bad_meetz_evil
03-28-2006, 02:46 AM
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- Dispatches and musings from the first day of the NFL's annual meeting, where team owners are considering how to begin "the Search for the New 'Bue,'' in light of league commissioner Paul Tagliabue's retirement announcement last week:
• At this point, they don't know who will replace him. They're not even sure when they'll decide exactly who gets to sit on the committee charged with replacing him. But the NFL owners and executives I talked to on Monday at least seem to know what they don't want when it comes to identifying and hiring the league's next commissioner:
They don't want to make the process of finding a successor to Paul Tagliabue twice as hard as it's already going to be. So you can forget about those rumblings that have surfaced in the past week, how it might be time to split the role of NFL commissioner into two jobs, one for the football side of things and one for the business side of things.
"It's an interesting concept, but in my opinion it's not necessary,'' Giants owner Steve Tisch said, after hearing Tagliabue open this owners meeting by delivering a state of the league address at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress Resort. "I think it'd be difficult to do in reality. It'd be two masters serving 32 masters (team owners). I think one master serving 32 masters may be a lot easier.''
Patriots owner Bob Kraft said he and his fellow owners intend to hire an independent third party -- a yet to be named head-hunter firm -- to funnel candidates to the still unnamed owners search committee. But that firm, Kraft said, will be looking for someone with the expertise to wear both hats that are required of today's NFL commissioner.
"I feel strongly that it should be one person, for accountability,'' Kraft said. "If you split the job, it's like corporate America, you're going to have turf battles and problems and you won't have accountability. Take preseason games that the league schedules. Is that a football thing or a business thing? That's what kills companies, because you have too many turf battles. You need one person. That's how we run all our businesses.''
The real battle within the league might be how many team owners can manage to finagle their way onto the search committee, which Tagliabue, by NFL by-laws, has the responsibility to appoint. There are plenty of factions within ownership who want to have a say and be represented when it comes to weeding out the candidates. Tagliabue said Monday that he won't recommend a successor to the committee, he doesn't yet know how big the committee will be, and he's not sure if it will be named while the owners are in Orlando or sometime next week.
"But I'm sure everybody wants to be on it,'' Colts general manager Bill Polian said with a laugh. "That could be the biggest committee ever.''
Added Kraft: "The last time they tried to do this (in replacing Pete Rozelle with Tagliabue in 1989), the league got paralyzed. You can't have 32 people making this decision. But on the other hand, everybody has to have some input.''
Which is why I find it laughable to think the league could identify and install Tagliabue's replacement by July, allowing him to downsize into the advisory/consulting role he'll take on after his retirement becomes official. But Kraft and Pittsburgh owner Dan Rooney are optimistic that timetable can be kept. This from a league that dragged its all-important CBA talks over the span of two years, and only reached a deal minutes away from a hard deadline, after pushing the start of free agency back a couple times?
"I think it definitely could get done that quickly -- I honestly do,'' Rooney said. "Even though things don't get done in this league until they have to get done. With this, everybody sees there's a need to get on with it. Now, maybe once we get into it, something's going to happen. But I have no problem thinking this could get done in that length of time and we could let Paul go on his way.''
Don't expect the Steelers to make too much of a fuss about their long-awaited fifth Super Bowl title on Sept. 7, when Miami visits Pittsburgh in the NFL's Kickoff Weekend Thursday-night regular-season opener. Making a grand to-do of hanging a Super Bowl banner at Heinz Field -- akin to what the then-defending champion Patriots did the past two Thursday night openers at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro -- is not the Steelers' way of doing things. The venerable Rooney informed me of this on Monday, after the league announced its glamour Week 1 matchups.
"It's a big game, and it's a great way to open up, back on NBC, but no, we don't do the banner thing,'' Rooney said.
But aren't the Steelers going to do a little commemorating or self-congratulation in the pre-game?
"No, we don't do things like that,'' he said. "We gave them all rings, and we have a trophy for winning that game.''
• I'm for anything that honors the late Wellington Mara, who as the longtime owner of the New York Giants was considered the conscience of the league. But re-naming the NFL's Wilson game football "The Duke'' in tribute to him doesn't seem like quite enough of a homage. (Mara, who died last October, was named after the Duke of Wellington, and he was nicknamed "The Duke'' as a child).
And if Mara, who spent 81 years with the Giants, gets the game ball named after him, how do we honor the likes of, say, Redskins owner Daniel Snyder, when it comes time to do so? I've got it, how about "The Danny'' kicking tee?
• There's absolutely nothing not to like about the NFL's opening-week slate of headline games. Here are the story lines worth anticipating:
Miami at Pittsburgh, Thursday, Sept. 7: Daunte Culpepper's first game as the Dolphins quarterback (if he's all the way back from his knee injury of last October 30), against a Steelers team that will be beginning a new era without retired running back Jerome Bettis.
Dallas at Jacksonville, Sunday, Sept. 10: The nationally televised 4:15 p.m. doubleheader game will be the Cowboys' first chance to show off receiver Terrell Owens, and it'll come in Alltel Stadium, where Owens had a spectacular game in defeat in Super Bowl XXXIX for Philadelphia. Just after that game was when it all started to go wrong for Owens as an Eagle.
Indianapolis at New York Giants, Sunday night, Sept. 10: A no-brainer for the league. It's Peyton Manning versus Eli Manning, in the first brother-against-brother starting quarterback showdown in the NFL history. How about their famous father, Archie Manning, does the pre-game coin flip?
Minnesota at Washington, Monday night, Sept. 11: In the first half of a rare Monday-night doubleheader, new Vikings head coach Brad Childress makes his debut (minus Culpepper) against a Redskins team that is coming off a season of accomplishment rather than underachievement for a change.
San Diego at Oakland, Monday night, Sept. 11: In the nightcap, the Chargers will debut the Philip Rivers era in Oakland's infamous Black Hole, as the Raiders' new/old head coach Art Shell gets his career redux underway. If you live in the Eastern Time Zone, better get your nap in Monday afternoon or call in sick Tuesday, because this one kicks off at the sleepy hour of 10:15 p.m. EST.
• The quote of the day came from Tagliabue, when asked about Seattle and Minnesota's ongoing free agency feud, where both teams have signed one another's players to an offer sheet, and inserted "poison pill'' clauses that make it virtually impossible to match: "The mind of creative people has no limits. But it's not in the spirit of the deal (the collective bargaining agreement), and we will be talking to Gene (Upshaw, the players union chief) about it.''
• At this point, they don't know who will replace him. They're not even sure when they'll decide exactly who gets to sit on the committee charged with replacing him. But the NFL owners and executives I talked to on Monday at least seem to know what they don't want when it comes to identifying and hiring the league's next commissioner:
They don't want to make the process of finding a successor to Paul Tagliabue twice as hard as it's already going to be. So you can forget about those rumblings that have surfaced in the past week, how it might be time to split the role of NFL commissioner into two jobs, one for the football side of things and one for the business side of things.
"It's an interesting concept, but in my opinion it's not necessary,'' Giants owner Steve Tisch said, after hearing Tagliabue open this owners meeting by delivering a state of the league address at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress Resort. "I think it'd be difficult to do in reality. It'd be two masters serving 32 masters (team owners). I think one master serving 32 masters may be a lot easier.''
Patriots owner Bob Kraft said he and his fellow owners intend to hire an independent third party -- a yet to be named head-hunter firm -- to funnel candidates to the still unnamed owners search committee. But that firm, Kraft said, will be looking for someone with the expertise to wear both hats that are required of today's NFL commissioner.
"I feel strongly that it should be one person, for accountability,'' Kraft said. "If you split the job, it's like corporate America, you're going to have turf battles and problems and you won't have accountability. Take preseason games that the league schedules. Is that a football thing or a business thing? That's what kills companies, because you have too many turf battles. You need one person. That's how we run all our businesses.''
The real battle within the league might be how many team owners can manage to finagle their way onto the search committee, which Tagliabue, by NFL by-laws, has the responsibility to appoint. There are plenty of factions within ownership who want to have a say and be represented when it comes to weeding out the candidates. Tagliabue said Monday that he won't recommend a successor to the committee, he doesn't yet know how big the committee will be, and he's not sure if it will be named while the owners are in Orlando or sometime next week.
"But I'm sure everybody wants to be on it,'' Colts general manager Bill Polian said with a laugh. "That could be the biggest committee ever.''
Added Kraft: "The last time they tried to do this (in replacing Pete Rozelle with Tagliabue in 1989), the league got paralyzed. You can't have 32 people making this decision. But on the other hand, everybody has to have some input.''
Which is why I find it laughable to think the league could identify and install Tagliabue's replacement by July, allowing him to downsize into the advisory/consulting role he'll take on after his retirement becomes official. But Kraft and Pittsburgh owner Dan Rooney are optimistic that timetable can be kept. This from a league that dragged its all-important CBA talks over the span of two years, and only reached a deal minutes away from a hard deadline, after pushing the start of free agency back a couple times?
"I think it definitely could get done that quickly -- I honestly do,'' Rooney said. "Even though things don't get done in this league until they have to get done. With this, everybody sees there's a need to get on with it. Now, maybe once we get into it, something's going to happen. But I have no problem thinking this could get done in that length of time and we could let Paul go on his way.''
Don't expect the Steelers to make too much of a fuss about their long-awaited fifth Super Bowl title on Sept. 7, when Miami visits Pittsburgh in the NFL's Kickoff Weekend Thursday-night regular-season opener. Making a grand to-do of hanging a Super Bowl banner at Heinz Field -- akin to what the then-defending champion Patriots did the past two Thursday night openers at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro -- is not the Steelers' way of doing things. The venerable Rooney informed me of this on Monday, after the league announced its glamour Week 1 matchups.
"It's a big game, and it's a great way to open up, back on NBC, but no, we don't do the banner thing,'' Rooney said.
But aren't the Steelers going to do a little commemorating or self-congratulation in the pre-game?
"No, we don't do things like that,'' he said. "We gave them all rings, and we have a trophy for winning that game.''
• I'm for anything that honors the late Wellington Mara, who as the longtime owner of the New York Giants was considered the conscience of the league. But re-naming the NFL's Wilson game football "The Duke'' in tribute to him doesn't seem like quite enough of a homage. (Mara, who died last October, was named after the Duke of Wellington, and he was nicknamed "The Duke'' as a child).
And if Mara, who spent 81 years with the Giants, gets the game ball named after him, how do we honor the likes of, say, Redskins owner Daniel Snyder, when it comes time to do so? I've got it, how about "The Danny'' kicking tee?
• There's absolutely nothing not to like about the NFL's opening-week slate of headline games. Here are the story lines worth anticipating:
Miami at Pittsburgh, Thursday, Sept. 7: Daunte Culpepper's first game as the Dolphins quarterback (if he's all the way back from his knee injury of last October 30), against a Steelers team that will be beginning a new era without retired running back Jerome Bettis.
Dallas at Jacksonville, Sunday, Sept. 10: The nationally televised 4:15 p.m. doubleheader game will be the Cowboys' first chance to show off receiver Terrell Owens, and it'll come in Alltel Stadium, where Owens had a spectacular game in defeat in Super Bowl XXXIX for Philadelphia. Just after that game was when it all started to go wrong for Owens as an Eagle.
Indianapolis at New York Giants, Sunday night, Sept. 10: A no-brainer for the league. It's Peyton Manning versus Eli Manning, in the first brother-against-brother starting quarterback showdown in the NFL history. How about their famous father, Archie Manning, does the pre-game coin flip?
Minnesota at Washington, Monday night, Sept. 11: In the first half of a rare Monday-night doubleheader, new Vikings head coach Brad Childress makes his debut (minus Culpepper) against a Redskins team that is coming off a season of accomplishment rather than underachievement for a change.
San Diego at Oakland, Monday night, Sept. 11: In the nightcap, the Chargers will debut the Philip Rivers era in Oakland's infamous Black Hole, as the Raiders' new/old head coach Art Shell gets his career redux underway. If you live in the Eastern Time Zone, better get your nap in Monday afternoon or call in sick Tuesday, because this one kicks off at the sleepy hour of 10:15 p.m. EST.
• The quote of the day came from Tagliabue, when asked about Seattle and Minnesota's ongoing free agency feud, where both teams have signed one another's players to an offer sheet, and inserted "poison pill'' clauses that make it virtually impossible to match: "The mind of creative people has no limits. But it's not in the spirit of the deal (the collective bargaining agreement), and we will be talking to Gene (Upshaw, the players union chief) about it.''