Commissioner Tagliabue

Press Conference

League Meeting, Pittsburgh

October 30, 2001

  

On network television deals . . .

 The TV discussion was a four-year look back. We’re at the midpoint of an eight-year deal. We feel it has worked fine in the first four years.  The last four years was the strongest market in advertising since WWII.  So from that perspective, advertising generally, and television advertising, specifically, have been through a boom market.  Obviously right now the networks are in a difficult time because they have the additional costs of covering news.  They’ve had to pre-empt a lot of programming, and the terrorist acts and the environment subsequent to that have made the advertising downturn even more extreme than it was.  So we’ve looked ahead on different assumptions and know what the rights and obligations of the networks are to us, but we didn’t reach any conclusions.  We’re not going to react one way or the other based on two months of experience and that’s basically what we have, September and October.

 On the CBA extension . . .

 We still have one or two issues, or maybe three or four issues, to work through with the Players Association, but we had a very thorough presentation today on the CBA extension.  I think there’s a lot of support for it, subject to getting these one to four remaining issues resolved, most of which focus on where we’re going to be in 2006, which will be the last cap year.  We deal with the cap in that year depending on certain television events and realities.  How do we deal under this system with the considerable additional expenses which the teams are going to have and the league is going to have in terms of security, which we balance for the benefit of everybody?  We think the cost should be split with the Players Association under the Collective Bargaining Agreement.  The owners are the junior partners in the deal when it comes to revenue splitting. 

 On the cost of additional security for the league and the teams . . .

 We don’t have a projection. We’re working on that on a daily and weekly basis.  I’m sure there’s been a lot of additional spending, and there will be a considerable amount more, especially as we approach the postseason.

 On the Texans expansion deal versus the Browns . . .

 It matters what fans will think around the league if we sweetened the deal.  Cleveland’s 4-2 and just beat the Super Bowl champs.  It’s a little hard at this point to see why it should be changed, other than perhaps the change in the scheduling formula.  But we’re going to discuss all of those issues.  What I heard from quite a few people in Cleveland recently was that if we changed the plan for Houston, will we go back and change the plan for Cleveland? And right now Cleveland’s doing pretty good.

 On the Arena Football League . . .

 This is just a preliminary discussion.  This is about the first time I’ve spent any hours on the Arena Football League.  A lot of owners are spending time on it for the first time.  And I suspect there’s more work to be done in the next two months than has been done in the last two years.

 On Super Bowl XXXVI security . . .

 We’re going to address Super Bowl security tomorrow, and more broadly, we’re going to address the Super Bowl tomorrow.  Both the restructuring of the weekend, the plans we have for making it a different but still the premier event in sports and entertainment, and one part of that discussion would be security.  We touched a little bit on some Super

Bowl security today, but tomorrow we’ll discuss all aspects of Super Bowl planning.  I’m going to be in New Orleans this Sunday for meetings and I’m going to go to the Jets/Saints game Sunday night and then we’re going to have meetings again on Monday in New Orleans.

 On the differences between Super Bowl XXXVI and Super Bowl XXXV security . . .

 I think we’re in a very different situation today than the Tampa Super Bowl, so we have been doing a lot more advance planning. 

 On improvements to ALLTEL Stadium . . .

 We discussed the plan yesterday and generally there was a very positive reaction to it.  We’re going to discuss it again with the membership.  We discussed it with two committees yesterday, which involved ten or twelve owners and club presidents and generally it was thought to be an innovative and positive way of helping make some improvements to ALLTEL Stadium.