Good afternoon. I managed to see a few of you last night over in the stadium, but I’m sorry to have missed yesterday. We had a long day and I ended up meeting with a number of the head coaches late yesterday to talk a about the early retirement plan for the assistant coaches and coordinators that was adopted yesterday. I can just recap from my perspective the key things that might be of interest to you and your readers or viewers.

First and foremost was the scheduling formula, which includes the question of the number of teams in the post-season and the possibility of seeding the post-season in some way that would be different than the way it’s been structured in the past. We took that up first because in many ways it’s the most important long-term thing relative to the game that we have under consideration.

Harold yesterday talked to you about some of the player conduct subjects that he reviewed with the membership and with some of the club people earlier in the meeting. We continued our policy of the league supporting the construction of new stadiums. We spent some time both yesterday and today talking about the Detroit stadium and the Seattle stadium and the prospect of a Super Bowl in a new stadium in downtown Detroit. We approved the league’s support for those two stadiums today.

We spent quite a bit of time yesterday on the Internet and how we’re implementing the Internet network that was approved at the March meeting. There are a lot of issues there. We had a special meeting early this morning at 7:30 with the club people to talk about getting all of that done, and we're having another meeting on the Internet in June. It’s just going to take a lot of work. NFL Films yesterday gave a great presentation, as you might expect, in terms of how they’re going to put video and highlights and a lot of other fan-friendly interactive type features into NFL.com for the coming season, as well as on the team websites, which is a major new initiative for them. Steve Sabol showed his normal innovation in a very good way: streaming video live from somewhere else in the hotel to show people how you can stream video on the Internet.

We had Don Ohlmeyer come in. Don and I had spoken on a number of occasions about Monday Night Football. I invited him and Howard Katz, the president of ABC Sports, to talk about Don’s vision of television, how it’s changed in the last 10, 15, 20 years with the multiplication of channels, the proliferation of cable, and now satellite and the Internet, and what that means in terms of viewer interest in sports. I think that was very well received; a number of owners said it was good to get an outside perspective.

Those were pretty much the highlights of the meeting, at least as far as I am concerned. We talked at the end today about the Super Bowl planning process, the prospect of having a Super Bowl in Houston in January 2004. We’re looking at Detroit with all likelihood being January of 2006, and then for the 2005 Super Bowl we’ll be making presentations this fall. The candidate cities would be Atlanta, Miami, Oakland, and Jacksonville.

Q: In regards to scheduling, what consensus do you see emerging?

PT: There’s a pretty clear consensus emerging around two points. One is the so-called common opponents scheduling formula where 14 of the games—you have either divisional games and then you have the teams playing common opponents for most of the schedule with the exception of two games at the end. There were a number of other plans that were discussed earlier but I think everybody is taking it as a given that the scheduling formula that Dennis Lewin outlined, which the Competition Committee supports unanimously, would be the basic formula. There’s an issue there as to how those two remaining games would be scheduled. It would be on some weighted basis. I think the likelihood is that we’ll end up with ones playing ones, twos playing two, threes and threes, fours and fours, and so on. But that’s still something that people want to discuss.

The second thing is there’s a pretty good consensus around the idea of adding two teams to the playoffs and keeping the playoffs at the three weeks leading to the Super Bowl and adding two games on the first week, which is what you have to do to accommodate two additional teams in the playoff. I think linked to that is another important footnote, which is the question I mentioned of seeding. We showed some examples of how the match-ups would have differed if we had a seeding formula, where the teams would be seeded in terms of match-ups in the playoffs according to their won-lost record rather than whether they were a divisional winner or a wild-card team. I think there’s a lot of interest in that. The most significant change in that concept last year would have been that Tennessee would have had a bye. If you went to 14 teams and had a seeding formula for the match-ups, Tennessee would have had a bye in the first week when they didn’t have a bye before because they were a wild card with a very strong record but not a divisional winner. And seeding in turn affects home field advantage. It affects both the location of the games, byes, and who your opponent is. That would be a significant innovation. The seeding in turn would have an impact on the regular season. If you just give home field advantage to division winners on some basis, then the team that’s in a comfortable lead in its division has less of an incentive in the last week of the season to go all out. Whereas if they could lose the home field advantage even if they were the division winner, under a seeding formula, then the last game becomes a critical game. You have to play the whole sixteen games all out. That was a linkage there.

Q: Under that plan, the first team with the best record in each conference would get a bye? Two would play seven, three-six, and four-five?

PT: There were a lot of different formulas discussed along those lines. I think that’s the basic concept.

Q: If you play three games in each conference on a Wild Card weekend, then only one team would get a bye.

PT: One in each conference. Correct. The basic concept is as you outlined.

Q: And then you just have to figure out whether you keep the current playoff match-up formula or if you go to the seeding plan. To figure out who is two through seven.

PT: Yes. And there were different kinds of seeding concepts: seeding after the first week, seeding before the first week. And Bill Polian and others who had given a lot of thought to that within the Competition Committee. They spent some time discussing the different alternatives. But we didn’t get any resolution or consensus on that. Just the fact that we were discussing seeding was an important development.

Q: Where do things stand with realignment?

PT: We didn’t discuss realignment at all, and I haven’t really given a lot of thought to it. We used some hypothetical alignments for purposes of these scheduling discussions. Right now, as I’ve said before, the likelihood is that we’ll get a plan approved of some type, and the scheduling formula will be an important part of clubs understanding how important or how unimportant a particular divisional alignment is. There will be a real rotation of opponents. I think you play every team in your own conference every three years and every team in the other conference every four years. It’s a far cry from the current formula. I think Lamar Hunt pointed out that the Kansas City Chiefs played the Philadelphia Eagles once in 39 years under the current scheduling formula; 29 years, I guess, going back to 1971.

Q: Does it bother you in any way that this league discussion of regional games, for instance the Jets-Giants who now play once every three years, will play once every four years. There can’t be some accommodations for teams that want to play those regional rivalries games, or does it look like that’s not going to work out?

PT: Do the Jets-Giants play once every three years? Sometimes yes sometimes no? It doesn’t bother me, with respect to those last two games. As I said, I think it’s an important thing if you match the ones against the ones on some basis because that’s what has given us over the years the Dallas-San Francisco cross-division match-ups, the San Francisco-Green Bay match-ups. I think addressing it in that way with respect to those two games you get a lot of very big match-ups, of traditional rivals and of strong teams, both for the fans in the stadiums and for television.

Q: Is there a priority for the league to realign to keep the traditional rivalries?

PT: I think you would want to make sure you don’t unnecessarily upset traditional rivalries, but again, I really haven’t focused on that. We’ve spent a lot of time on the scheduling formula and

PT: Yes, basically that’s it. There’s no salary cap issue, there’s no cap circumvention issue. All of the contracts have to be funded. Basically some deferred obligations to players have to be funded. Some other types of contingent commitments don’t have to be funded.

Q: What’s the difference between them?

PT: You really would have to ask someone else. It gets into an area of mechanics that Management Council administers. But the basic concept was that whenever there is a deferred obligation it should be funded so that the players are assured that the money is there and it gets paid and you don’t have unfunded mandates and unfunded obligations, which create the illusion that people have money when they don’t really have it. But all of the contracts were properly accounted for under the salary cap. There’s no issue of cap count or of cap circumvention as to the Broncos. But they didn’t fund when they should have funded. I had a hearing earlier this year and we determined that the kind of contracts they had needed to be funded and were being funded by other teams, same types of contracts. Now I have to figure out what the penalty is for that type of non-funding violation. It’s a feature of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Q: Could there be some penalty on the Broncos?

PT: I would think so. It’s a violation of an obligation of a team under the Collective Bargaining Agreement and we have to figure out what’s appropriate. There’s no issue of cap circumvention or cap counting.

Q: Al Davis today accused the Broncos of violating the cap. I assume that this is what he meant. You’re saying that other than this there is no current investigation of the Denver Broncos for salary cap violation.

PT: Correct. As I said, there is no issue of cap count or cap circumvention. Everything was properly counted in the proper years. Basically it involves proration of signing bonuses into some future years, and/or obligations to players which were properly contracted for and properly accounted for under the cap.

Q: Are you close to a resolution for the 49ers and Brett Jones’ contract?

PT: I think some progress is being made by Harold Henderson and Gene Upshaw. They’re the ones who have been dealing with it. The Pittsburgh thing was resolved, and I think they’re making some progress on the 49ers case. It’s kind of a four-cornered hat. There’s some issues with some individual team employees, teams, as well as agents as well as what are the rules for the future. They’re really negotiating on four different points, trying to put together a package that resolves the past in a fair way and also clarifies and strengthens the ground-rules for the future.

Q: How soon do you think it will be?

PT: I couldn’t venture a guess, but I know they are working on all of those aspects.

Q: Do you have any idea when?

PT: I would think fairly soon.

Q: The issue of player conduct was talked about. What can you say about that? How closely personally are you following the Ray Lewis trial?

PT: I’ve been so busy here, frankly I haven’t had a chance to read too many newspapers other than Lenny’s article about scheduling and a few other items on players who had signed or had been released, things like that. Obviously, we’re interested in it but it’s in front of a jury now in court. I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to comment on it other than to say we’re obviously very interested in the outcome.

Q: What about the discussions that took place here regarding player conduct?

PT: I think it was more in the nature of a report. We had quite a few discussions, as you know, at the March meeting. We had some additional discussions with a number of people including Harry Edwards, who has been involved in these issues for many years with the 49ers. We had those discussions in New York several weeks ago. I think Harold pretty well summarized what are policies will be. I supplemented Harold’s report with a couple of observations. One is something that he said I underscored, which is that these issues have to be addressed principally up close at the team level. It’s hard to sit in New York and think that you can have a significant impact on what’s going on in 31 different teams, other than by having good policies. But I think the coaches and the teams and the owners are all now focused on the fact that they have to have good policies at the team level.

Second thing I emphasized was that we had to be smart. We had to be street smart, but we shouldn't overreact. We have good policies in place, but no matter how good your policies are you’re going to have individual issues that arise. You just have to be smart and street smart, understand why people are having the issues they’re having, and try to deal with them realistically and take account of what is going on in a player’s life or understand the context of what’s going on. And it’s not unique to the NFL. Most of us in New York, or in the Northeast, have been reading about the incident involving the Providence College basketball players. We are all in sports dealing with some of these issues.

The third thing I emphasized was that there would be suspensions in the appropriate circumstances for off-field misconduct. We had the suspensions of Jumbo Elliot and O’Dwyer and Denard Walker, and again, we’re not going to overreact and reach out and escalate things. But we’re also going to make it clear that players understand that they can forfeit their right to play if they engage in off-field misconduct.

Q: Also along those same lines, could you envision a scenario where the league—if Ray Lewis is exonerated—could take action against him? A suspension of some sort?

PT: There again, I think with the case being in front of a jury it’s really not the right time for me to comment.

Q: Could you explain the assistant coach benefit changes?

PT: Under our retirement plan for coaches, which is kind of a traditional format, if a coach wanted to take early retirement he could, but then the monthly benefit, or the annual benefit, however you want to view it, would be reduced because of two factors. Number one, you’re getting the money earlier. And number two, you’re getting a pension payment for a longer period of years if you take it when you’re 60 rather than you’re 65, just as an example. The action yesterday limited that discount or that deduct feature. If a coach wants to retire early now, there’s a mechanism in place to ensure that he would receive at the early retirement age the same thing he would have received if he had waited until age 65.

Q: Johnny Unitas is now one of the many Hall of Famers who is trying to get something going to get some more money for some of the older players on the retirement plan. He said there’s a surplus of money in the retirement plan. Do you know what the league’s position, or the league’s power, to get some of this supposed surplus money to the players?

PT: I know two things about it. Number one is a lot of confusion and misinformation as to the facts. And number two there are provisions of the pension plan which have been made retroactive. I think Gene Upshaw has done a terrific leadership job in making sure that every time we negotiate on the pension plan, he works hard to secure retroactive benefits for retired players. That’s been done on a number of occasions. Players have been receiving benefits when they’re entitled to get them. There’s a retirement board that passes on individual cases, on both retirement and disability, and they handle those matters under the terms that have been collectively bargained. The key thing I would emphasize is that Gene has done a very good job as a former player and as someone who is sensitive to the needs and the interests of the people who have built the game in making pension improvements retroactive.

Q: What is the misinformation that you said is out there? Is there something that’s incorrect about the surplus that all the players feel like there’s money there to give to them?

PT: What I know is that I have received letters from older players, or representatives of older players, and then when I looked into the facts, most of the information in the letters was wrong. So that’s misinformation.

Q: Is there any desire in the NFL to do anything? I know I’ve spoken to a number of the older players who find the plan unsatisfactory. Do they go through the players union as older players or do they go through the NFL? What would the process be?

PT: As I said the Players Association and our Management Council have been very generous in going back and improving pension plans for retired players. In addition, we’ve done some special programs of our own through the league. We have a committee we recently set up. Wellington Mara and Jerry Richardson are on the committee where as a league we are unilaterally entertaining applications from retired players who can show special need and we are making payments to players in that category. In addition, the Players Association has that type of a unilateral program of it’s own, and we contribute to that through NFL Charities. So there are two supplemental programs dedicated to older players, retired players, in addition to the pension plan.

Q: Without referring to any one case, can you envision a scenario where a player is not convicted of a crime but is punished by the league for off-field behavior?

PT: That’s a little hard to envision…I can’t think of every conceivable scenario.

Q: On the question of off-field behavior, will the league want to occasionally consult with individual clubs to discuss policies and programs?

PT: We already do that. You’d have to talk to Harold, but we already have meetings on a conference-wide basis or a league-wide basis of the people involved in Player Programs at the team level that would be meeting with Harold Henderson and Lem Burnham and others to talk about best practices, to talk about the types of people you might want to hire to play that role of Player Program manager. I’ve met a number of these people myself. Carl Banks is one and a lot of people are holding Carl out as an example of a former player who is really doing an excellent job in that area for the Jets. Leo Lewis and some other former players are also doing a great job. So I think those meetings already occur.

Q: For the early retirement for the assistant coaches, are there any issues in regard to assistant coaches that their group proposed in the meeting that you are considering? I know one of the things was uniform health coverage from club to club.

PT: That was done last year at the May meeting. We made some changes and some improvements in the health coverage, some portability features where health care gets carried from one team to another to cover the gap when you’re between teams, if you’re out of a job, and also to cover what’s called medi-gap, which is the gap before you qualify for Medicare. All of those improvements were made a year ago and the retirement improvements were made now. I think from the standpoint of what has been done on a league wide, collective basis, the owners feel that it’s pretty well completed.

Q: Why did you appoint the four-man committee of owners to look at the way the league is run?

PT: I talked to Ralph Wilson about it yesterday and again today, and I think my focus with Ralph was some of the things in his resolution which talked about the fact that the league has been extremely successful with traditional media and now we have to deal with new media. The league has been extremely successful with stadium construction. Now we have to look at other challenges down the road and how do we structure our business organization, and things like that. We talked about if he might want to participate in the NFL Properties committee and the NFL Enterprises committee, which is working on Internet and new media matters. We’re looking at new business models in a number of areas: retailing, e-commerce, and so on. He said he didn’t think he wanted to do that on an on-going basis. Then we talked about the idea of a committee that would be the two conference presidents—Wellington Mara and Lamar Hunt—which I had suggested back in March, plus Al Lerner and Ralph just to figure out whether there are issues to talk to other clubs about, and then to make a report at the October meeting.

Q: He was talking about the lack of communication with the clubs. Do you feel that’s the case and if so, why is that happening?

PT: I don’t feel it’s the case, and I don’t think it’s a widely shared point of view. If any owners feel that way, then it’s something we should respond to. I know Ralph has some feelings on that, but I don’t think it’s very widely shared. I think that information flow in some cases is so massive that there’s a lack of comprehension, not a lack of information.

Q: On the player conduct issue, it seems that the basis for a lot problems that the players get into, it happened both with Rae Carruth and Ray Lewis, is that friends from their past, friends from their backgrounds create. I wonder what if anything—it seems like you’re almost powerless to do anything about guys who come around who somebody hasn’t seen in a few years but they feel a debt in some way because they grew up with these guys, and these guys become bad influences. Is there anything at all tangible that you can do about these situations?

PT: I think so. Again, I don’t want to talk about Ray Lewis or Rae Carruth. When we discussed this with the teams and the coaches back in March, and also at the Combine in February, a number of coaches and number of team representatives brought up examples where a good security person within the club, a full-time security person, working effectively with local law enforcement had been able to avoid problems in advance. One team gave me an example where an old friend of a player, quote unquote, an old friend, had offered to help the player by driving the player to the airport whenever they had a road game, and then pick the player up when the team plane got back from a road trip. And then law enforcement discovered that the player’s car was video-taped by law enforcement authorities as part of a ring where there was inter-state trafficking of drugs. Well, they knew it wasn’t the player because the player was out of town. It turned out it was the player’s old friend using the player’s car when the player was away on road trips. They worked with law enforcement and they arrested the person. I think there are things that you can do when you have so-called old friends who are trying to capitalize improperly on a relationship if you have good security and if you have good relationships with local law enforcement, which is one of the reasons why Harold yesterday talked about every team having a full-time security person. A lot of the players have emphasized the importance of a good security person, too, as a source of information, as someone who may be an ex-detective with the local police department in the area where the team’s headquarters is located in. I think the Jets players feel that they get good security assistance in the Long Island area. Many players say that before you do something, before you go some place, before you make an appearance check with the security guy and you’ll avoid a lot of problems. Don’t take the word of old friends; talk to the security person. That’s just one example of the type of person you could have on staff and the type of incident that could be interdicted and avoided. I thought it was pretty dramatic, and other clubs said they have long lists of similar types of things where people were trying to take advantage of players and it was pre-empted.

Q: How much money was approved for the Seattle and Detroit stadiums?

PT: In terms of the league piece, I think it was about $50 million roughly in Seattle and about $100 million in Detroit.

Q: Do you know how much it is total for other stadium projects?

PT: The program goes back to Joe Robbie Stadium in 1987, so I can’t give you a complete answer. In terms of the policy we expanded last March, it would probably be about close to $500 million.

Q: Did you review Unitas’s case?

PT: I haven’t reviewed any cases. I’ve had people write to me about cases, and I’ve had people who do the reviewing give me the facts. My recollection was that there was some sort of retirement board application that considered John Unitas and made some decisions. I don’t recall what the decisions were, but I do think it was considered by the retirement board.

Q: Any feelings on Daniel Snyder’s decision to charge fans to see training camp? Is this something that you can see down the line as the future across the league?

PT: I don’t think it’s new. I think you already have some of that depending on the circumstances. I know I’ve been in Wisconsin where people have charged admission to scrimmages and in some cases the proceeds go to charity and in some cases they go to off-set costs. It’s almost like a crowd-control factor where you charge a minimal price so the people who come are serious about coming and well-behaved rather than anybody coming and you lose control of the crowd. I think it’s going to vary from area to area and it will also depend on what kind of investment people make in youth experiences and football-related entertainment for kids, NFL Experience-type things. I think there will be a number of variables. I know in Wisconsin teams have certainly charged for scrimmages and things like that.

Q: What is the difference between a scrimmage and general practice?

PT: Again, it depends on what they’re doing, when they’re doing it, what other opportunities there are to have fun, and things like that.

Q: Isn’t it bad enough to charge full price for pre-season games and with ticket prices are rising, and something that’s traditionally been free for fans to access, it doesn’t seem like it’s the best PR.

PT: Traditionally, very few fans went to training camps. Traditionally, very few fans went to practices. It’s a relatively new development. I think Dallas is one who took the lead and opened up their training camp down there at St. Thomas College and not only opening it up to fans but giving fan services. The Jets have started in New York. I remember six or eight years ago you could go to a Jets practice and there would be virtually no fans there. Three years ago you might find 1,000 or 1,500. Then they added, with support from Citibank and support from other sponsors, an NFL Experience and rides and races for kids. They added football tossing contests, and now they have 5 or 6,000 people there. The Eagles did the same type of thing. So I think it’s a relatively new experience. I know the Lions did it for the first time a few years ago and about 10,000 people were out there. Previously they had considered training camp to be like boot camp. I think the fact that you have fans going to practice is a very positive development and an added element of contact with the game. I think the question of whether it’s fair or unfair is going to be determined by the fans. If they think it’s fair, they’ll come. If they think it’s unfair, they won’t come.

Q: Are you worried at all about what happened with the Redskins? Is the NFL worried about the reputation of a team and an owner when something like that happens?

PT: I think Dan Snyder has done one extremely good job with the Washington Redskins and I think even the Washington Post has come around on that. Most of the Redskins fans I’ve talked to think Dan Snyder is doing a terrific job in running the Washington Redskins and they are very comfortable with their ownership, as well as their coach, as well as their draft picks.

Q: Will you go over the structure of the league right now? With Austrian gone, is Goodell on the same level as two or three other people?

PT: I think it’s a lot simpler than at any time in the last ten or twelve years. There’s the Commissioner, then you have four individuals, or groups of individuals, reporting directly to the Commissioner. One is Harold Henderson, Management Council; another is George Young, Football; a third is Roger Goodell, who is running all of our non-media businesses basically; and the fourth is Tom Spock, who is running all of our new media, Internet, and technology-based businesses. We have a headquarters staff group of people who have league-wide responsibilities, which includes Joe, includes Greg, includes Jeff Pash, who is our chief attorney, and includes our chief financial officer, which is right now being shared by Joe Siclare and Ralph Carras. Basically, other than headquarters functions, league wide staff functions, which includes PR, finance, and legal, we've got four people reporting directly to me, which includes Management Council, George Young, Tom Spock, and Roger Goodell. And everybody else is working as a team within that framework. I think it’s a real good, simplified structure with a lot of young, good executives on the team, which is what we tried to accomplish.

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