Question: Looking over the first nine seasons is there any one particular success that stands out above the others?

PT: I guess it’s the labor agreement-- getting us through a decade without any strikes, work stoppages, and lockouts, but much more importantly than that putting in place a structure which strikes a good balance between the needs of the fans, the owners and the players. It works on lots of different levels. It works in terms in of the game on the field, it works for the teams, it works for the players, and even though labor and management don’t think it’s perfect because that’s the nature of a labor agreement. If it works well for the game and for the fans then I think it’s a decent structure. I think creating that structure, which was totally different then the prior structure, is probably the most significant accomplishment.

Question: I’ve seen Gene Upshaw make some comments about how he thought you handled things all throughout that process. What makes you good at that? That’s sort of a volatile area, why do you think you have a knack for working in that arena?

PT: I think it starts with knowledge and understanding. It’s something that I was involved in with the Competition Committee going back to the early 70’s when I first did work with the NFL. I got involved with Tex Schramm and others, including Don Shula, on the player system. I worked on all of those things for almost two decades, but very closely with the original Management Council Committee. I worked with the second committee beginning in 1970-71, then I worked with Dan Rooney negotiating the ‘77 Collective Bargaining Agreement, which was the modification of the old system that brought compensation, first refusal. So, I knew a lot about the area and I was able to understand what the teams felt was their bottom line needs. I understood what the players felt were the negative aspects of the old system, and worked with Gene, Dan Rooney, Wellington Mara and others with the League to keep the focus on the game. Gene Upshaw is very good at that. He’s a great player and Hall of Famer. Our goal was to keep the focus on what the coaches need, on what the league needed and what the fans needed to have great football and still try to be responsive to the new system.

PT: I suspect it’s probably patience and not having too short of a fuse is one of the things. But I think the key thing also is the preparation and trying to understand in a very concrete way what the clubs feel they need and what the Players Association feels it needs. You end up with solutions that in this day and age get to be fairly complicated like the franchise player system. But I think preparation, patience, and listening to what and why people feel they need something. That’s a big part of it. Why do the clubs feel they need one thing, and why do the players feel they need something? Again this goes back to people like Tex Schramm. Tex was a phenomenal, in-depth analyzer. And Don Shula’s the same way, Paul Brown. All these players’ issues are issues that the NFL has had the benefit, and I have had the benefit, of working with people in the 70’s like Tex Schramm, Don Shula, Paul Brown, Dan Rooney, who are really hard working, in-depth people who take very seriously what they’re dealing with. Therefore when you’re working with people like that you really have the same type of in-depth immersion and I think that’s the key. You just can’t come in and try to change the mood and deal with generalities.

Question: What are two or three of the greatest issues or challenges that you have coming?

PT: I think in some ways the biggest issue is connecting with the fans, continuing to connect with the fans. That’s an issue because more and more of our exposure is on television. Television is so great that fans connect to the game through television, 125 million people a week, compared to what, maybe a million going to the game live. Then of the million who are going live, how many fans actually shake hands with a football player and how many can get an autograph from a football player? Some of the things that you see clubs doing, connecting with the fans and making that contact between the fans, players and media, that’s a big challenge. And then part of that also is making sure that players really are involved in the community, as people with their families. Connecting with fans is a big challenge.

Another big challenge is what you referred to --some people think there should be more revenue sharing, some people thing there should be less. A league is a partnership and the challenge going forward is to have everyone continue to recognize that it’s a partnership. And if you think you’re in this alone, and you think you’ve got to have more entrepreneurship on your own, you don’t understand the business you’re in. It’s a partnership; it’s us with us and us against other forms of entertainment. It’s not us against us. Pete Rozelle understood that in a phenomenal way. The people who made this league as successful as it is understand one simple thing. It’s us against them, meaning other forms of entertainment. It’s not us against us, meaning one team against the other. The teams are partners and if you don’t recognize that sooner or later this thing is going to unravel --and not only recognize it but act on that basis. That’s the biggest challenge. When everyone’s successful, everyone seems to think ‘I can do it on my own.’ Well, guess what, it’s not going to work that way. The NFL is successful because of the equal sharing of television revenue. It’s successful because of the equal exposure of all the teams, with every road game being televised back, every home game being televised if it’s sold out, everyone having access to primetime television based upon performance. A small-market team is not at a disadvantage relative to a big market team. You don’t get primetime exposure if your in a big-market, you get primetime exposure if you win. So there’s a lot of incentive built into the system. Equality of opportunity is the biggest part of being a member of the National Football League. Access to television exposure, television revenue and access to players under the CBA, that’s what you have to keep solid. That’s a partnership. The rest of the stuff, competing here when people start getting consumed with that, well…guess what, we’ll be heading in the wrong direction.

PT: You need to keep focusing on the point that we’re in this together as partners. The most important issues and the most important challenges are your external relations-- your agreement with the Players Association, your agreement with the television networks, your agreement with your stadium owners, your landlord. Those are all the most critical things-- your relationship to your fans and all your external relations. Your internal relations are important and there you have to recognize that it’s a partnership at bottom, but if you get consumed with trying to figure out who owns this piece of that sponsorship or who has this, is this NFL Properties, or is this the team, then you’ve lost sight of the big picture and you don’t have your eye on the ball. But I think the key thing is that right now and for most of this decade we’ve had a real good strong focus on the big picture; labor agreement, television contracts, new stadiums, service to the fans, the public’s perception of the players, Player Programs, what are the players doing in the community, what kind of support are you giving the players to make sure they mature as responsible citizens in the eyes of the public and so forth. So I think that’s the key. Yes, you have these differences of opinion but when it comes to the big things like TV, labor, expansion, international development, the whole league has had a very strong consensus.

Question: Is LA almost out of the picture given how far Houston has come regarding public financing for a new stadium?

PT: No, I don’t think so. I think the October meeting will have presentations on behalf of both Houston and Los Angeles. Cleveland will be done and we’ll be focusing on the 32^nd franchise. We’ll have presentations from both Houston and Los Angeles. The critical thing is we’ll be focusing on a decision sometime within the next six to twelve months ideally. Not just talking about what-ifs and not just getting status reports but really trying to address this as a decision for the membership to make in the next six to twelve months.

Question: If LA puts together an incredible deal and you know how much Houston wants it, do you then reconsider and think about 33 and 34?

PT: I don’t think so. I think for a long, long time the league was at 28, probably for too long. But going from 28 to 32 within a decade, I think adding four teams should be it for a while.

Question: What’s the one greatest failure in your nine years as commissioner?

PT: I think the greatest failure is having four teams move. I’m sure Pete Rozelle felt that way at the end of the 80’s. He and I talked about it, having three teams move in the 80’s, the Raiders, the Colts, and the Cardinals. You never want to see a team move because of continuity, tradition, and fan loyalty. Those are things that sometimes become so overused that they almost sound trite, but that’s what it’s all about. It’s my team against your team, our city against your city. There’s that element of ownership and civic pride. The great accomplishment of people like Pete Rozelle, George Preston Marshall, George Halas, Art Rooney, Lamar Hunt, all those people who contributed so magnificently to pro football becoming the number-one sport in the 60’s and maturing even more in the 70’s, the great thing they did was take the enthusiasm, the excitement, the ownership that people have in their college football team and transferring that to pro football teams. What you had with Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma football at the college level became the Dallas Cowboys. What you had with Big 10 football, in terms of excitement, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota…became the Vikings and Lions, and Packers and so on. So the team moves are the most disturbing thing. Right now the biggest satisfaction is reestablishing the Browns because it’s an unprecedented thing, having a team go dark for three years basically, having the city partner with the league and building a new stadium on the site of the old stadium and have the team resurrected is exciting.

Question: What have you learned that you can do differently next time around?

PT: I think we’re doing it. What we learned is something that a lot of us suspected by the end of the 80’s, I remember during the search process when I was asked to appear before the membership and talk about the priorities for the 90’s, I said that one of the big priorities was new stadiums. I made a speech up in Boston shortly after I became commissioner where I said one of the priorities for the 90’s would be getting the league involved in stadium finance and maybe even in the league office we should have a stadium and finance unit within the league office. When I said it people said, ‘Why is the League getting involved into the stadium business? That’s ridiculous. Stadiums are built locally. They’re team responsibilities.’ Well, here we are in the latter half of the decade with basically a stadium finance and construction unit in our office headed by Roger Goodell, with banking relationships, relationships with HOK and others that we have never had before.

Question: Given the dollars today, do you suspect sooner than later that you will approve to corporate ownership?

PT: I don’t know…I doubt it. It’s a complex question. First you have to ask, why are corporations involved in owning franchise sports? One of the reasons some of the media companies are involved is because you get programming by owning a team. You get regular season programming because they play so many games like in baseball. Even in the NBA they have terrific national television packages on broadcast television and with Turner. But it still only covers nine or ten percent of the games so the team has still got television rights to the other 90%. So one of the reasons you have corporate media ownership in those league’s is because of access to television programming. You don’t have that in the NFL given the way our television is structured. Then you go to the other side of the coin and say, are there individuals who can continue to deal with the economics of owning NFL franchises? I think the answer is clearly yes. And probably a big part of it is what I eluded to earlier-- that partnership structure in the league, the revenue sharing, and the equal sharing of television. It gives you ownership of a franchise which is pretty staple by definition in terms of the solid structure. Then if you apply yourself you can make it very, very successful. I don’t know that corporate ownership is coming to the NFL.

Question: How many more years do you see yourself doing this? Do you want to teach sports law at Georgetown?

PT: I’m finished teaching. I’m under contract until I’m 65, then I’m going to start my second career. I told my wife it’s going to be a new, silent 20-year career. I might become a lobsterman in Maine.

PT: In some ways I’ve had an opportunity that few people get in their business, or professional life. Which is to start working on something when you’re relatively young and have the chance to work with really phenomenal people and then to be able to stay involved with that. That’s a really unique opportunity. I think that it has done two things. Number one, I feel that, in the 30 years I have been involved in the NFL, you really understand the league, the people in the league and what has made the National Football League as successful as it is. And number two, it has given me a very strong, positive feeling about having been apart of something really fantastic.

Question: Is there something more important than something else in the coming years?

PT: The other thing that belongs right up there is making sure that the Collective Bargaining Agreement works. We have a minimum number of disputes with the Players Association, and we have to continue working closely with the union on subjects like building stadiums, revenue sharing, the whole subject of making the CBA work.

PT: It is really critical. Any to-do list that I’ve had in the last 10 years has started with getting a CBA and making sure the CBA works. And that means avoiding disputes, solving problems before they arise. We had the Curtis Martin issue this year, which we resolved. So anticipating problems under the CBA both from the players’ standpoint and the clubs, is always on the list. After the CBA, I have Cleveland, Houston, LA, under the next heading. The third heading would be stadiums-- Denver, Arizona, Chicago, Philadelphia. The fourth thing would be youth football reinvesting in the game, and working with the players to make sure that they have the tools to really represent the NFL. I think what Bill Cowher said at the Rookie Seminar was phenomenal. In one or two short sentences he said, ‘the thing you need to understand most of all is that your talents get you here, but your decisions will determine whether or not you stay.’ That’s a hell of a quote. Your talent got you here. Your decisions will determine whether or not you stay.

Question: Does that fit you too?

PT: I think that it does. Maybe that’s why I identify with it.

Question: Can you summarize the decade?

PT: When I came in, Pete Rozelle and I had quite a few conversations. I came to the conclusion that growth and change were really big. Like I said before there had been no expansion since Seattle and Tampa, and a relatively lackluster performance in terms of stadium building. So I really felt that growth, in terms of expansion, was important. The first press conference that I had at the Super Bowl, I said I was going to support expanding the league. There was a real strong don’t expand attitude, but I said I don’t think your dividing up the pie, I think you’re growing the pie. Growth and change-- and I think the areas where we needed the change was in the labor area. We had the change, two strikes in the 80’s, including the replacement games in ‘87. It was perfectly obvious that we needed change. People were fighting change. And we needed a different approach to getting stadiums built. And the time was right to do more internationally.

Question: Could that be part of the next expansion?

PT: I think it would be, but again, as I said before, I think once we get to 32 we’ll be there for a while. I think once you get beyond 32, whenever that is, I definitely think international expansion.

Question: Not going beyond 32, is that to keep a scarcity of franchises so that demand remains strong?

PT: I don’t think that’s a concern. The concern is having teams in markets so that they can be supported well. That’s the key thing.

Question: Isn’t that kind of the problem in LA?

PT: There’s a lot of interest in LA. Our Super Bowl ratings in LA have been phenomenal. Our playoff game ratings in LA have been very strong. I think it was two years ago when Green Bay won the Super Bowl game, the ratings and the share in LA were among the highest in the country. The National Football League, off the TV ratings and the post-season ratings, we’re still doing very well with a very large segment of the audience in Los Angeles. What we haven’t had there is a local team that has turned the fans on. Through the 80’s and into the 90’s neither the Rams nor the Raiders turned on a big segment of the population. That was the problem with the market at that time.

Question: If you expand internationally during the next expansion do you have to go to two international teams or could you go one?

PT: You could go one international. You could put a team in Canada or Mexico. You could put a team in England and Germany.

PT: I think as you look from 2002 out to 2012, in that decade, perhaps we’ll be launching in Cleveland in ‘99. Let’s say were launching a thirty-second team two or three years later, so now your at 2002 and you look another decade and it begins in 2002 and ends in 2012. I think you could see international expansion in that decade.