August 17, 1999

NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue attended this morning's practice at the New York Jets training camp at Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY. He met with reporters covering the team and addressed their questions.

Q: What's happening with the sale of the Jets, and is there anything that you can let us know?

PT: There's not much that I can report on. I'm going to try to get an up-date this week when I meet with John Hess and get a status report of where they are.

Q: Are there any specific things that they would like to see out of the new owner of this team?

PT: With this team, and with other teams, you're looking for someone with a vision of the future who is looking long-term….someone coming in for the long-term with a vision for what the Jets could be in New York and for New York sports fans. I think that's the key thing, someone with energy who can recognize what potential impact this whole NY area could be for the New York Jets. And you'd want someone who has the same qualities that Mr. Hess had and people like Sonny Werblin had and that Wellington Mara and Bob Tisch have. The NFL in New York has had mighty few owners in 80 years of NFL football, but they have all been strong league people and have known the importance of the league. The owners have recognized the importance of doing well in every city, doing well in Buffalo, Green Bay and Kansas City, as well as in New York, Chicago and some of the big markets. So someone that has the same values and long-term vision is what you'd like to see.

Q: Do you have a feeling on a separate stadium for the Jets?

PT: Leon Hess talked to me about that early this spring. In fact, we had a meeting of the Broadcast Committee and we were talking about the Internet and future technology. Leon told me that he was going to have to leave at the lunch break because he was going down to talk to Mayor Guiliani about the possibility of a stadium on the West Side. It came out later in the newspapers that he had those discussions with the Mayor, and obviously, anytime you can get a new stadium and one that would be really convenient to Jets' fans and a facility for the Jets, it would be attractive. But you also have to be realistic and know that it's going to be, in all likelihood, a part of something bigger like a convention complex or some other multi-purpose complex.

Q: Can you talk for a second on the timetable for a league decision on the Jumbo Elliott situation or the league monitoring of that?

PT: I don't know what the timetable would be. Anytime a player like Jumbo Elliott and the other players get involved in these types of allegations, you are disappointed because you don't want that type of allegation made about a player. From a coaching standpoint, you don't want those kinds of distractions as you get closer to the season. A lot of it, at this stage, seems to depend on how the civil authorities will deal with it, and then our timetable would have to kick in after that.

Q: Is this under the Violent Crime Policy?

PT: All of the policies that we have, and obviously we have been dealing with some other players in recent weeks. I met with Lawrence Phillips a few weeks ago and talked about his situation and the fact that he had done a heck of a job in NFL Europe. But all our policies have their own timeline and in this situation we have to wait and see what the civil authorities will do first. At this stage, as far as we are concerned and as far as they are concerned, they are allegations.

Q: As far as your position on this, does there have to be a concrete action taken by civil authorities for you to take action?

PT: I wouldn't say that. We have to get to the point where the facts have really been heard and we know that from some of the situations that we had down in Dallas, that sometimes allegations turn out to be correct and other times they turn out not to be correct. Sometimes they are a sham. So you really have to know that the facts have been addressed, either by the civil authorities or by own fact-finding.

Q: Have you made any decision on when Leon Lett can reapply for re-instatement?

PT: Leon Lett has already applied for re-instatement. I haven't addressed it yet but he's already applied and I've asked our medical people to give me a report on his status. Once I get that, and get a chance to review it, then I'll address it.

Q: Denise DeBartolo-York has said that she doesn't have any intention of selling the team and that she wants to go ahead with the plans for the new stadium/mall complex. Does the league believe that this is in fact the long-term ownership situation or is this going to change?

PT: No, absolutely I think this is going to be the long-term ownership situation. I think that Denise and her husband made a decision that they want to own the 49ers and own it for the long term and work with Mayor Brown on a stadium. That's been clear in their conversations with me going back to the early part of this year and it's been reaffirmed with me in this last month or so. That's what they advised the judge in Iowa, who has been so instrumental in getting the settlement reached.

Q: Any thoughts on replay and any concerns about the replay failure in Kansas City and how that may be addressed before the season starts?

PT: We had a football operations meeting, which we have every year, before the preseason begins. At this point, I look to people like George Young to be on top of all of our game operations. We discussed before I went to the Hall of Fame Weekend in Canton the fact that what we needed on replay was a weekly analysis of replay and how it was being handled: the mechanics and the technology. I just spoke to George yesterday and Jerry Seeman last week and we're going to have a weekly conference with all of the referees with George Young and Jerry Seeman and some of our operations people so that we can share what is going on.

In some instances, you'll see a game where it appears that replay was never a factor. But in reality we might have had a number of replay reviews during commercial breaks or even between plays before teams get up to the line of scrimmage in the final two minutes of either half. The public won’t know it, but replay reviews would have taken place and determined that the calls were good.

One of the things we have been discussing is when a TD is scored and sometimes you get replays before you go to the extra point. Other times you get replays after you go to commercial breaks following the extra point. Jerry Seeman and George have been talking with our referees about that kind of a situation. If there is any question about our need for a replay review when a TD is scored, the referee will have the discretion to slow down going into the extra point and call an official time-out on the field. He would do that if he feels the coaches or, in the final two minutes, the replay official, need time to look at a replay.

A lot of mechanics issues are going to be discussed on a weekly basis, plus technology issues such as how the beepers are working. In some games we had some inadvertent buzzers caused by the coaches wearing the buzzers on their belt in the wrong position.

But I think the system is going to work well. I've said before that with digital technology and the ability to review plays fast without having to wind and rewind VCR's, and the computer software that's built into this system with the ability to freeze things on a monitor and pair different replays in a freeze frame and get that down to the field fast, I think with all that everyone is very, very confident this state-of-the-art technology will help the way the game is officiated.

Q: With the sale of the Browns and the Washington Redskins, one of the things that you did was install a quality control person. Can you talk about the process with the Jets and how you are keeping an eye on it?

PT: The Jets have been, as you would expect, very cooperative and we've had a good working relationship with Steve Gutman. We've also had a number of good discussions with John Hess. Everyone understands that if this process goes smoothly, it will be important to the league and important for the Jets. I would say that with an executive like John Hess in the mix, representing the family in effect, and Steve Gutman representing the team, we think that this will work very smoothly.

Q: Is there a prospectus already prepared at this point?

PT: I know that they were working on one recently and I know that our people were talking with Steve on finalizing it. Whether they got that done last week, I don't know. You'd have to ask Steve that question.

Q: One of the things that is associated with Leon Hess is integrity. Is that something that you are hopeful will continue on with the tradition of the team?

PT: Integrity and understanding the context of the Jets as a member of the league and the importance of a partnership. Leon always felt very strongly about that, as do Wellington Mara and Bob Tisch. That aspect of it is important. So is recognizing that every team in the league has an interest in every other team in the league, and that includes how a sale is handled, how it relates to the Finance Committee and how it pertains to the league.

Q: There has been some discussion about assistant coaches and the forming of a potential union there. What are your feelings on that?

PT: I have met with a lot of assistant coaches in the last few weeks in training camp. The thing that I've emphasized is that owners recognize the great job that they do and how important assistant coaches are to our operation. I think there was some feeling they were overlooked, and that is not the case. The second thing is that people recognize they have a life in which there can be a lot of turnover and involves a little bit of a nomadic existence. That raises some issues in terms of health insurance coverage and other insurance issues that we addressed at our league meetings in March and in May with all the owners. There can be lots of turnover among assistant coaches. Sometimes it has more to do with complete staffs changing rather than the performance of any individual man or coach. I think the coaches are satisfied that the coaches are being listened to and that people understand their situation.

Q: A question about the Philadelphia stadium issue. How important is it to the Eagles and to the league to have that happen soon?

PT: I think it is important that Pittsburgh is done and construction has already begun. We'd like to see Philadelphia at the same stage and I think it's going to get there.

Q: What's holding it up do you think?

PT: I'm not that close to it. I spoke to the mayor probably 8 to 10 weeks ago and I spoke to Jeff Lurie at our May meeting when we voted to give league support to the Philadelphia stadium. At this point I think the processes just have to work themselves through.

Q: How much does the NFL keeps its fingers on that and keep an eye on that?

PT: If there is a problem, we like to get involved. About 15 months ago when things were at kind of an impasse, I met with the mayor and just tried to give him a sense of how stadium packages were being structured around the country. I think he found that meeting to be useful and we worked with his people, through the Eagles, and we feel like we are headed in the right direction.

Q: How would you describe Los Angeles' chances of getting a team at this point?

PT: We are now looking at multiple alternatives out there. The issue with the Coliseum is that everyone recognized back in April that if a new Coliseum were going to be done it would involve costs that wouldn't exist with other sites, for two reasons. One, it would have to be built in the shell of the existing Coliseum and to respect the landmark features of the existing Coliseum it would involve 50 to 100 million dollars of additional costs. The second thing was the access of the fans to that location and that included parking, not just the number of parking spots, but making sure that the flow of traffic would make sense. That was going to involve probably another couple of hundred million dollars. Those kinds of infrastructure costs can't be met simply out of team operations. We seem to be at an impasse right now regarding how those costs are going to be met. They are over and above the ordinary costs that you would have over a stadium. So now we are looking at other alternatives, including the site that Michael Ovitz developed in Carson, plus Hollywood Park and others.

Q: Is September 15^th coming in too short a period of time?

PT: I don't know the answer to that. If we were starting from scratch, I would say yes. But we are not starting from scratch. We did a lot of work with Michael Ozitz last year and early this year on the Carson site and we did lots of work dating back to a year ago on the Hollywood Park site. So I think we have a running start and we are going to keep working at it.

Q: Has there been any fallout or complaint by the Vikings regarding Demetrius Underwood ending up in Miami?

PT: Nothing that I've heard. It just happened yesterday.

Q: The fact that they are now without their number one pick, is there anything to that?

PT: I really don't know enough about it to comment on it. I don't know how they released him, I know that they were talking to our office about the release and all that stuff, but I don't know enough about to comment. I would imagine they are more concerned about losing to the Giants than they are about losing Demetrious Underwood.