Paul Tagliabue, the Pete Rozelle successor who in 17 years as NFL commissioner set the table for the success the league now enjoys under Roger Goodell, died Sunday at age 84.
Tagliabue in 1989 won the unenviable task of filling the vacancy left by the retiring Rozelle, who to this day ranks among the very greatest commissioners in the history of professional sports. “Pete Rozelle is an impossible act to follow,” read a USA Today column in October of that year. It was Rozelle who over a 30-year tenure took the NFL from an also-ran to the leading American pro sport, and it was Tagliabue who — after a protracted selection process — was tasked with the job of keeping the league on its positive track.
His was not the most serious challenge facing a new commissioner that year. Bart Giamatti took over as MLB commissioner months earlier, dealt with one of the most serious scandals in the history of the sport when Pete Rose was accused of betting on games, and then shockingly died before the season ended. His successor, Fay Vincent, took over just in time for the earthquake that delayed the World Series ten days.
By comparison, the challenges of replacing Rozelle were quaint. Yes, the league was just two years removed from a damaging strike in 1987 — the second of the decade — and still had no new collective bargaining agreement. But Rozelle left behind a league that was otherwise on solid ground, facing issues of how best to expand on and off the field. It also helped that at just 48, Tagliabue had built up two decades of trust as a league lawyer, to the point that Rozelle would regularly ask “what does Paul think?” when confronted with thorny matters.
Tagliabue held office during a period that saw the NFL expand to its current 32 teams and completely overhaul its media presence. The league reached an industry-shaking rights deal with then-fledgling FOX in 1993 and then a decade later launched its own cable network. It was at the tail end of Tagliabue’s tenure that the NFL negotiated the media rights deals that are still largely unchanged to this day, with FOX and CBS splitting Sunday afternoon, NBC getting Sunday night and ESPN airing “Monday Night Football.”
Like his predecessors Rozelle and Bert Bell and his successor Goodell, Tagliabue did not hesitate to ‘protect the shield’ in dealing with media partners. It was Tagliabue who pressured Disney — calling Michael Eisner directly — to have ESPN cancel its football soap opera “Playmakers” in 2003.
Perhaps most notably, it was under Tagliabue that the power of the players union waned considerably. The league did not lose a single game to a labor-management dispute during his entire tenure, a sharp contrast from the strike-filled 1980s — and even from Goodell’s tenure, which included a 2011 owner-imposed lockout that resulted in the cancellation of the Hall of Fame Game.
The defanging of the union had some significant real-life impact as the league — including Tagliabue specifically and on the record — downplayed the issue of concussions for years.
Outside of media, Tagliabue’s tenure was perhaps best remembered for how he steered the league through the crises of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, and his aforementioned inaction on the concussion issue.
As a bridge between the growth of the Pete Rozelle era and the domination of the Roger Goodell era, it is fair to say that Tagliabue’s time in office can be overshadowed. But it is also fair to say that successfully steering the league from then to now makes him a significant figure in his own right.
