Commissioner Tagliabue Press Conference, Annual League Meeting, 3/23/98, (Midday Session)

Good afternoon. We started our meetings this morning with the general membership. We had had some committee meetings yesterday and Saturday, and this morning I gave my state of the league remarks. We then took up the collective bargaining agreement and gave a lengthy presentation on it. It was approved with 28 clubs supporting it. I think that’s very significant because, in conjunction with our television contracts, it is a very positive omen for our fans. It guarantees that we will have a great product on the field for a minimum of five more years without any disputes about labor disputes hanging over our heads. Coming off the Super Bowl we just had, this is a very positive way to start the meeting. We are very pleased to begin this way.

This afternoon we will be taking up some additional subjects, including some discussion of Cleveland, Los Angeles and Houston. I will be talking with you again at the conclusion of the afternoon session. I will be glad to take questions, focusing primarily on the collective bargaining agreement.

Question: (Regarding discussion of Cleveland, Los Angeles and Houston)

PT: I think we will have a wide-ranging discussion of where we are with regards to those three cities. We will start with Cleveland because of the commitment we have there and then move on to the other two.

Question: (Regarding Wellington Mara’s opposition to the CBA)

PT: Wellington Mara was opposed for reasons that I certainly respect. I think he knows that we negotiated this together, along with Dan Rooney, Jerry Richardson and Harold Henderson. This issue of termination pay and guaranteed contracts is a very difficult one and Well has very strong convictions on it born of many, many years in football. On the other side of the coin, people such as Dan Rooney and Mike Brown, who have been in the game for many years, and Mike referred to his father’s thoughts on guaranteed contracts in terms of motivation…I think we all realize that in an era where you have free agency and a salary cap and very large signing bonuses, you have very large amounts of money being paid to players on a guaranteed basis. You have to look at the broader context. One of the positives of the labor agreement to this point is that the game has remained so strong on the field, despite the guaranteed money. Hopefully we can keep that up.

Question: (Inaudible)

PT: No, we haven’t been taking formal applications. We are not at that point of the process yet.

Question: (Regarding benefits to the NFL from CBA)

PT: There are a number of things in this agreement that are important to us and positive to us. In the opinion of most clubs, if you compare an uncapped system and the type of unrestricted movement of players that that could produce, along with its impact on the quality of the game, this is clearly a preferable place to be.

Question:

PT: The focus was on the fans and the quality of the game. The amount of player movement impacts both of those. The ability of teams to play as cohesive units is one of the great things about football. The competition committee was discussing in Indianapolis in February that we had a substantial increase in the number of sacks last year per game. What causes that? It’s the same thing you had when Buddy Ryan was at his peak with the Eagles in the ‘80s. There are two possible causes. One is an increase in aggressive blitzing. The other is a possible deterioration in offensive line play. What is it? You could get every coach to disagree. The general consensus right now is that we have had more blitzing and more sacks because of the amount of passing we have. If more sacks are caused by deterioration of line play in some places that results from players moving around and not being cohesive, like the Redskins lines were, like the great Giants lines were when you had Ottis Anderson pounding it out and the Redskins pounding it out behind Jacoby and those guys, that is a big concern. That was a big concern for us – not having too much player movement. Fans want to identify with players. They want players to be their heroes on a continuous basis. That was our biggest focus, in addition to the cash over cap point. The union’s position was that this system is working in a fair way. We have great football. We do have some movement but its not been excessive. The one year we had a blip in the movement was when we added two teams. After 10 months of very tough negotiation and a very good exchange of opinion, we basically ended up with the same concepts we started with in ’92, with a lot of very important fine-tuning. We fine tuned in terms of the rookie pool, increasing the minimum salaries, better benefits…There are a lot of very positive things, including the youth football fund. We all went in there with a lot of priorities. We had a tremendous exchange of views with the Player’s Association, led by Gene Upshaw. We came out with the same good, solid agreement we started with, with considerable improvements, and no significant deterioration. We don’t have free agency after two or three years, we still have a good, solid draft. Those were the critical things.

Question: (Regarding stadium fund)

PT: The new stadium fund is not, at this point, a final agreement. It’s a best efforts commitment by the union to do what its been doing with us relative to stadiums. Carolina – they helped with the construction of Ericsson Stadium by excluding from sharing with the union the PSL revenue. Anything from PSL’s is excluded from sharing with the players. That obviously helps. Where we have club seats, and there are premiums going to pay stadium construction, that’s excluded. They made it clear that if we could identify other revenues, including possibly television revenue, that would go into stadiums to help become part of a public-private partnership on stadium construction, they would be prepared to look at that favorably. That’s as far as we have gotten. It’s a complicated subject and we’re going to continue discussing it in the next couple of weeks.

Question: (Regarding Cleveland)

PT: We have to discuss an array of issues: expansion vs. relocation, ownership selection process, pricing, player stocking, player evaluation. The other thing that has to happen is that you have to listen to 30 people. Whether it’s 30 members of a family or 30 owners in a league, that is a time consuming process.

Question: (Regarding future San Diego Super Bowls)

PT: I’ll know a lot more once we have the report from the Super Bowl Advisory Committee. The video recaptured what everyone experienced who was in San Diego. It was a wonderful Super Bowl. There was a feeling downtown that was like an Olympic Village, especially in the Gaslamp district.

Question: (Regarding 49ers ownership)

PT: I’ve been focused more on where Ed DeBartolo and his sister stand in terms of ownership of the team. I have had some conversations with the mayor about the mall project and I am satisfied as to where that stands.

Question: (Regarding new minimum salaries)

PT: The new minimums, in full, take effect in ’99. We have some other transition rules that are still being discussed with the union in various areas, including the franchise player area, to transfer to the new rules.

Question: (Regarding Houston)

PT: I think there is a very positive attitude right now. There has been leadership from a number of people, both in the private sector and from public officials, and that's the reason we are having meetings that are beginning to look toward a positive and constructive agenda. We did not have that much conduct directly with Mayor Lanier when Bud Adams was trying to get something built in Houston. Maybe with the benefit of a learning experience we should have been involved earlier. It’s a little hard to compare. We have been much more deeply involved now that it falls to us to try to get something done.

Question: (Regarding player behavior)

PT: The policy that I was talking about this morning is a policy we put in place last August – well before there was any issue with respect to Sprewell. The policy focuses on violent misconduct by players. It could be anything from a charge of assault with a deadly weapon to harassment to spousal abuse involving women. We’ve defined it in the policy that went out to the clubs last August. Because we were not able to brief the players on the policy last year during training camp, this year we only applied the counseling features of the policy. If a player pled guilty or was convicted of the type of crime that fell under the policy, he was required to have counseling under the league’s direction. Beginning this year, we’re going to be suspending players. This is a feature of the policy, but we didn’t implement it last year because we felt there was not sufficient opportunity to discuss that with the players. We wanted to give them notice. This year there will be suspensions for certain types of off-field misconduct where we have not suspended players before.

Question: (Follow up)

PT: The suspension would be after there is a conviction or a guilty plea. It would be based on that and factors I might regard as pertinent. The policy was written down and distributed to clubs last August.

Question: (Possibly regarding Cornelius Bennett)

PT: No, I haven’t. I know that some people in our organization have had discussions with the Falcons about that, and among other things, how it fits under this policy.

Question: (Regarding player behavior)

PT: I’d have to refresh the policy. I reviewed it carefully. I was involved in developing it. It was issued by the Management Council but I haven’t memorized those kinds of things…It involves suspension from play without pay. I don’t think the union needs to approve it under our labor agreement. We’ve had discussions on a number of different occasions about misconduct that involves violence. We put in place a policy with regards to weapons, which we discussed with the Players Association. I put this policy in place. They had no objection to it and thought it was a positive thing to do. We developed it, we discussed it with Players Association representatives, we had some discussions with representatives from college football about the concepts, but it’s our policy.

Question: (Follow up)

PT: We had growing concern that there was detrimental conduct of this type and that under the player’s contract, there is basis for suspension. We want to deter the misconduct. One way is to impose discipline and another way is to have counseling. We want to help the players avoid off the field problems.

Question: (Regarding Sprewell)

PT: We are talking about off the field, outside of the team misconduct with respect to third parties. It doesn’t have anything to do with Sprewell. Whether it would apply there, I don’t even know. That’s not what we were talking about, nor were we talking about. Nor were we talking about anything such as occurred with Michael Westbrook and a teammate. We were talking about misconduct with respect to third parties.

Question: (Regarding Cleveland)

PT: Two things, I would say Dave. The people we are going to be hiring I think are of the quality kind of people that the new owner would want. If that proves to be the case, the new owner in Cleveland would have some very good people. On the other side of the coin, if the new owner felt he wanted different people or people, that would be an option. It would not be required to take the people we develop. On the other hand I think the kinds of people George is talking about would be attractive to most football organizations.

Question: (Regarding Houston)

PT: They have been doing a good job and we are certainly in a more constructive stage of discussion then we were when the Oilers left.

Question: (Regarding free agency)

PT: I think there is definitely a feeling that you are better off with the known than the unknown. Most people who have had long careers in football have operated on that premise. It’s always been one of the reasons that we’ve been opposed to free agency of a destructive type. Chuck Noll could speak eloquently on that, and Don Shula, and other coaches – including people like George Young. I think it took a few organizations time to relearn something that a lot of people knew. I think it’s also understood better by the players. There is difficulty in moving from one system to another system. There is difficulty in this kind of a team game in assuming that you are going to be taken out of this defensive scheme and be the same kind of player in another system. I think it’s a recognition by both sides.

Question: (Regarding Cleveland)

PT: We don’t really need a vote on Cleveland. We had a vote on Cleveland when we agreed with the city to put a team there. Whether we vote on something is not really the issue. The issue is to get a consensus and start a planning process and accelerate our time table if we can. I’ve said before there is a good majority of owners who feel there should be an expansion team. There are also a number of people who have not heard this discussion before, so we’ll discuss it.