TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -Since voters for the NFL Hall of Fame love throwing around numbers so much, maybe they should try these on for size:
During Paul Tagliabue’s time in charge, players’ salaries and TV revenues more than tripled, on average, and the cost of most franchises increased fivefold. Better yet, try putting a dollar figure on what the league gained by supplanting baseball as America’s pastime.
Can’t?
finalists on the Hall of Fame ballot this weekend. Yet that likely won’t stop them from bypassing Tagliabue’s name for the third year in a row. The former commissioner is one of only two candidates who made his mark off the field – longtime Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson is the other – but I dare any writer to cobble together a history of the league in which Tagliabue’s accomplishments aren’t front and center.
Suffice it to say they can’t do that, either.
rd Shapiro, “his name belongs in the first three or four sentences, behind only Pete Rozelle, George Halas and maybe one or two others.”
As it turns out, though the 68-year-old Tagliabue has plenty of work to occupy his time, history is very much on his mind. He just became chairman of the board of directors at his alma mater, Georgetown University, and continues to do some work for his old law firm. Though he declined an offer to make his own case for induction, Tagliabue wrote in a recent e-mail, “The pro football hall of famers are members of the most exclusive team in the sport. They have tremendous players at nearly every position and legendary coaches like Don Shula and Chuck Noll.
“I was fortunate to be at the induction ceremonies every summer as commissioner,” he said, “and that weekend always was a memorable great start to each season.”
The arguments against bringing Tagliabue back to Canton at least one more time are flimsy at best. He could be stiff and lawyerly during news conferences and public appearances, but gripes about Tagliabue not being “media-friendly” – an art which Rozelle, a former public relations man, mastered – are downright silly.
o gets in may not be a science, but it isn’t a popularity contest, either.
The other complaints most often tossed in Tagliabue’s path are: the league’s failure to put a franchise back in Los Angeles; failing to block former Browns owner Art Modell from ripping the team out of Cleveland and relocating in Baltimore; and a potentially troublesome labor contract that will end in 2010, instead of 2012, after dissatisfied owners claimed the players’ share was too high and voted to trigger an opt-out clause.
First, only a handful of people will ever know whether Tagliabue offered enough support to any of the competing bid groups trying to return a team in Los Angeles. But the league did award the city a franchise on a conditional basis and when those terms weren’t met – remember that 23 other stadiums were built or renovated during Tagliabue’s tenure – the NFL had no problem finding a group in Houston.
As for the Browns, not only did Tagliabue help bring a franchise back to Cleveland, but trying to stop Modell would have proved costly and ultimately unsuccessful. The NFL had tried to stop Raiders owner Al Davis from taking his franchise out of Los Angeles and back to Oakland, lost twice in federal court and was pursuing an appeal when Modell made his move.
ling who insisted on anonymity, “that we’d already given enough at the office to that cause.”
Complaints about the labor deal require even more speculation, since Tagliabue took over in 1989, just two years after a divisive 24-day players’ strike, and managed to maintain peace with the union until the day he left office in August 2006. His close relationship with Gene Upshaw, who was head of the NFL Players Association until his death last year, frequently drew the ire of several owners.
But who’s to say that connection wouldn’t have enabled Tagliabue to finesse yet another agreement were he still in office and Upshaw still alive?
And while the presence of a half-dozen black coaches in the NFL is widely credited to the league’s adoption of the so-called “Rooney Rule” – after Steelers owner Dan Rooney – Tagliabue deserves equal billing. He pushed for more minority participation in NFL front offices from the day he arrived and never backed off.
For all the times Tagliabue presided over the proceedings in Canton as commissioner, none probably matched his one and only stint as a presenter. Precious few figures in the game deserved their reputation as a champion of antiestablishment causes than Redskins running back John Riggins, but when his day for induction rolled around, he chose Tagliabue.
Asked why, Riggins replied, “Because Madonna wasn’t available.”
When reporters pressed him, Riggins revealed that for all the gripes he had about the NFL and how it was run, he still harbored plenty of respect for the commissioner’s office and the man who occupied it at the time.
“When you get married,” he said, “you want the Pope to perform the Mass.”
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Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitkeap.org
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