changing all the time. The key thing about the Cowboys is that they are ready to play football this year. They’ve got the focus on the field, they brought in Calvin Hill and some others to work with the player programs and I think they’re going to be a tough team.

Q: With how many years Don Shula stayed in one place, does it concern you how often owners like to change coaches these days and coaches don't stay in the same place for six, seven, eight, nine years anymore?

A: I think it’s a concern that we may be in a place where the pendulum is swinging. You look at people like Bill Cowher, you look at people like Mike Holmgren, you look at some of the young coaches we may see that they have long careers. Bill Walsh, Chuck Noll, Shula, they were giants of their era and they stayed in one place for a long time although Bill was in and out. Last year was a transition period and we’ll see some long timers out there with some of these young coaches. It’s hard to know.

Q: It must be nice for you thinking about the league as a whole when a Bill Parcells slides into a downtrodden Jet team or Mike Ditka goes into New Orleans. It must be nice to sit back and smile when guys like that, who can sell the league, move into places that really need it and move into places where they fit.

A: Well, that’s very positive, I think the biggest thing that’s been positive last year and it’s coming into this year is new teams emerging. We went in the ‘96 season with some people saying it’s either Dallas or San Francisco. Well, guess what? It wasn’t either one of them, it was New England against Green Bay. Now in the NFC we’ve got not just Green Bay but Carolina. Other teams are very strong in the AFC, New England with Bill at the helm last year came to the top, Denver, Jacksonville and not just Pittsburgh. I think we’re at a point right now we have a lot of competition around the league and it’s good for everybody.

Q: When you look to further expansion, as every league does, did you make it easy for Jacksonville and Carolina? Would you give another set of expansion teams the same latitude you gave them or would you close some doors on them?

A: I think we should approach the draft basically the same way because they’re catching up. Basically, you start a new team, you have no draft picks, everyone else has got the prior four picks basically under contract so accelerating the draft, I think we should do the same thing again. In the area of veteran free agency, maybe there was opportunity since they didn’t have big veteran salaries charged against the cap. I think the key thing was that they got their football operations in early. Tom Coughlin in Jacksonville, Bill Polian in Carolina. Both selected well and they traded well. Mark Brunell was available to everybody in the league. Jacksonville with Tom Coughlin at the helm was the one who decided to go for him. Kerry Collins was available but, of course, Polian and Capers went to him high in the draft so they picked well. As you know that’s not always the case.

Q: The fans sitting at home, the consumer wants replay. The league, coaches, GMs, owners, very much divided on Instant Replay, where so we stand? What kind of system are we looking? Are we looking at anything for the future or have you tabled the whole idea again?

A: We have tabled it for now, but I think it'll be back probably in a couple of years -- looking again at the monitor on the field maybe with some new technology. The biggest problem with instant replay as an officiating tool is you’re looking at a two-dimensional picture, but making a three dimensional judgment. It turns out on a lot of cases the camera doesn’t help you very much and that’s one of the negatives. The other negative is from a coaching standpoint, it interrupts the game and it gives the defense a competitive edge. It gives them the ability to adjust at a time when maybe the offense is on a roll and we don’t interrupt our game once the drive gets underway except with instant replay. Those kinds of factors affects the coaches. From the fans’ standpoint it’s fun, it’s interactive TV and we’ll get to the point I’m sure someday when the fan can determine what replay he or she wants to call up one the TV screen. But officiating, there’s still some issues to resolve.

Q: As far as TV, there is no league that has even approached the success the NFL has had with TV. Is it enough? Are you in enough places right now? Are there enough games on enough nights? Are you looking to expand and bring more networks in? Direct-TV, Pay-Per- View? Where does the NFL sit as we head towards 2000 with all those TV issues?

A: I think the success on TV is that we’ve kept all the games on free TV. Major packages with NBC, Fox, ABC, even those games that are on ESPN and TNT --- the Sunday night special. It’s on over the air in the cities of the teams and that’s been the key because it gives us tremendous audiences --- 125 million people every week are watching NFL games and most are on broadcast TV. That’s what we need to continue, we will continue that plus the excitement on the field, we’ll continue to be okay.

Q: How about preseason? I have heard maybe we’ll have two preseason games and expand the regular schedule? Do you see it staying where it is right now?

A: Yes, and I think what we have here in the Jets camp is a good example of that. So Bill’s got a lot to do here, he’s got a lot of judgments to make about young players, he’s got a lot of judgments to make about some veteran players, all the guys he calls "hold the fort" guys. But when you get a new coach in, we have 11 of them this year, you need four preseason games to evaluate what you have and play those 16 on a competitive basis. Plus with free agency after four years, you’ve got to get those guys on the field, you can’t leave them on the bench for two years and waste those two years. I’ll think we’ll have four preseason games for the foreseeable future.

Q: You’ve got a couple stadium issues and a lot of times you’re going to get passed by for the stadium. Does that bother you in some of those cities, that maybe you’re going to second in line for these stadiums?

A: I think we put a strategy in place in the last 24 months. Sometimes learning the hard way. We learned the hard way in Cleveland, you have to be proactive, you have to be out there as a league so we did that in Tampa, we did that in Seattle, we’re doing that in a number of other places and working with the community to get the new stadiums built so we can have good facilities for the fans and not have team moves. That’s the big thing. Other areas we’ve been spending a lot of time on is getting younger players and have them mature and make sure they do what they know is right and not let someone who’s got some other set of interests take them off the straight road.

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