Commissioner Tagliabue

Luke Cyphers (NY Daily News) Interview

10/15/01

 Q:  On that date, September 11th, what immediate things did you have to deal with?  What were the first issues that came up?  

 A:  September 11th was pretty much exclusively devoted to the safety and security of our own employees and team employees, and most particularly the missing family members.  We had some employees who had missing family members in the World Trade Center.  We had other employees who had children in school in lower Manhattan.  So virtually all of that day was spent on personal issues involving the safety of employees. 

 Q:  So, for the league and for you, it was a personal tragedy that you had to deal with first?

 A:  Absolutely.  I think it was that way for everyone in New York and around the nation.  We focused immediately on the horrific loss of life and the missing.  And some of the missing thankfully turned out to be a matter of failure of communication and loss of telephone service.  But we focused most on the loss of life.

 Q:  When did you have to start thinking about business issues in the broader scope of the league rather than just is everyone okay?

 A:  At one point on Tuesday afternoon, some of our senior executives and I took about ten or fifteen minutes to set up some conference calls for Wednesday.  I spoke to Gene Upshaw, the head of the Players Association, both about the safety of his employees in Washington, and also to get some sense of what kind of communication he was going to have with his player representatives within the Players Association, and the players generally.  So we took a small amount of time on Tuesday to set up some conference call meetings on Wednesday and Thursday to try to deal with what we knew were going to be business issues, including the playing or not playing of games.

 Q:  Since you made the decision not to play, what other kinds of issues have you had to deal with in this climate, regarding security specifically?  With a new scare coming up pretty much every day, are you guys in touch with federal and city governments, or how does that work?

A:  Security we’re always in touch with -- governments and state and federal and local law enforcement.  So that’s nothing new.  We have normal liaison with both the governments who host our stadiums and state, federal, and local law enforcement agencies.  But since September 11th, I made fan, player and stadium safety and security our number one priority.  We’ve been having a weekly phone conference with all the owners on our priority issues, including security, and I’ve been spending a lot of time on stadium security, both in the short and the long term, and a lot of contingency plans.

Q:  Before September 11th, did you think the league’s venues were possible terrorist targets? How much more of a target do you see them now, or has your assessment changed at all since September 11th?

 A:  I think the whole nations’ assessment has changed.  We had to spend a considerable amount of time throughout the nineties on security, beginning with the Gulf War, and then through the first attack on the Trade Center and the Atlanta Olympics and Oklahoma City and other events.  So we felt that there were threats and we were geared up to deal with them.  But like everybody else, we’re in a state of war now, and we’re looking at a much wider range of threats and I assume with a higher likelihood that they may occur.

Q:  Are you going to be doing some things that make the fans more in charge of their own security?  For instance, the airlines give pointers on what to do if a plane is hijacked.  Is there any thought among the league to give the fans flyers on evacuation procedures or anything like that that hadn’t been done before?

 A:  The fans have a lot more information now about what’s expected of them, and what they should expect to bring into stadiums and what not to bring, and how early they should expect to arrive at the game, and where they should be expecting to park and not permitted to park.  So there’s been a lot of communication with fans, with players, with everyone in the league.

 Q:  Are there some specific things you’re doing now, besides the obvious ones at the gates and with parking, that you’re also implementing this year or since that time?  Specifically, are there announcements in the stadium about “here’s what you do in case of . . .”?  Basically a fire drill or safety announcement?

 A:  My role is not to write announcements to be made in stadiums or figure out what announcements are being made in which stadiums.  My role as I see it is to make sure that all of our senior executives are focused and spending significant amounts of their time on security and safety planning issues, that league-wide we have the right senior executive attention to safety and security.  I created a task force of team security directors and stadium security directors, which is chaired by our director of security, and includes seven team or stadium representatives, top people with long experience in security matters, including former director of the secret service, who’s the security director for the Cleveland Browns and Cleveland’s stadium, Lew Merletti. 

 Q:  And this is a new task force?

 A:  Yes.  So at one level, my role is to make sure we have all of our priorities straight and we’re devoting our own executive resources, both at the league and the team level.  The second thing is to make sure that we’re bringing in outside specialists who are world-class in their areas of security.  A third thing is to make certain that the owners understand that this is a priority and that they’re prepared to invest resources in security and infrastructure in a significant way to achieve our goals.  The fourth major area would be to set policies and priorities and then to apply all of the internal executive talent and the external resources, in terms of specialists and money, to implement those policies.  That’s basically the framework that I look at.

 Q:  The Super Bowl is obviously a model for you guys because you’ve done such an intensive job with security for at least the last decade.  Is it safe to say that there’s that kind of level of security going on now at all your venues every Sunday, or are you approaching it?

 A:  The fundamental thing I’m doing is not focusing just on Sundays.  I’ve told my people that we need to have world-class security standards seven days a week, 24 hours a day.  Sunday is three hours of that seven-day-a-week, 24-hour-a-day program, so that’s the way we’re approaching it.

  Q:  It has come up with the World Cup that there is an insurance issue -- that they won’t insure the World Cup.  Do you have any insurance issues?

 A:  We have a task force working on insurance issues with several of our senior executives, including our general counsel, our executive vice president for business operations, Roger Goodell, our CFO, plus outside specialists and outside counsel.  We’ve got a whole task force working on insurance issues.

 Q:  On the patriotism front, what has been your reaction to this outpouring at the venues?

 A:  It reflects a deep-seated need for people to connect to each other and for people to share their emotions and their pain and their support for each other.  I think it’s a very deep-seated part of human nature.  And sports have always involved a huge element of community -- people coming together around the competition without regard to position in life or economic status or race.  There’s always been that bonding and binding element of community in sports, certainly in the NFL.  And at a time like this, I think it’s reinforced.  It’s both community and it’s a way of saying “I’m with you,” and “we’re in this together,” and “we understand how you feel,” and “you understand how I feel.”  So that’s what it’s all about -- human nature.

 Q:  What was it like, for instance, in Kansas City, that first weekend, and seeing that outpouring of non-New Yorkers for New York teams?

 A:  It was tremendous and it was what I anticipated knowing the fans from Kansas City and knowing the people there.  And knowing how the nation had responded to the attacks on the Trade Center and the Pentagon and the plane going down in Pittsburgh.  So I assumed that it would be viewed by the fans as a symbolic sharing on the part of mid-America, the heartland -- sharing some of the pain and burden of the biggest city in America.  And it was just a great outpouring, both by the leadership there and by the fans themselves in terms of the money they contributed, plus the way they cheered the Giants team when they took the field.

 Q:  Speaking of the money, you guys quickly, along with the players, put up $10 million.  Is any of that starting to get to the ground yet?

 A:  We’ve made a number of decisions on specific grants, including the $500,000 that we gave to the police and fire foundation a couple of weeks ago.

  Q:  The other thing is, you have had, I don’t think I’m exaggerating, a far larger profile than any other sports commissioner, and I think that’s partly because you’re right at the start of your season.  I notice you’ve been in Dearborn talking to kids.  Why did you see it fit to have such a great number of appearances in public?

 A:  I don’t think I’ve had any more than I normally do.  I’ve met with different kinds of groups, but I go to a game every weekend and I usually make public appearances at every game.

Q:  Is it just that we’re paying more attention?

 A:  No, I think it has to do with the need for more visible leadership.  People in the private sector have a responsibility to lead in a circumstance like this, and to set an agenda for the private sector that supports the goals of the nation and the goals of the elected officials in the public sector.  You have to get out and lead in every way you possibly can, both with the mood of the nation, the self-confidence of the people, and the financial wherewithal of the communities to get done what they need to get done to meet new challenges.  And that’s what we’ve all been doing.

 Q:  What are you telling people in the private sector and what are they telling you about basically getting through what everybody expects to be rocky times in the next year or so?

 A:  Basically I’ve been telling them that predictions about the future are useless, and no one knows what the future holds.  But I think we can assume that, over the long term, the American economy will be very robust and strong.  And there will be some different shocks and ups and downs in the economy that were not anticipated prior to September 11th. But the U.S. economy in the last 60 years has been pretty resilient, and it’s extremely broad-based, and all of the fundamentals are pretty solid.  I think most economists feel that the fundamentals today are much more solid than they were in the early nineties when we were engaged in Kuwait.  If you look back at economic trends, as well as some of those trends that affect our business, like advertising, you see that there are some pretty cyclical trends and they tend to be driven by fundamentals more than by specific episodes or activities.  Obviously there will be some shifting of investment in terms of transportation and potentially the power and security and other sectors.  But long-term, I think we can assume that the economic outlook for the nation is solid. Short-term, it’s going to be very difficult.

Q:  And you would echo that in terms of sports?  The economy of sports is going to be reflective of that -- of tough short-term goals?

 A:  In some areas, we’re insulated.  We have long-term TV contracts that go out through 2005.  At the same time, our network partners will be having a difficult financial time so we may have to deal with that.  Our overall structure with the Players Association through the Collective Bargaining Agreement takes accounts of ups and downs because it’s geared to revenues going up and down.  Basically we have a structure that anticipates ups and downs, including some severe swings up and down.  So structurally we’re in a pretty sound position.  We have relatively small amounts of debt on our teams.  Overall we’re not a highly leveraged business, so we’re pretty well positioned.

 Q:  And some of the things that people talk about in other sports with problems with sponsorship and marketing partnerships and even suite leases and deals like that -- are you guys a little better positioned than other leagues?  Or how tough is that going to potentially bite you?

 A:  Sponsorships are a tiny fraction of our total revenue.  If we have $4 billion in revenue league-wide, sponsorship might represent a $100 million, so it’s a small number to begin with.  If it gets smaller, it will be significant but it’s not going to be traumatic.   There are some areas which are holding up very well.  Our consumer products business seems to have a pretty good outlook, considering everything that’s going on.  We’ve had very strong sales to retailers.  And there are other areas of the economy that are experiencing the same things.  What I’m hearing from the automobile industry is that October may be a pretty robust month.  So I don’t think we should be unduly influenced by the fact that the travel industry and the tourism sector is inordinately hit.  I think it’s premature to make judgments about some of the other areas.

 Q:  Are you taking any specific steps to deal with the short-term turmoil that everybody has already faced?  And what are you planning down the road economically?

 A:  We’re looking at keeping close track of what’s going on with network TV.  We’ll be talking to our network partners trying to understand the dimensions of the impact on them. 

 Q:  Have you had to do any cost cutting league-wide?

 A:  We were in a very cost-conscious environment before September 11th with the economy slowing, with the dot-com bubble having been eliminated.  So we always pay close attention to our operating expenses.  And we’re continuing to do that.  The main thing we’re doing is investing additional resources in our own headquarters facility here.  We’re investing additional resources and supporting our employees as they try to get back to a normal stride in their lives, and we’re investing additional resources in security.  It’s more a process of investment and priorities than it is a process of cost cutting.

 Q:  With the whole West under attack, have you given thought yet to any security or economic concerns regarding NFL Europe?

 A:  Yes, we’ve spent a lot of time on that.

 Q:  Is there going to be a season next spring?

 A:  Yes.  I think our general philosophy, which I spelled out to the owners, is that we’re going to do a lot of things differently.  We’re not scaling back our goals in any areas.  We’re re-stating our goals.  We are continuing to be number one and the best at everything we do.  And that means doing things very differently, but not with less commitment, less enthusiasm, or with any lowered set of expectations.

 Q:  Can you give an example of that?

 A:  Super Bowl would be one example.  We have told our people and our owners that we’re going to be doing a lot of things differently in connection with the Super Bowl.  But we still expect it to be the number one sporting event in America, as it always has been, and a great experience for the fans, for the whole community.   We’re not scaling back our expectations for the quality of the weekend.  We will be doing a lot of things differently, including capturing the spirit of the nation and the positive and optimistic strength that’s out there in America’s people, but it will certainly not be business as usual.

 Q:  How close was New York to getting the Super Bowl?

 A:  We had commitments to New Orleans which were long-standing contractual commitments.  We had hundreds of contracts with people in New Orleans.  Everyone understood that.  We had that obligation to try to honor those commitments in New Orleans, which is what we did.   Because we had to honor those contracts, we couldn’t consider playing in New York. 

 Q:  What’s the role of the league in these times and how maybe has it changed since September 11th, in terms of the role of the NFL in society?

 A:  In one sense I don’t think it’s changed because our basic appeal has always been centered on community and competition and excellence and that piece of human nature which pursues excellence and wants to compete at the highest level.  That’s what sports are about.  That’s what NFL football is about.  I think you add a major element to that, at least for some fans and non-fans. We are kind of a keeper of the nations’ mood or a barometer of the nations’ mood.  So I think we have an obligation to strike a balance between recognizing the loss of life that society has experienced and the risks that our society faces on the one hand, and being positive and self-confident and resilient on the other.  That’s a new challenge, and that’s why we’re working 20 hours a day, 7 days a week.