COMMISSIONER’S PRESS CONFERENCE
OWNER’S MEETING-MARCH 25, 1998

 PT: Obviously the bigest thing this morning was the discussion of instant replay and the vote. We worked with the competition committee this morning to see if we could make people comfortable with the concept that has been pour forth, and do it on a one year basis. For a while it looked like we get there. The goal is to eliminate from the game the very rare bad call that is a game breaker, or season breaker.

The challenge is how do you do that without having a system that disrupts or interruopts other aspects of the game, delaying the game, and having other negative effects. Everyone can agree on the goal, but they can’t agree on how to achieve it. This morning there appeared to be a time when we thought the committee would agree on a one-year trial basis. Bill Cowher changed his position this morning because it was limited to one year, and he felt on a one year trial basis he could live with it and see if some of his concerns were real or imagined. We felt other people would have the same attitude, but it didn’t turn out that way and it was voted down.

On the Super Bowl, there was a report from the Super Bowl advisory Committee. New Orleans and San Diego will be the finalists for the game in 2002. There will be a meeting at the end of April in New York with the representatives from those cities to review their presentations, and we’ll have a decision at our regularly scheduled meeting in October.

There were a couple of playing rules adopted this morning, including the so called anti-flinch or Neil Smith rule. They passed the proposal that prevents the offense from lingering in the huddle in cases where the offense is trying to deceive the defense as to who is in the offensive unit. There were lengthy discussions on those at the combines because both of those created an unfair advantage.

Q: Do you think its time to give replay a rest?

PT: The ownership of those six clubs that were voting on it this morning have overa combined ownership of 400 seasons of NFL football, averaging more than 60 seasons per club. What that leads to is a real philosophical conviction of how the game is being officiated, and what kinds of intrusions you should or should not have in the game. Whether that will change, I don’t know. Tony Dungy remarked that he didn’t think it was necessary because the officiating was good. Every coach of course would like it to be better. Mike Holmgren and his staff went over the film from the entire season and concluded that they would have challenged only nine plays if we had a challenge system in place. That’s just one every other game. That had an impact on coaches who just don’t think it’s necessary, and think the stoppages would be unnecessary also.

Q: Could you maybe use it I the preseason for a few years and then use it in the regular season if the results were good?

PT: We’re going to consider it again. Atlanta had a proposal where it wouldn’t be a coach’s challenge, but the system would instead be triggered by a replay official upstairs. Some of the clubs were saying limit the review to the endzone only, in or out of the endzone. When the replay official does the review he’ll notify the game official who will then judge it on a monitor on the field