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Commissioner Tagliabue Informal Press Conference (On the concept of opening the season on a Thursday night) “Instead of having a prime-time game just on Sunday night or Monday night, which is the end of the week, let’s have prime time both at the beginning of the weekend and at the end of the weekend on the opening week of the season. So we came up with the idea of the Thursday night prime-time game. And that, also, we felt, would be a tremendous way for the media and the fans to focus on the upcoming opening-week Sunday games.” (Are you going to do this every year?) “I think the Thursday night opener, we’ll try to do every year, whether it’s in New York or whether we do it in Washington or whether we do it, let’s say, when the Bears are coming back to Chicago in the new Soldier Field or in Dallas or San Francisco, something like that. I would think we would want a big city with a lot of energy. There are special reasons this year, obviously, to do it in New York, in terms of Sept. 11. But I would think, in future years, it would be something we might do in places where there was a lot of energy.” (Would it rotate networks?) “No. I think it would probably be ESPN.” (More on having it on a Thursday) “I think Thursday works well, especially since the teams can adjust their final preseason week and get a full week of rest and not be at a competitive disadvantage in terms of a short week. You do have that concern on a Thanksgiving Day game, but you don’t have it here.” (On whether he expects, because of television revenues, player salaries to continue increasing) “That’s certainly our expectation. I think the question is how fast do they go up? It’s not just television revenues. Our stadium revenues have been growing with so many new stadiums and I think that’s a very important piece of DGR now that we share with the players. And ancillary revenues are becoming important, too. But we certainly think, with the national interest in the sport as strong as it is, that revenues will continue to grow.” (On how are talks going with on the digital TV front) “They’re going well. They’re continuing. I think they’re going to intensify this month, with the representatives of the cable industry who also happen to be talking with Direct TV about the satellite side. On the cable side, we’re talking broadly about an NFL Channel, about interactive elements in a game telecast as well as the Sunday Ticket Package.” (What about the broadcast networks? You have to talk with them to get this rolling also, right?) “We’ve had a lot of discussions. We’ve been in close discussions with CBS and Fox and ABC, I’d say, for the last year about the future of television and the present of television as well.” (On what he sees as the league’s top priorities?) “Right now our number one priority is to focus on football and to focus on all the great, young players and the new divisional alignment and the scheduling formula, all the things that affect competition on the football field. We’re in a position where we can do that. We don’t have the need to negotiate a new television contract … (or a new) collective bargaining agreement. I think, business-wise, we’re just trying to really focus on why there’s such passionate interest in NFL football and to serve our fans better all across the country, and to make the game-day experience a really rich experience and deep experience for the fans. We have all these new stadiums. The business priorities, right now, relate to the game and relate to the fan experience at the game and how we serve the fans on television. So it’s all tied to the game.” (Where do you think is going to be the biggest area where your revenue will continue to improve?) “You’d have to start with what some people call electronic distribution. It’s television in all of its forms and the Internet. That’s over 50 percent of our revenues currently. In an information age, a media age, an age of digital explosion, you’d have to assume that that would continue to be the biggest piece of revenue in sports, especially for the NFL, perhaps.” (On whether events, such as the concert, will be part of the opening-night celebrations in the future or is it particular to this year?) “I think that would continue. A mixture of things that appeal to people of all ages – some of it focusing on the games and the players and some of it focusing on bands and concerts that have been part of great sporting events for a long time.” (Any concern about the celebration of the start of the season so close to Sept. 11?) “We started last night with the NFL Films premiere of the movie about the rebuilding of the football team of the Fire Department of the City of New York. So we understood that, at this time, in New York and around the nation, that you had to strike a balance between keeping the spirit strong, as Mayor Giuliani and Mayor Bloomberg have been emphasizing. Keeping the spirit strong, keeping people positive and resilient … fearless, courageous going forward, but also remembering those who were lost, honoring those who were lost, honoring those who showed so much courage and heroism on Sept. 11 and after Sept. 11, including the military. So a balance is needed and we think the whole week has that balance, and it started last night with a movie about the Fire Department’s football team and it will continue Monday night and through next Wednesday, the 11th.” (On his personal schedule this week) “It’s a rare opportunity to go to three football games in one weekend, which I’ve done a few times. With launching a new team, I think it’s very important to be there with the Texans and the Cowboys on Sunday, and seeing the defending Super Bowl champs open a new stadium in New England, which has been a long dream of Bob Kraft, both the championship and the stadium. I think it’s important for me to be at both games, so I’m going to be at both games.” (How moving was the FDNY film?) “I first heard about it in April or May down at NFL Films and they described it to me then. Being here in the city and knowing what the Fire Department went through and just to see NFL Films do that kind of a masterpiece about the rebuilding of the team and the symbolic rebuilding of their spirit and the City of New York’s spirit was one of Steve Sabol’s crowing moments, and he’s had a lot of crowing moments.” (On opening-week pregame ceremonies honoring memory of 9/11?) “We’re working on some special pregame ceremonies for both Sunday and Monday, and also have a public service program we’re introducing called ‘American Postcard,’ which is a tribute to the men and women in the military, starting with a focus on Afghanistan, and grows out to the trips I made to Germany this spring to meet with the troops once on my own and once with Jerome Bettis and Eddie George. That’s going to be launched, I think, tomorrow night. It’s what we call ‘American Postcard,’ honoring ordinary people doing extraordinary things in the military service, and we’re going to come back to that theme, with all 32 teams, on Veteran’s Day Weekend.” (How curious/surprised or interested were you in the baseball labor talks?) “More as a fan than anything else. They have their own, unique issues. They have their own structure. Sports are like transportation in some ways. Transportation is an industry, but the airlines are different from the railroads, are different from the automobiles, are different from the ships. And we’re about as different from the other sports as one form of transportation is from the others, so I don’t think it has much of a rub off for us.” (Planning anything extra for the Thursday night game?) “I think we’re going to have a halftime show featuring – I don’t know who; you can check with Aiello – I think it’s going to feature Madden, Simms, and others. I know they’re sitting with me during the first half and they’re part of some special halftime show.” (But there’s no additional rights fee from ESPN to show this game on Thursday night?) “No.” (And how many Bon Jovi CDs do you have at home?) “Well, I have a growing collection. I think the striking thing about Jon Bon Jovi is he’s an ordinary guy who connects with the policemen, the firemen, and the public safety workers. I saw that last year at a firehouse here at 51st and Lex when he and I went in there with some of the survivors and some of the widows and families of firemen who at that time were lost, and he immediately grabbed a big mug of coffee and connected with everybody in the room in a very, very genuine way, which is one of the reasons we asked him to be part of this Kickoff event tomorrow.” (Anything new on New York hosting a Super Bowl?) “Nothing new. I spoke with Gene Upshaw today about it and he’s strongly supportive of it. We’re going to work closely with the Players Association on the playing conditions to make sure those points – which would be a focal point of coaches and players and also of owners – are addressed. Gene thinks the concept is great. We’re going to work on his office on game condition issues.” (When do you think a decision might be made?) “Not until next year some time.” (Do the circumstances surrounding this opening weekend give you a higher level of enthusiasm?) “I think Steve Sabol said something last night that resonates with all Americans – and I guess Mayor Giuliani has been saying it all along – that when people are in difficult times they need faith and they need spirit and they need to rely on things that are intangible and non-material, and people’s interest in sports and sports teams that represent their community, those are intangibles. In a sense, it’s part of every individual’s spirit and so sports are maybe more important at this time than they are at other times.” (Two of the new stadiums are going to feature Field Turf. Is that an important development potentially for your league?) “Not as important as it might have been once, because we have so many grass fields now. We have a huge number of grass fields. Since we have our own stadiums, we’re no longer sharing stadiums with baseball stadiums in many places where we did. One of the reasons we had artificial turf in many stadiums was because baseball had it. In Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and so many other places we now have grass fields. Teams are off artificial turf to a large extent. Field Turf is important, but most of our stadiums now grass fields.” (Will you continue to pursue flexible scheduling and do the networks have to agree to it? Is that in their deal?) “Could we do it without any contract amendments? I think we could, yes, as long as we did it in a fair way that was consistent with our past scheduling patterns. I think we’re getting new ideas on the table in that area and trying to be responsive to every network’s concern. Ultimately it’s the fans’ interest here in seeing the best games on national TV, and that can be a plus both from the prime-time national telecast and for the Saturday and Sunday national telecasts of CBS and Fox. So if we can get a fair way of giving everybody the big games, it would be important to do that. The one thing that’s clear on flexible scheduling is that the league is so competitive now and it’s so hard to predict in advance of the season – particularly pre-free-agency, prior to the draft, in February and March – it’s so hard to predict what teams are going to be competitive that flexible scheduling makes that very possible. For instance, this year, we made our schedule when Drew Bledsoe was a New England Patriot. Now he’s a Buffalo Bill, and that changes the picture in terms of an outstanding quarterback and some Buffalo Bills matchups as potential national games. So I think, for most of the television era, Pete Rozelle and I have had to deal with game selectivity, where you try to prioritize and pick, on a selective basis, the top games. Now it’s impossible to do that in February and March, so we’ve got to get from selectivity to flexibility, which is a conceptual change that we’re talking through with the networks.” (What about the “Madden idea” of not scheduling any games for the final four weeks of the season?) “That’s not the Madden idea. That’s my idea. I gave it to John about six months ago. That’s something that we’ve been talking about for about two years. Why announce anything for the last four weeks of the season until you see where things are going? And then announce everything in a way which is fair to all the networks. You wouldn’t leave all 16 games unscheduled because that generates too much uncertainty in terms of fans making plans and teams making travel schedules. But if you took a limited pool of games on several weekends and then took pains to make sure that different teams were in the pool each weekend so it wouldn’t be a repeat type of thing for the fans, you would have a real good system.” END |