Friday, November 14, 2008
During Paul Tagliabue’s 17-year tenure as commissioner and CEO of the NFL, the league saw several advances that turned it into the premier sports league in the world.
Four expansion teams were added to the league. A salary cap was initiated. Instant replay began. But maybe Tagliabue’s greatest accomplishment, he said during a speech Thursday at the Dole Institute of Politics, was his ability to keep steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs out of the league.
Paul Tagliabue, former commissioner of the National Football League, speaks to an audience as part of the Leadership and Globalization in Sports lecture series at the Dole Institute of Politics Thursday evening. In his 17 years as NFL commissioner, Tagliabue supported the construction of more than 20 new NFL team stadiums and established NFL operations in overseas markets.
While Major League Baseball and other leagues were going through a steroid crisis, Tagliabue had a plan in place years ago that helped keep his players clean from those illegal and harmful drugs.
“We were able to share information with the players and their leadership through the union and were able to convince them that these substances were a hazard and not an attraction,” Tagliabue said. “The players also viewed it as unfair because they didn’t want the small group of players using artificial substances to put pressure on all of them to use them.”
Tagliabue’s speech was the first in a series started by the Dole Institute of Politics called “Leadership and Globalization in Sports,” intended to bring in guests from around the sports world to discuss inner issues of sports and not just the winners and losers.
The Georgetown University graduate talked to a standing room only crowd about several sports topics including his ability to turn the NFL into an economical power. The NFL’s television package is second to none and provides $130 million to each NFL team through its rights agreements with the television networks.
“When television first appeared in sports, the owners in the NFL made a decision that the league would control all of the television arrangements,” Tagliabue said. “No other league would do that. And more importantly, that each of the teams would share the revenue.”
Tagliabue cited the poor television ratings for the recent World Series featuring the small-market Tampa Bay Rays and said that would never happen in the NFL because their television package allows for each team to receive similar television coverage each week.
“Some of the greatest audiences for Super Bowls have been for some of the smallest market teams,” Tagliabue said. “Because all of the teams get the same exposure.”
The speech, which was taped and will air on CSPAN at a later date, allowed members of the audience to ask the former commissioner questions ranging from his thoughts on the increased fines for celebrations that have some calling it the “No Fun League” to the minimum three years’ wait needed for students out of high school wanting to play in the NFL.
“Very few people have ever been seen as being ready to play in the NFL out of high school,” Tagliabue said. “The likelihood is that you would not be successful without some sort of college or other experience. We were able to get that agreed upon in the collective bargaining agreement.”
Tagliabue retired from the NFL in 2006 but has spent the last two years traveling around the world to speak about his time with the league and his thoughts on the globalization and advancements made in modern-day sports.
— — Edited by Arthur Hur
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