PT: We wrapped up the meetings today. It was a long four-day session beginning with our committee meetings on Sunday. Today, we started the meeting with the head coaches and owners to talk about things that are going on around the league with coaches who are such a public personification of the teams. We obviously adopted instant replay and had a lengthy discussion of the proposed sale of the Redskins and we addressed the question of the Super Bowl in San Francisco and also had some committee discussions about assistant coaches, and the benefits issue.

PT: We hoped to address it with the ownership but we just ran out of time. The feeling was, especially in the health insurance area, that they have some needs that the clubs need to respond to. Overall, there was a better understanding for our assistant coaches in this day and age where we have, like this year, nine new head coaches. It means 1/3 are becoming unemployed in a given year almost annually. It can be a chaotic existence for those coaches and their families and we should try to address that situation.

PT: We are very sensitive to the management of the team and the need for the team to be competitive and to be able to prepare for the draft. The meeting will be in the first week of April where we will expect to get this resolved. That’s well in advance of the draft and in the meantime we will be working with the Millstein-Snyder group to see what can be accomplished. We were simply not in a position to make a decision this week. The votes were not there. They requested that we defer and we thought the request was sensible given all the efforts gone into this but it will not be a significant delay, just a matter of weeks.

PT: There are a whole variety of questions about the transaction. I don’t want to go into it in very much detail. Frankly, I think there is a feeling on both sides that this has sort of become a media event when it should be a business decision-making process. Suffice to say we are very sensitive to the fans’ interest in getting this resolved and I had some conversation with Norv Turner last night.

He told me as far as the players are concerned, it has been business as usual and everyone was working. His attitude was similar to what Dennis Green’s attitude was last year at this time in Minnesota. But we’re sensitive to that and I think we will get it resolved in the immediate future.

PT: The votes to pass it were not there.

PT: This system really grew out of discussion internally with our staff. We had met in early February to get ready for the meetings with the coaches at the Combine in Indianapolis. In getting ready for that meeting George Young went over the problems that the clubs still had with the coaches challenge system and it really boiled down to two problems: one was the fact that a coach would have to keep one challenge in his pocket going into the final minute or of the game to deal with that big last play like we had in the Pittsburgh vs. Indianapolis AFC Championship Game in 1995. The coaches felt you’re going to have to keep one challenge in your pocket for the last play of the game, otherwise you’re going to look foolish. The other problem focused on the final two minutes of each half where you could have an abuse with the challenge system if you shammed a timeout. So if you used it, you forfeited a timeout. The more we discussed it the more we realized the problem centered in the final two minutes. So I said, ‘Why don’t we have a ‘28 and two’ type system. Have a replay official and the referee handle it in the final two minutes and disengage the coach. Let him coach and don't present him with these dilemmas. From that meeting George went and met with the coaches and the Competition Committee in Indianapolis and everyone thought it was directly responsive to the two concerns that were lingering about the coaches challenge system and then I think the snowball began to run from there.

PT: This is for one year only. A number of people who voted for it emphasized this was for one year only. They still were not convinced that replay was the wise way to go but they were willing to try it for one year.

Obviously the play in the Seattle vs. New York Jets game had an impact. I don’t think the plays in the Buffalo vs. New England game did. The last play wouldn’t be covered by replay anyway because it was pass interference. The one at the sideline, the official had about .03 of a second to figure out whether the player’s foot was on the ground or not. I think it was more of the fact that we had built up on the coaches challenge system that we had come to within a couple votes last

year and we had not had replay since 1991 and a number of things pushed it over the top. I don’t think it was any one single play. I think it was more the feeling that we were very close last year and solved the problems that bothered clubs at the end of the debate last year.

PT: I don’t think that’s my responsibility here. We had a split Finance Committee right down the middle. Owners are making a decision on who their business partners should be. I don’t think it’s the commissioner’s job to take sides on that kind of debate between owners. My job is to be fair to the owners, fair to the proposed purchaser and manage a process that lets everyone put their best foot forward on their merits but I don’t think it’s fair for me to say, ‘I’m going to side with this group of owners which supports this as opposed to that group of owners that opposes this.' That's not the commissioner's role.

PT: I don’t know about that. Replay passed and I didn’t say a word.

PT: We rolled over the commitment in San Francisco. I spoke with Mayor Brown and suggested to him that it would be sensible to keep the commitment in place and that’s what we did. San Diego, South Florida and possibly some other cities will be making presentations at our May meeting to seek the award of that Super Bowl.

PT: We are going to be working with John and Denise York and Mayor Brown and once we have some meetings we’ll have a better sense of what the possibilities are and what the timeline might be. I know the entire organization, beginning with Denise York, herself as the new chair of the board of the 49ers, is committed to that project and we will be working with them and hopefully we can stay on an aggressive timetable.

PT: I think the rules as stated can be met by prospective owners. They were met by Al Lerner, Red McCombs, Jeff Lurie and Malcom Glazer so I don’t think that’s really the issue.

Q: Was the ownership being kind on not moving to vote on the Redskins sale?

PT: I don’t think it’s a matter of kindness. I think it’s a matter of working in good faith and recognizing the complexity of this transaction, the unprecedented price and the unprecedented financing that needs to be put in place. I think our membership felt that everyone had walked the long walk and we should continue to try and walk together and see what can be accomplished as long as we did on an expedited basis that took account of the fans’ interest in resolving this and I think we can do that.

Q: Is the purpose of the stadium resolution to help Los Angeles?

PT: I don’t think it would. It was really directed at cities where we have existing teams. A big part of the resolution is trying to ensure the stability of the franchises where they are. That was the focus. That’s not to say that maybe in Los Angeles we can’t adopt a similar concept but the purpose of this is to help existing teams.

This resolution affects quite a large number of cities, not just the top six. As I said the other day it’s merely an extension of our existing policies where we already have had a policy that has put $250 million or more into stadium construction the last five years with most of those funds coming out of the premiums that are paid for club seats. As I mentioned the other day about Jack Kent Cooke Stadium, there is a big component of the construction cost of the stadium being paid for by the premiums on those 12,000-15,000 club seats. The new policy just builds on that and some loan mechanisms for making the money available to the team sponsoring the stadium project, investing in the project. There are some loan mechanisms for making money available to them up-front which would have an important impact in terms of securing the construction financing and mortgage financing for a stadium.

PT: The reason is to maintain the two weeks between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl dates that far out are fixed so we have to start on Labor Day in order to have the two weeks between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl. Beyond that, I think we’re telling Super Bowl cities that we would like them to keep a date in early February so that we might play the Super Bowl in early February: maintain the week between conference championship games and the Super Bowl and then be able to start the week after Labor Day.

Q: Did anything prevent the owners from voting down the Redksins sale?

PT: There was nothing to prevent us from voting it down today. That could have been done. We didn’t want to do that. We felt the reasonable thing to do in terms of good business practice and good business management was to continue to work with them for another period of time to see whether something can be accomplished.

There was some feeling that we were struggling with the terms of the financing and there was some feeling that a lot of work had been done under a lot of time pressure in the last week to 10 days and maybe more could be accomplished if we gave ourselves a little bit more time.

PT: I think it’s important for the fans. It’s important for teams to have that extra week for players to rehab from injuries. When you’re going into the Super Bowl, you hope that you can have most of your players there. But it’s also an important factor for the fans, particularly if you have a west coast team like the 49ers playing in a game in Miami. A lot of arrangements have to be made by a lot of fans to cross the country.

Q: Did you discuss the quality of officiating?

PT: There was some discussion of that with the coaches this morning. I told them in my judgment a bunch of coaches spend a lot of time haranguing the officials along the sideline and that if they paid more attention to coaching it would be helpful to everybody. One owner said that one of the real problems we had was that we seem to be in an era when the coaches felt it was part of their job to try to intimidate officials. So we did discuss officiating and a number of aspects of it and those were among the points that were made.

Q: What about the grading system of the officials?

PT: We are going to review the grading system of the officials. I don’t think it’s a matter of style. It’s a matter of how you grade. Coaches go through the same thing. We have been discussing with some of the coaches the fact that some of the grading of players has changed. Players are graded now on a weekly basis but you don’t communicate a grade to players every week. You try to coach and you communicate a grade at the end of a season. Our system involves communicating a grade every week that was mandated by the Competition Committee years ago and we may move away from that system.

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