Pete Rozelle Interview (page: 7 / 9) Pro Football Hall of Fame	Print Interview

You pulled off some amazing fancy footwork with some very persnickety owners over the years. Can you tell us some of the wilder incidents that you can remember of owners acting up?

Pete Rozelle: There were occasions like that. Gosh, I'd have to think a lot about it to give you specific ones.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. They are a very unusual breed, because some have a lot of money, and some really depend on the sport and the club to get by. And there are all types. They come from very patrician WASPish backgrounds, to men who came up the very hard way -- from the ghettos and so forth, Brooklyn -- and have made it as entrepreneurs. It's a fascinating thing to watch, to sit at a meeting and watch the interplay with the owners, and how they vote, and so forth. There have been cases where they have gotten angry at one another at meetings and expressed themselves in different ways -- but it's a real experience, I can tell you that.

Do you recall an incident of violence, or threats?

Pete Rozelle: Well, way back, I think there were incidents of verbal threats of violence, but they didn't follow through.

What was your secret in getting all these people to vote your way?

Pete Rozelle: The main thing is trying to be patient. Be sure to give them a chance to speak to the issue on both sides, and so forth. Then I would have a policy of taking straw votes, and seeing how close it was to passing, if I was trying to get it passed. And if it won by one or two, then you might recess, and then talk to those one or two, and see if they have changed their vote. But mainly, again, being patient and giving everyone a chance to be heard on something, so they feel they were heard, and they wouldn't suffer too much by the outcome if it went the other way, against them.

Being such a patient person, and so even-handed, didn't it drive you crazy, trying to get along with some of these big prima donna personalities?

Pete Rozelle: Well, they are all types, as I say. Some are the most decent, reasonable-thinking, calm, willing-to-compromise people you could find. Others are just the other way. You have a great lesson in psychology to watch the ownership group as a whole, because they do vary. But the one thing they are all together on -- boy, they want to win! They are as bad as the coaches. They want to win. They just gotta win! And anything they think gives them an edge, why, they are going to try and do it.

In First Down and a Billion, Gene Klein's book, there are some details of what it's like to deal with the owners.

Pete Rozelle: A lot of Gene's book was on the AFL before the merger, and they really did have some rambunctious meetings -- from what I heard after the merger -- he told me.

You've had to do a lot of politicking, and in some cases literally going to Congress and lobbying. Did you ever think about going into politics yourself?

Pete Rozelle: No, not really.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I enjoyed meeting a lot of the congressional leaders and Senate leaders and so forth. I remember hearing a wonderful story from a great Senator, Russell Long of Louisiana. At the time, I was trying to get the merger bill through Congress. He was supporting it because he knew we'd grant a franchise in New Orleans if we did get the merger through. So one night I sat up drinking with him in his Watergate apartment -- this was in the '60s -- and we were up almost all night. Really a funny man, particularly when he talked about his relatives. He told me a story on his uncle Earl. Earl (Long), who was Governor of Louisiana. I'll never forget it. He said that when Earl decided he was going to run for governor, he talked to his aides and so forth and told them to go out and get support from everybody. So the aides came back, and said, "Well, we've talked to all our boys, including the big boys. And they said they will support you, contribute financially to your campaign, and they will also get out the vote," and Earl says, "Fine." And he says, "All they want to be assured of was a little easing of the regulations on gambling and liquor," and so forth in those days. So he says, "Fine, tell them okay." So they went back and he is elected Governor of Louisiana. This is Russell's uncle. And about a month after the election, one of his aides comes in, and he says, "Those guys that supported us and got out the vote, and gave financial help, they said nothing has changed in the law enforcement of those things." So the aide -- then two months go by, three, and four -- and now he can't even get to Governor Long. Finally, after six months, he corners him in the corridor. He says, "These guys are talking about me taking a swim in the Mississippi in a concrete suit. Now what can I tell them?" And the Governor said, "You just tell them Earl Long lied." That was from Louisiana politics, I guess in the '30s maybe, the '30s and '40s. And for that, and a lot of other reasons, I never thought about going into politics.

Did you work with Congressman Hale Boggs as well?

Pete Rozelle: Boggs? This was the same period. Both Senator Long and Hale Boggs, I got to know very well. They were supportive of the bill that would put through the merger, because they knew that they would have an expansion franchise in Louisiana. They had just built a big superdome, or were going to build it. It was the logical place for a football team, because of the interest in the sport down there. So they did support us, we got the bill through, and they got a franchise.

There was a lot of political persuasion in the work that you've done.

Pete Rozelle: Yes. I was fortunate, because you have many members of Congress that know something about sports, and football, and like it. Senator Ted Kennedy was very helpful. Jack Kennedy was helpful, because they knew sports and at least you could have a session with them, get your point across.

Do you feel that TV has too much influence over the game now? It certainly has had a tremendous influence.

Pete Rozelle: Particularly with the money they pay. That's what's caused football, as well as other sports, a lot of trouble with the labor relations. Because highly publicized television contracts create a voice on the part of players, to get some of it. Maybe too much of it sometimes, and that's been a major factor. Some people don't like the instant replay. We felt that there was going to be a reaction. You're going to have the instant replay, whether they have a rule to change a play or not. Because by having it, and just showing it on television -- which they would -- why the people could see whether a play was called, in some cases, correctly or incorrectly. So we decided that for that reason we should show it, we should use it rather for evaluating the way to place a call. I think that for the most part it's had a very healthy reaction on football. When you look at the money it's brought to the game, and the promotion and popularity it's brought about, it's awfully hard to say that it's a drag on the game.

It's been said that when you took over as commissioner, football was a game, and it became a business. Do you ever think it's too much of a business now?

Pete Rozelle: No. One face of it is always a negative. I've talked to other commissioners about this. It's tough to have litigation. There's a growing spread of litigation in sports, over maybe the last ten to 15 years. When you're trying to use your efforts, and you're being constructive, when you're going through a two-year case, a couple of long sessions in court much of the time, and you feel it's so wasteful against what could be positive that you could be doing with that time. That was something I found distasteful. But the business side, as a business per se, I didn't think it became too much that. You still have the feverish interest of the fans and the great dedication of the players to win. They don't even think of this when they're playing.

Where do you see football going in the next 25 years? What changes do you see happening?

Pete Rozelle: Boy, you've seen so many in the last 30 that it's really hard to imagine. As transportation, communication, and things that will create a closer world bring the countries closer together, I think it's certainly possible, with the interest being shown on the world league games, that the NFL might have teams in London, Barcelona, Frankfurt. All of them have done well, of course, in this World League. But I think that's possible in the future. It would have to be a situation where you have faster travel and so forth, and a real interest on the part of the people in those countries in football, which we're starting to learn about now.

So you see a possible globalization of football in the future?

Pete Rozelle: Yes, I think that's possible. And for other sports.

Will salaries keep inflating?

Pete Rozelle: I don't know, that's tough. This last television contract they signed was a very good one for the sport. But when they get to the end of it, with the networks doing rather poorly now, and not having the 95 percent of the audience that they used to have, now they have cable, and a rival, independent Fox network, and they have fractionated the audience so that they can't get the number of viewers they had before. Now if that continues, it will be awfully hard for them at the end of this contract to pay what they've been paying. That's why the sport that gets involved with the big deferred payments to players over the years, if they don't have that money coming in the future, why it could be tough.

And the networks speak for themselves. It's a little up in the air.

Pete Rozelle: Very difficult, after being so dominant for so long.

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