Commissioner Paul Taglibue with NFL Publishing’s Tom
Barnidge
(for New York Times advertorial)
July 18, 2001
Please tell me what you think is the most important accomplishment in the NFL now?
The most important accomplishment is the great football on the field. The last two Super Bowls were really strong teams, competitive games, the emergence of good talent – Kurt Warner two years ago and the Ravens’ talent this year. That is a big story and it’s coupled with the extension of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, which keeps in place the system that is producing a competitive allocation of the players. Realignment was an important accomplishment, the growing presence of the NFL on the Internet, the Internet network that we created as a league, the youth football initiatives through the Youth Football Fund, which we jointly created with the Players Association. Those would be some of the major accomplishments that we all take some pride in.
If we were to go back to the Collective Bargaining Agreement…could you give me some details on that? How far that it actually extends?
We’re
hoping to conclude an extension that would take us through the 2006 season with
free agency, the salary cap and the franchise player system. That could give us the foundation for
continuing the agreement for when we have a new television contract in the last
half of this decade. We might take the
Collective Bargaining Agreement right out to the next decade, which would give
us 20 years of labor peace.
I can remember so many years of friction and strikes and threatened strikes. How do you account for this turnaround in attitude?
It is a
couple of things. Number one would be
the system that we developed in 1992-93.
It is continuing the quality and appeal of the game. That in turn gives us overall financial
health, including on television with a large television audiences and new
stadiums. Finally we have recognition
on both sides of the bargaining table that working together is more fruitful
than confrontation and that produces willingness to compromise and not get
stuck in rigid, ideological positions.
I know that you have a number of occasions where you meet with the Commissioners of the other leagues. You must be the envy of the other leagues.
I feel
all the leagues have tremendous strengths.
I’ve always said you’re never as high as people say you are and you’re
never as low as people say you are.
Each sport has its appeal and its seasonality. Certainly, I think everyone recognizes the structure of the NFL
that the owners and Commissioner Rozelle put in place in the early ‘60s with
the pooling of television, the equal sharing of national television revenues,
the sharing of gate receipts. These are
organizational parts of the NFL that work very well. On top of that we’ve added
the good Collective Bargaining Agreement, which supports the game on the field
and other features, such as our league support for financing and construction
of new stadiums. So in some ways, we
are the envy of at least some observers.
I get the impression that your relationship with Gene Upshaw has something to do with this as well. Is that correct?
I hope
so, and I think so. I think Gene feels
that way. We just visited recently for
three days together in Amsterdam where we attended the championship game of the
NFL Europe League and also visited over there with the players and
coaches. We try to do things
together. We try to share information
on what’s going on in the league and have a common understanding of both the
successes and the problems and that enables us to work together well. Of course, our CEC is an important part of
the mix with owners such as Dan Rooney, Wellington Mara, Bob Kraft and Jerry
Jones, and others who work closely with the union.
When you sit down to talk to Gene Upshaw, what kinds of little hurdles come in your way? What are the things that you need to iron out before you can announce another extension?
Usually
it’s a wide range of things. The first
thing you have to do is understand the realities of the revenues and the
costs. In that area, the cost of
building new stadiums has been a challenge for the teams and ownership. The Players Association has recognized that
these new stadiums are very costly and owners and teams are picking up those
costs. They’ve given us support on the
Collective Bargaining Agreement and how we treat those costs.
Years ago, when Ed Garvey was representing the players, the big stumbling block as I remember was always percentage of revenues allocated toward salaries. Is that still a big issue?
It is
because of two reasons. Number one, the
players are getting a very large share of revenue under the current CBA and
every club is obligated to this system and all clubs are driven to spending at
the cap level. Particularly for teams
who are at the middle of the range or low end of the range of team revenues,
this is a very costly system. In the
eyes of some clubs, it’s prohibitively costly.
To make it work, we’ve had to institute revenue sharing to help some of
those lower revenues teams deal with player salary costs. So the percentage of the revenue and the
ability and inability to teams to deal with the costs are certainly a big
issue.
What is that percentage?
It
depends if you’re looking at it on a cash basis or accrual basis and what
particular year you’re looking at – it’s in the mid-60s. So the players are getting roughly
two-thirds of the revenue of the league and the teams are getting roughly one-third. With that they have cover all of their other
operating costs outside the player area.
Let’s turn our attention to realignment for a minute. Were you surprised how quickly and easily it
was approved?
I was a
little bit surprised, but I also felt that we had done a lot of work in
preparing for our May meeting this year where the final decision was made. I
think what looked easy was the result of a long process. It grew from the fact that we created a
package of new arrangements that were good for the fans of all teams and had
something in it for each team.
Specifically, I think the new scheduling formula that involves a
rotation of opponents over a period of years and guarantees that all teams will
play every other team within a short period of years – home and away. This is new feature that is really good for
the fans throughout the league. That
made all the clubs enthusiastic about the overall package. The divisional alignments were sound and we
tried to respect as many rivalries as we could and we also made commitments to
teams that were moving out of their divisions or getting placed in
substantially new divisions, that they would have preseason games with existing
past opponents. Those commitments extend
in some case 10 or 15 years. It was a
total package that was good for the fans and positive for each team. With that, plus a lot of work over a period
of 18 to 24 months, something looked easy that was a product of a lot of hard
work.
I gather that the pooling and sharing of road receipts was pivotal to this, too. How did that idea come to being?
The
sharing of road receipts was very important.
It is something that has been discussed from time to time in the league
for many years. Our working group of
owners on realignment felt that if we could separate the financial issue from
the issue of competitiveness of divisions and maintenance of rivalries, we
could take a long step toward a very sound divisional structure. They proposed that all visiting teams
receive the same dollar distribution and gate receipts for every road
game. This compares to the current
system where there is a fluctuation high and low, depending on where you are
playing an away game. This was adopted
earlier this year by the membership and it paved the way to focus on rivalries,
past and future, as well as geographic proximity, television strengths that
ultimately produced the realignment that we adopted.
I would think in general terms that it’s difficult to get 32 people to agree even on what day to meet, never mind the important issues the owners have. How do you go about doing that?
Fortunately,
our bylaws give the Commissioner the responsibility and authority to designate
the date of meetings so we do get that done with very little controversy! But we do have a committee system in place
and a lot of owner participation on committees. Some of the key committees
include the Labor Management Committee, Broadcasting Committee, and Finance
Committee, Competition Committee and the Stadium Committee. A lot of these committees involve owners’
participation, plus some others. It
gives us a broad consensus when we approach our league meetings and the basis
for decisions in most situations.
What in your mind are the biggest differences operation-wise in the way the league operates now compared to 30 years ago when Pete Rozelle was in office?
I think
it starts with the size and financial scope and complexity of the
business. We are now at 32 teams. We are now perhaps the major attraction on
network television; we’ve extended it to cable and satellite television; we
have many new stadiums under construction. The quality of the game, the success
of the game on the field, the continued appeal of the game and the players to
the public have created a scale of business that is much more complex. The
solutions to different issues are much more complex, such as the Collective
Bargaining Agreement, the salary cap, which is all administered by computer
with an elaborate database. Technology
has made life for all of us in America both simpler and more complicated. But certainly in the area of television the
technological revolution in the last 20 years in cable and satellite, plus the
ongoing digital and Internet revolution, make the business more complicated; it
makes the choices and decision more complicated. You need specialists at all levels, whether it’s salary cap
specialists or technology specialists, medical specialists. In most parts of
our operations, specialization is a key element in getting things done right.
According to several newspaper accounts, this is the second golden era for the NFL. In your own mind, is the NFL in the best condition it’s been in during your tenure?
I hope
so! A lot of people have worked hard to
keep the game strong on the field. That includes the players and the Players
Association. A lot of people at
television networks have been supporters and partners of the NFL and innovators
in terms of NFL television. A lot of
people also includes government officials who have been supportive of partnerships
with the NFL on stadiums and, of course, our fan base. Our fans continue to be the most passionate
and the largest audience in sports. We
have a second golden era and a strong league; the credit goes to a lot of
people.
Of course, you can never be content with where you are, so as you look ahead, what are the biggest challenges you face in the future?
There
is always the challenge of the game on the field. Developing talent. We’re investing in youth football to keep
the game attractive and strong among young people. We have NFL Europe as a vehicle for developing talent and
nurturing the players along and that’s been very successful with players such
as Kurt Warner emerging from NFL Europe to play at the highest level in the
NFL. Overall, I would say the biggest
challenge is fan service. In our stadiums, with our league and team apparel,
with the Internet, and with television.
At every point where we connect to the fans, we want the NFL to be the
best and the fans to feel like they’re getting tremendous value. So far that’s been the case and that
accounts for the size of our following and the passion of our fans. We need to do everything to continue that.
End