NFL Meeting May 22, 2001 - Chicago
Commissioner Tagliabue –
Press Conference
Commissioner Tagliabue:
I think that you have been told that
we reached a unanimous decision on realignment at our opening session of the meeting this
morning. I think you have been given a copy
of the realignment plan, the new divisional structure.
There were a couple of other elements
of the member clubs decision on realignment.
The league office will have the
authority to schedule pre-season games that are directed at the scheduling needs of clubs
in new divisions, or moving out of existing divisions, to maintain some traditional
match-ups and to ensure that those teams would have preseason schedules that would be
strong and representative schedules. This
authority to the league office would last for a five-year transitional period from the
2002 season to 2006, and it would not include the final week of the preseason.
There has been a longstanding feeling
that the final week of the preseason is critical in terms of competitive aspects and the
cut-down dates, so teams want to have their own authority to schedule that final preseason
game on a date, and in a location, that suits their cut-downs and other competitive needs.
The second aspect of this is that in
fixing the regular season schedule of the non-divisional games, both within a conference
and across conferences, we were directed to pay special attention in starting the rotation
to the needs of teams who are moving into new divisions.
So that for example, with respect to Arizona and Seattle, in starting the
rotation of the scheduling of the non-divisional games we would pay special attention to
when those teams would play the NFC East and the AFC West.
As another example, in fixing the schedule of the regular season games for
the AFC North and AFC South, two new divisions growing out of the AFC Central, we would
similarly pay attention to the rotation and start the rotation in 2002 and 2003 so that we
could have a good representative number of match-ups for those teams with teams from
former divisions.
So, those were the added elements. I think those were important in producing the
consensus. Obviously as you all know we
earlier had a consensus around the pooling of the visiting team share and the equalization
of the visiting team’s share for road games. And
the scheduling formula itself was an important step towards this decision today on
realignment.
I would be glad to take any questions
that anybody has.
Question: On benefits of realignment.
PT: It’s very strong and the entire membership
feels it’s very strong. It’s a
win-win for everybody when you consider the scheduling formula, which is a very powerful
concept that becomes possible when we have 32 teams in eight divisions of four each. It will give all of the fans guaranteed match ups
on a rotating basis outside of the division, within the conference and across the
conference. We have not had that before and
it will bring the strong teams into everyone’s market on a guaranteed cycle. Plus the maintenance of key rivalries, both for
individual teams and for our television audience, is also preserved by this. We did an analysis with input from the networks on
what have been the major rivalries over the years that have been important to television
and an overwhelming number of those rivalries are preserved, obviously not all but the
overwhelming number.
Question: On the quick decision.
PT: We are a little surprised that we did it today. We assumed that coming in here we might want to
have some discussion this morning and then vote tomorrow, but the membership felt that we
had had a very thorough discussion over the last 18 months, both in league meetings and in
smaller working group meeting of owners in New York and Denver last fall. As one owner said it, he questioned whether there
would be any new thoughts uttered here today and didn’t see a reason to rehash. So the focus was on the scheduling issues. Our seven-member working group unanimously
recommended both the pre-season and regular-season scheduling elements that I have
outlined for you and there was a quick buy-in to that by the entire membership. There were some questions of how radical a
departure it would be from the current pre-season scheduling. I explained that it was really an extension of the
league’s role that currently exists on the pre-season schedule, when we schedule
American Bowl games, when we schedule the bye weeks with the current 31-team league and
also when we schedule national network telecasts. This
is an evolution and an extension of our current scheduling policies, not a radical
departure, so we were able to get a quick consensus around all of these points.
Question: How many plans were discussed?
PT: A1 was the only one discussed. I met with the working group this morning along
with Roger Goodell and some of our other key staff, and they felt that I say there had
been an extensive discussion of all these plans over an 18 month period and their
perspective was that with the scheduling elements A1 represented the best over-all plan
for the collective interest of all teams and the league, so they came in and said that. Everyone rather quickly agreed. I think it’s a measure of where we are as a
league. There is great cooperation; there is
a willingness to elevate the over-all interests of the league to individual club interests
on important matters. We are now discussing
the new venture we have in the apparel area with Reebok, which is also very broadly
supported and a major new initiative of the league. We’ll
be discussing later today our Internet network that we established last year –
extending that out to 2005. I believe there
will be strong support for that. We have been
meeting, and will meet again this week, with the players association to talk about
extending the Collective Bargaining agreement out at least to 2006. I think this is another example of owners working
closely with a broad perspective of the league’s interests and not a parochial or
narrow perspective about any particular clubs individual agenda.
Question: Why was the discussion so brief?
PT: The discussion on plan A1 was very brief, because
as I say, everyone is fully acquainted with these plans.
They are fully acquainted with the differences between the various plans we
had sent. We had discussed them at length in
March, as you know –many of you were at our March meeting. I said then that we had a real good discussion of
this. We sent these out probably a month ago,
or close to that, to all of the clubs. So
most of the discussion, an overwhelming part of the discussion, was on the scheduling
issues – not on the realignment.
Question: Did any owners have comments on the
realignment?
PT: Yes. Seattle
felt strongly and Bob Wittsit was quite eloquent, as was Bill Bidwell and Wayne Weaver and
several other clubs that there were other alternatives that they had proposed in prior
meetings. They recognized that the philosophy
of Art Rooney should really prevail here and that was stated by Dan Rooney. He harkened back to 1970, as did Wellington Mara. They said that no matter how significant a change
you are making in terms of divisional alignment you can make it work. The NFL will make it work. So the Steelers who had been in the National
Football League ended up in the American Football Conference without many of their key
traditional rivalries, the Giants being the foremost.
But they not only made it work they ended up winning four Super Bowls in
relatively short period of years after that. If
you look at this in a positive way, and understand the power of our game, and the appeal
of our game and our teams to the public this will work.
Bob Witsitt spoke, Bill Bidwell spoke and other owners spoke but they all
recognized that there are multiple ways of achieving your goals and this was an extremely
strong plan for all of the teams and the fans. Again,
I think a lot of it comes back to the scheduling formula itself, with the rotational
element of the games.
Question: On whether or not current strengths of teams
were taken into account in the realignment.
PT: No. We
had a strong consensus months ago that current competitive conditions of teams were really
irrelevant, and that it’s cyclical. Particularly
under the current Collective Bargaining agreement will the draft being very important,
with the salary cap and free agency. We have
tremendous competition across the league and you are slicing it pretty thin if you think
you can say that this team is going to be more competitive or stronger than that team in
the next two or three years. Even where you
might be able to make that judgment like I said, we had agreed months ago that that
shouldn’t really be a factor. What was
important was a longer-term perspective, where competitiveness is cyclical.
Question: On Houston and Tennessee being in the same
division.
PT: I think it’s a very good thing. It was supported by Bud and Bob McNair. I have spoken with both of them over the months
preceding this about my own feeling that these two teams can have a tremendous rivalry
–they are in states (Texas and Tennessee) that have great football traditions at the
college level and at the high school level, and we can build upon that. The same is true with Jacksonville and Houston
– Florida and Texas having great football traditions - at the NFL level with Houston
and Dallas, Jacksonville, Miami and Tampa, all the college football in those two states. I felt that this was a very strong division and
the networks agreed with that assessment - having Houston in the South would be a very
strong thing long-term and that was preferable to having Houston in the AFC North, which
would have been other alternative. I think
this has gotten very broad support.
Question: On whether individual players effected the
realignment.
PT: Nothing that I ever heard. Like I said, we didn’t consider the current
competitiveness of any team or the position of any player.
It had to do with a much longer-term perspective.
Question: On the NFC West division.
PT: Well there too.
I expressed my thoughts this morning and I have expressed it previously. I think this is going to be a very attractive
division. It has in it, the team that won the
Super Bowl two years ago – a team that was extremely competitive last year and might
have been back in the Super Bowl if it hadn’t been for an unfortunate injury to Kurt
Warner’s hand. They have great players
as we all know with Kurt Warner, Marshall Faulk, Isaac Bruce and Orlando Pace. San Francisco came on very strong last year,
Seattle seems well positioned to come on and so does Arizona. The 49ers have been one of the premiere teams for
two decades, St. Louis is a current premiere team and the other two teams are well
positioned to play outstanding football. To
me that is a very attractive division right from the get-go.
Question: On where to start the scheduling rotation.
PT: Well the rotational point on the regular season
schedule we had identified that from the very beginning as an important consideration. Where do you start the rotation of the
non-divisional games and the fact that you could do it in 2002 and 2003 to perpetuate in
the regular season some of the prior divisional rivalries?
The other focus on the preseason really goes back to something that was done
when the league realigned from the NFL and the AFL to the NFC and AFC 30 years ago and
Wellington Mara made the point this morning that the Giants made their two main rivals at
that time, Pittsburgh and Cleveland, and they made the commitment that those teams would
play in the preseason for as long as was necessary. Jerry
Jones made a similar commitment today to Arizona and other teams made similar commitments. The AFC West teams made commitments to Seattle
that they would play Seattle not only on a rotational basis during the regular season, but
during the preseason in a very strong representational way.
Question: On whether or not the rotational schedule will
be announced during these meetings.
PT: No. We
expect to announce that sometime later this summer, but not today. We want to do some further study. (Referring to the rotational schedule)
Question: On the stocking plan.
Question: On whether the stocking plan will be addressed
during this meeting.