We started off with a tribute to Walter Payton and on Sunday we’re going to have a tribute at all of the games where there will be a moment of silence for Walter Payton just prior to kickoff.

Today’s meeting was mostly discussion and putting things in front of people that we can talk about in March. We had a review of the season which is certainly an unusual one in some ways but very positive one in terms of attendance, fan interest, TV ratings, and the competitive races out there. Everything is extremely positive. The unusual part is the retirement of John Elway and Barry Sanders coupled with injuries to two of the great quarterbacks, Dan Marino and Steve Young. And the injuries to the two outstanding running backs Jamal Anderson and Terrell Davis. Despite the fact we don’t have those six players on the field, we have extremely high levels of interest, with 40 percent of the games decided by three points or less, twice as many as last year. Eighty-five percent of games have been sold out in advance, which is a record pace, 65,000 plus in attendance which is a record pace and so forth.

We talked about the stadium construction-financing program that we adopted in March and approved some projects in May and talked about how we’re going to implement that going forward. We talked a little about the Internet and our Internet policies. We had a committee meeting this morning and a discussion this afternoon about NFL Europe and we will be kicking off another season before we know it. We have a team in place there. Oliver Luck will be returning to the States. Bill Peterson will be running the league; he has been with it since the beginning. We have a football operations meeting tomorrow and we talked about some of the things which will be discussed there, including scheduling matters. Next year will be the last year we will kick off on Labor Day weekend. Beginning with the 2001 season, we will be starting the season on a regular basis a week after Labor Day on a consistent basis. For at least a couple of years, it will mean we will have only one week between the Conference Championship Games and the Super Bowl. At some point in the middle of the decade we will play the Super Bowl in early February, starting the season a week after Labor Day, having a two-week break after the Conference Championship Game and playing the Super Bowl in February will kick in at some point.

PT: I think the one concept that is floating out there, the Dan Rooney concept, needs to have more refinement. It reflects the last to come into a division would be the first to go out of the division so it would preserve some of the long-standing divisional rivalries that originated with the merger of the AFL-NFL in 1970. One of the things that I think is important is that you have teams with the long tradition and with a tradition of success scattered through all of the divisions. Those teams have deep national appeal and I think it is important to continue that with the divisional alignments and divisional rivalries. The last thing we want to get to is too much regionalization. I think that would be negative for our game and our fan base and how we do that will involve quite a bit of additional thought.

PT: I’m skeptical of that because those are all new faces in town beginning with Indianapolis in 1984. At the other end of the spectrum you have some divisions where the average history of the team is 70-80 years and you have a lot of postseason appearances since 1966 and pre-1966 and that needs to be addressed. One of the great memories I have this decade is the Green Bay Packers coming back. That was not just my memory. It resonated throughout America for a lot of different reasons but part of it is tradition coming back the memories of Bart Starr, Paul Hornung, Ray Nitschke and all of those guys and the comparisons of Bart Starr versus Brett Favre and Mike Holmgren versus Vince Lombardi. I think it is really important to the fans and those kinds of opportunities should be spread around through the divisions to the best extent we can. Obviously we have some newer teams beginning in 1976. We have some teams that relocated and became new for that reason, including the Ravens to take one example. And that division that you just outlines is post-1984 faces and I think it would be a weakness of that kind of alignment. As much excitement as a Jacksonville can generate with a Mark Brunell and a Tony Boselli, it is still a new tradition. It will be a long tradition at some point but not right now.

PT: It certainly would with what I just said. Although, what you have is Chicago, Minnesota, Detroit and Green Bay and you have not only great tradition but long years of participation in pro football. So that would mitigate against that but does that mean we wouldn’t keep those teams in that grouping? I wouldn’t say that but I think that’s an example. At one end of the spectrum you have the ‘black blue and blue’ division with a lot of history and a lot of success. Vikings Super Bowl participation, Green Bay Super Bowl participation and the Bears. At the other end of the spectrum you have teams none of whom have been in the league for more than 15 years.

PT: We covered it in our report this morning. There are two things that I think are clear about replay which I think are both positive. Number one is, we’re not using it very much, less than one review per game. Secondly, it’s out there as an insurance policy for that play you’re going to want to review. We have had a number of plays where there have been reviews and reversals that clearly changed the outcome of the game. Even bigger than that we all think of that 1995 Indianapolis vs. Pittsburgh Championship Game ‘Hail Mary.’ What if they hadn’t gotten it right? Same thing this year. What if they hadn’t gotten the Deion Sanders lateral in the N.Y. Giants vs. Dallas game right? You would have replay to review it and get it right. I think that’s the most important part of having it. I think it’s working. There are some issues out there. The Dan Marino play in the Miami vs. Indianapolis game was a classic example of an official being shielded off seeing the ball pop out and calling it a fumble and he was able to look at the replay and see the quarterback’s hands going forward like a shovel pass and called it an incomplete pass. Those are complicated things because once he makes the call it’s supposed to be entitled to a presumption that he’s right and that it’s got to be conclusive before he can overturn it, but from his perspective it gave him the first clear view of the play that he ever had. He’s behind the quarterback and his view was obstructed. It helps officiating, there is no doubt about that.

PT: There will be plenty to do. Extension of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, modification to include more performance-based pay.

PT: It’s been fun and I think we have gotten a lot done. The biggest accomplishment has been getting the CBA done with the players, getting us out of the courthouse and more importantly getting us from a decade where we had constant strife in 1982 and again in 1987 to a decade where we did not have strife and coming up with a system where the game is so competitive as it clearly is. Last year was the second time in the history of the league where there were six new division winners from the year before. Now this year, we have a similar thing going on and I think that’s great for the fans. The thing that I think is clear is that it is free agency coupled with the salary cap that spreads the talent around. For years people have talked about the fact that the 49ers were able to have Joe Montana succeeded by Steve Young. If you had free agency, chances are Steve Young would have been out of there at some point while Montana was still quarterback and I think we saw it working that way with Brad Johnson leaving Minnesota. So you spread the talent around by giving the backup player a chance to move and this goes back to what we discussed in the early 1990s, where we have the franchise player rule and you keep the greatest players where they are. I was in St. Louis two weeks ago. I was interested to see Dick Vermeil’s comments where he was asked, ‘What’s the biggest difference between today and 1981?’ He said the players are bigger, faster, better and the game is more competitive across the board every game. I think that’s the greatest accomplishment, keeping the game as competitive as it is on the field.

PT: Maybe by that time there will be a team in Los Angeles. That gives us another 20 years to get it done. I will only be 74 at the time.

PT: I announced it the other day. I’m giving up on lobstering and told Bloomberg I was going to keep working, which is a non-news story on top of a non-news story.

PT: It feels more like four or five years. It’s hard to imagine it has been 10 years. People ask what my memories are and it just seems like yesterday that I was in Buffalo watching the Bills playoff game with the Gulf War erupting, talking with Jack Kemp whether we should play the game because people, including the Washington Post, were editorializing that we should not and Gen. Powell told Jack Kemp that one of the best things we can do was to play the game and ship the videos to the troops. That was eight years ago and it really seems like it was yesterday.

PT: I don’t know how you answer that. In the 1970s you had an explosion of interest in the game and in the late 1950s and early 1960s you had Jim Brown and the Packers on one side and Joe Namath and the Raiders, the two leagues coming together and Monday Night Football coming in. There have been so many high moments in the NFL since World War II it’s hard to say what is the best shape of the league. I think the 1980s were clearly the most troubled period since WW II because of the cancellation of 57 days of play in 1982 and the replacement games in 1987.

PT: Absolutely. Take the Rams. People have known since he came into the league that Isaac Bruce was an outstanding receiver plagued by injury and Marshall Faulk was a great player. Two of those players ended up on the same team with Orlando Pace. They have outstanding football players and then you throw in a quarterback who comes out of no place and you have a heck of a football team and it’s been reflective in their scores.

PT: You lose your quarterback and running back and one wide receiver goes to Miami and guess what, you’ve got a different group of players. It’s not a lack of depth. You go pick teams in the history of this league who lose a quarterback and a premier running back and your’re not going find a team that can survive that. The other factor is obvious. They came from nowhere real fast so they’re coming off a weighted schedule into a weighted schedule. The injury situation is a real factor.

PT: We have never had a dynasty like the Yankees. When you think about, that is one of the strongest parts of our league. It’s great in New York to say that the Yankees won their 25^th World Series in 75 years but that means they won the Series one in every three years. That means in two of every three years the rest of the league had a chance to win. Personally I don’t think that’s great for sport other than in New York. I think we’re going to have dynasties in the same sense that we’ve had teams win multiple Super Bowls with the same group of players.

PT: I think that is going to be very difficult. Like I say, the combination of the longevity of the two quarterbacks and the ability to keep the receiving corps very strong is extremely unusually. It is a tribute to the organization and to those players but I think the more typical pattern involves teams like Washington, Dallas and the New York Giants when they went from winning, aging and then dropping down to the middle or bottom of the barrel before you can rebuild because you don’t get the Steve Young and Terrell Owens. Dallas’ decline during the Tom Landry-Tex Schramm years and then coming through the draft are much more typical. More and more of the personnel people are recognizing the continued importance of the Draft and building teams.

PT: No. I’m not in favor of it but if that’s all we can get done then we’ll do it. But I think there is an opportunity here to do considerably more than that. I think most of the membership feels the same way.

PT: I think that is the sense. It gives you a good geographical spread because of what’s left in the NFC East from New York down to Washington and Dallas. Another thing is the Cardinals have only been in Arizona since 1987. It’s not the fact they’re in the west; it’s the fact they are in the west and have been in the NFC East for such a short period of time relative to the rest of the division.

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