We’ve had two extremely strong presentations from two cities who have hosted outstanding, some think people think fantastic, Super Bowls. And the membership vote for the Super Bowl in January of 2002 was to select New Orleans.

After that Super Bowl, we’re committed to playing in San Francisco in January of 2003 and at some point in the near future we’ll be focusing again on the Super Bowl in January of 2004. I think from the presentation made, and from the sentiment I’ve heard from owners, San Diego would have to be considered, not only a strong contender for that, but probably a front runner at this point.

We’re not finished yet with our meeting. We’re going to be resuming at 2:15. We had very positive discussions this morning on Los Angeles and Houston and expansion to 32. Basically, we’re going to proceed as follows: first of all, I’m designating an Expansion Committee for the 32^nd team, which will be made up of the members of our current Finance Committee and our Stadium Committee. This will be co-chaired by Jerry Richardson and Bob Kraft, who are the chairmen of the two committees that will make up this Expansion Committee.

Secondly, we’ll be meeting in the next 30-60 days with these groups to work on further aspects of their stadium construction and financing plans. We’ll also begin a discussion of franchise price.

Thirdly, we’ll have a special league meeting on February 16 – that’s the Tuesday before the Combine begins in Indianapolis. We’ll probably meet in Dallas and, at that time, we’ll have a report and a recommendation from the Expansion Committee. Then, if necessary, we’ll discuss this further at our annual meeting in March.

Q: Commissioner, when you say you hope to have a recommendation by February 16, does that mean you can vote on February 16^th?

PT: If we’re ready to vote, we could vote. Yes.

Q: Would March be the more likely scenario to have a vote?

PT: I really couldn’t say until we meet with the committee and start to see how we address the choice of a city and a franchise price and the other things that have to be addressed.

Q: But, it wouldn’t be out of the question.

PT: I guess the point that I would emphasize is that there was very positive discussion about the presentations yesterday, a positive assessment of those presentations, and recognition that there were unique opportunities there, both in Los Angeles and Houston, that we haven’t seen before. We should move on this as an urgent priority and see if there’s a consensus in the league, both to expand and to do so in one of those two cities.

Q: Is one of the three a tentative front runner?

PT: No.

Q: Will the league set a price for the team?

PT: The league will set a price.

Q: By February 16^th will it be voted in that there would be a 32^nd team?

A: We didn’t discuss that this morning. What we discussed were the positive aspects of the presentations and the stadium projects; the concrete aspects of it in terms of financing plans; the concrete aspects of it in terms of ownership groups that have emerged; the strength of the stadiums, the designs and related areas both in LA and in Houston. All of that was discussed. We didn’t have an abstract debate of if we should go to 32 or stay at 31. These are attractive opportunities. We’ve got to understand them, evaluate them, compare them, and then see if we have a consensus to go forward.

Q: Would your expectation of the franchise fee start at the Cleveland price?

PT: I would think that Cleveland would be the starting point - at that level or higher.

Q: Why not open up the bidding?

PT: Because we haven’t decided how we will establish a price, but we have here in front of us three specific ownership groups with three specific stadium concepts which is analogous to where we were, say, back in 1993 when the Carolina proposal was being proposed by Jerry Richardson. You can’t just take a proposal and sever it from the party that is proposing it. That does a rather dramatic thing. It puts an end to the proposal so we can’t proceed along that basis. We’ve got to take the proposals as they’re presented, which include proposed ownership groups.

Q: Is there any significant opposition to expansion?

PT: There are owners who have reservations. People always have reservations about making major strategic decisions before they are comfortable that they understand the alternatives, the choices, and the implications. But I think everyone assumes that, at some point, we’re going to be a 32-team league. But different owners have had different degrees of involvement in this process so some people were more positive and some people were somewhat more reserved. No one spoke against expansion.

Q: Will the plan be, if you expand, to have a team on the field in 2001 or could it be sooner?

PT: Most people are looking at 2002, which would be the end of a five-year television contract. We would have five years of television under our belt. We’d be looking at some of the options we have under the television contract after the 2002 season so some people feel that is a factor. I think that with the realities of taking projects of this scale and getting them done, the most realistic time frame puts you in the 2002 season.

Q: The 30-60 days you talked about … will the price be determined by then?

PT: I don’t think so. No.

Q: How far did you get on realignment?

PT: We had some good discussion on realignment. We did approve, as I think was announced earlier, the 31-team scheduling format for as long as we’re a 31-team league. There was some discussion of realignment by a number of owners. Some owners recognized that this has been difficult in the past. Pete Rozelle had to pull things out of a hat, literally. Dan Rooney pointed out that if you were to go to four divisions of four in each conference, in some ways, it might be a self-selection process. One team in the AFC East, one team in the AFC West, and two teams in the AFC Central could, in effect, opt into a fourth division, almost by choice. That may oversimplify the process, but it’s an interesting thought. There was some good discussion.

Q: Is it safe to say if 2002 is the first year of expansion that there would not be realignment before 2002?

PT: That would probably be realistic, although you never know.

Q: So, in other words, the realignment that passed today would probably stand until the expansion team.

PT: Underscore the word ‘probably’, but I wouldn’t say it’s a certainty.

Q: We’ve heard a lot of different viewpoints on Los Angeles with owners saying it’s critical to have a team there. They don’t want another generation of fans growing up without a team there. What’s your feeling on that? Is it central to move there or expand there at some point?

PT: I think that both Los Angeles and Houston are very important areas of the country for the National Football League. I told the owners this morning that it wasn’t just a question of two cities; it was a question of two regions in each case. In the case of Houston, we don’t have an AFC team in the southern tier of the country between San Diego and Jacksonville and Miami. That covers a lot of ground. There are 50 million people in just a segment of that territory. It’s great football country. The closest AFC teams other than those on the Pacific and Atlantic shores are Kansas City and Nashville. And you have the whole Southwest, which is a booming part of the country - where population is growing - where we don’t have the AFC represented at all. So, it’s a regional issue from that perspective.

By the same token, with Los Angeles, it’s not just Los Angeles or Southern California; it’s the Pacific coast, from San Diego up to Seattle and Vancouver where there’s a huge segment of the population. And you link that to the Rocky Mountain time zone, where we only have two teams. I think we’re underrepresented in that area and the potential in each of those regions to have the National Football League better represented with a better and more attractive alignment is a major strategic decision for the league and for the fans of the National Football League. You have tremendous interest in football among young people in those areas and great football programs at the high school level and the junior high school level. In California, you have 11-man football; you have 6-and-7-man football. In Texas, the Southwest is legendary in terms of developing young players. Someone mentioned to me yesterday that we have more players from the Houston area than we have from most states: 65 players, roughly, in the league today from the Houston area. These are not just local issues; they are regional issues that have implications that go way beyond whether we have a team in one city or another.

Q: If you’re going to expand to only one region, how do you address the other?

PT: You live life a step at a time and you drink water a glass at a time.

Q: Could you shed light on how television could affect the decision?

PT: We didn’t get into too much detail on television. We had reviewed some of that yesterday. We’ve had some data, which we’ve shared with our committees. If you look at television in 1994, the highest rating we had in a market was in Cleveland; the ninth highest rating was in Houston; the 14^th or 15^th highest rating was in Los Angeles, which reflected some of the difficulties that the Rams and the Raiders were having at that time and blackouts. If you look at last year’s ratings, Cleveland was 30^th; Los Angeles was 29^th; and Houston was 23^rd. So, we’ve obviously had a steep decline. Cleveland, we’ve addressed, but the importance of addressing Houston and Los Angeles is illustrated by that television information.

Q: Could you describe any further information you and the committee would like to see from the presenters?

PT: It would be pointless to go into that today. It’s going to be a lot of information.

Q: Will they be getting this information privately by phone or will there be another kind of presentation?

PT: I would say we’re going to have meetings and discussions and conversations. We’re not going to have another ‘dog and pony show.’" That’s a Pentagon phrase I learned 30 years ago.

Q: When will we go beyond 32 teams?

PT: Not in my lifetime and yours.

Q: What are the reasons for TV ratings being down?

PT: Our ratings are still the strongest in sports, by far. Our ratings are up compared to everything else that’s equivalent-type major programming. We showed a chart yesterday that showed the prime-time television ratings in the last four years are down something like 30-35%. Ours are down maybe half of that and we’re comparing that to ’94, which was a very high base year because that was the year in which baseball cancelled a big part of its season and the World Series. So our ratings are actually going up relative to primetime ratings. It’s illustrated by the fact that in the late ‘70s, if you go back 20 years ago, I think our ‘Monday Night’ rating was over 20. The average rating of ‘Monday Night Football’ was the 34^th rated program in television. In the last few years, we’re down in the 15s and 16s, and we’re in the top-5. So, as the rating has slid from the low-20s to the mid-teens, we’ve gone from the 34^th most-viewed program up to the third or fourth most-viewed programming, which is why we still have the best sports product on television and one of the mega products on television.

I think another big factor, which is sometimes overlooked, is the explosion in the amount of NFL programming we have on television, which is part of the explosion in channels out there. From 1983 to present – 15 years – in the average market we’ve gone from something like 20 channels in the typical home to 50 channels in the typical home, so that produces a fractionalization. From ’86 until now, before the first ESPN deal, we’ve taken our own television from basically 6 ½ hours on Sunday to 14 hours on Sunday. It used to be 12:30 until 7. Now it’s 10 am until midnight, in terms of pre-game shows and post-game shows and the ‘Sunday Night’ package and so forth. We’ve more than doubled our own television on Sunday in a decade. We’ve had a big increase on ‘Monday Night’ because of the lead-in programming and the post-game programming now that we’re kicking off at 8:20 eastern. The reality is we’ll have anywhere from 100 to 125 million different viewers every weekend because we’ve had an explosion in programming and we still have very high ratings. But, you can’t overlook what’s happened. It used to be that ‘Monday Night Football’ was the only sport in prime time. Now, you have wall-to-wall sports in prime time on sports channels that didn’t exist.

There are a lot of factors. We’re still doing very strong with our audience. The recent Harris Poll shows that we’re more popular than ever, both with men and women. The large increase in the last 2-3 years in terms of the public following NFL football as their #1 sport is very encouraging.

Q: Do you have any special feelings about the Browns’ first regular season opponent?

PT: No. We haven’t looked that far ahead. There would be so many factors that go into that, including who ends up in the playoffs and the Super Bowl this year. Traditionally, we’ve had one of the Super Bowl teams, usually the Super Bowl winner, at least in recent years, in the first ‘Monday Night’ game. We try to have major attractions on the opening weekend and you’d have to factor all that in before you make a decision about the Browns. And you might want to focus on a divisional opponent such as Pittsburgh.

Q: Has David Stern contacted you at all for any advice on the NBA strike?

PT: I contacted him and asked him whether he got the idea to grow a beard before Terry Bradshaw or vice-versa and he didn’t return my phone call. We have not spoken.

Q: Can you say that the Orange County groups are not involved?

PT: No, they are involved. We’ve met with people from Irvine and other parts of Southern California in the last two weeks. Roger Goodell took a special trip to Southern California for that purpose and if they want to continue in the process, we certainly will meet with them and include them as well.

Q: Do you have any fear of a franchise relocating?

PT: I’m really not looking that far ahead.

*****

PT: On the tampering issue, we discussed a number of things and focused on two areas. One, are assistant coaches and coordinators that Cleveland might want to be their head coach. And, number two, non-football executives, financial people, marketing people, public relations, and so on, that Cleveland might have an interest in talking to. The way we left it was that for assistant coaches and coordinators, we would consider whether at the end of the regular season we might have some rules where Cleveland could talk to people, of which they would be prohibited from doing under the current rules. And the second area on the non-football people, we considered, as of December 1, whether there might be a system we could put in place so that Cleveland could talk to some club executives as of December 1.

We’re going to make some final judgments on this. I’m going to work with the six owners who are on our CEC and other club representatives: non-coaches who are on the Competition Committee. So, key people would be involved consulting with me over the next couple weeks, and we will make some decisions. And whatever we decide, the membership would accept. And those owners would be from the CEC -- Dan Rooney, Wellington Mara, Lamar Hunt, Jerry Jones, Jim Irsay and Mike Brown. And from the Competition Committee, we would also involve Charlie Casserly and Rich McKay. Mike Brown is also on the Competition Committee. Bill Polian is on the Competition Committee, but Jimmy Irsay is already involved. So, we would basically have eight teams involved. Six owners plus Charlie Casselry and Rich McKay will work with me and my staff over the next two to three weeks and come up with a set of rules that might apply to Cleveland on a one-time basis to enable them to get their organization together and be ready for the expansion draft in February and free agency and everything else.

Q: Could there be general changes in the tampering rules?

PT: We need a deal with Cleveland first and the broader set of issues, secondly. The broader set of issues was discussed in depth last year by the Competition Committee and by other owners. And there was no sense that we should make any changes to our rules, any significant changes. There was very little sentiment today to make any general changes in our rules. It was emphasized by most of the people who spoke that they would be open to something on a one-time-only basis in view of Cleveland’s unique situation. And the uniqueness is really in two areas. Number one, they have to participate in the veteran player allocation on February 9^th. They don’t have veteran players; other teams do. The second thing is they have to start addressing veteran free agency and they should have a coaching staff in place to do that. They do have a player personnel function in place. It was recognized that it would continue to be in place and that the player personnel people on most of the other teams are committed through the college draft. So player personnel is a given: they have their staff and whatever additional staff they get will be under the normal rules. But getting a head coach and getting some front office people and moving that timeline up was what we focused on.

Q: When is the soonest the Browns will be able to speak to Dwight Clark?

PT: We didn’t go into that today and I really can’t answer the question. The other thing we did decide, which relates to the Dwight Clark point, is that whatever modified rules we come up with, they will not apply to the 49ers. I’ve said that before and we reiterated that today. The 49ers will be protected because Carmen Policy was formally the chief executive of that organization and also they’re working under difficult circumstances now with Ed DeBartolo being totally divorced from the operations of the team. So the 49ers will be off limits in terms of any changed policy. The changed policy would apply to the other 29 teams, not to the 49ers.

Q: So there’s no way the Browns could talk to Dwight Clark under the 49ers’ season is finished?

PT: I said we’re not changing the policies.

Q: Are you counting Dwight Clark as a personnel guy or a club official?

PT: I’m counting Dwight Clark as a personnel guy.

Q: Carmen’s main concern seemed to be front-office people who are in football operations. Basically, there’s no change in that?

PT: Right. For football operations people, the rules are going to remain as they are. If someone is a non-contract employee in football operations and he could leave after the Super Bowl, then that would continue to be the case. If he’s a contract employee bound through May 1, then that would be the case. Whatever the normal rules are would apply to football operations people.

Q: Do the Browns face any fines for taking the people they have from the 49ers?

PT: No. Carmen raised the fact that, in his judgment, he had fully complied with all the rules and the 49ers confirmed that. And, I confirm that as well.