POSTED 11:03 a.m. EST, February 8, 2007
DISSING OF TAGS RUFFLES LEAGUE OFFICE FEATHERS
We hear that the failure of the Hall of Fame voters to include former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue in the first cut from 17 to 11 candidates on Saturday has caused some hard feelings toward the panel of voters at the league office.
The debate regarding Tagliabue lasted nearly an hour, and it started with a presentation from Peter King of Sports Illustrated on Tags' behalf.
"I failed miserably," King wrote this week in his Monday Morning Quarterback column. "We are prohibited from discussing publicly what was said in the room about the candidates, so I can't tell you exactly what I said or what Tagliabue's detractors said."
But King's weekly NFL news and notes item shares these insights: "There seems to be a movement to wait a year or two or six to judge Tagliabue's tenure and maybe he wasn't the great facilitator and leader of the most prosperous sports league on the planet that for years the public has believed him to be. Waiting for perspective on Tagliabue is odd, seeing that Hall voters installed Pete Rozelle in 1985, with four years left in his term. Had they waited until the end of his term, voters, after putting Rozelle in, would have seen a strike, replacement games, flat TV contracts for three straight years to consider with him. Even if the current labor deal falls apart, there will be football until 2010, four years after Tagliabue left office."
We're hearing (and not from King but from others) that the biggest knock on Tagliabue is the perception that he didn't create the golden goose, but that he merely fell into it. A "right place, right time" deal.
It's hard to disagree completely with that. When the fruit is hanging so low that it's falling into the basket as the cart goes by, it's often difficult to determine what the guy running the show has added to the end result.
Also, Tagliabue has a somewhat aloof, aristocratic air about him. Stuff like that isn't received well by guys who are busting their butts for far less money than what the people they write about are making.
Still, there are signs of deeper problems that festered on Tagliabue's watch. The revenue-sharing mess that pits high-revenue franchises against low-revenue franchises still hasn't been solved -- it merely has been tabled. It very well could hit the fan during Roger Goodell's tenure, especially in light of the fact that the most recent CBA revision allows either side to opt out of the deal early.
Speaking of the CBA, there's still a perception in some circles that Tagliabue was too cozy with NFLPA chief Gene Upshaw. Last year at this time, for example, some eyebrows were raised regarding the union's insistence that the issue of revenue-sharing must be solved by the owners as part of any new agreement. The suspicion was that Upshaw was doing Tagliabue's dirty work by forcing an issue about which, in theory, the union shouldn't really care.
Then there's the ongoing problem of bad behavior. Not long ago, Tagliabue and company bristled at ESPN's fictional portrayal of pro football in the short-lived Playmakers series, arguing that the crime and violence presented an unrealistic depiction of NFL players. Now, Playmakers can fairly be called unrealistic only because it was too tame.
The mere fact that Goodell is regarded as having launched a crackdown on those who violate the substance abuse policy and the steroids policy and the personal conduct policy implies that, previously, things were looser. Over the past year or so, the product of that air of lenience has been a mind-boggling number of player arrests.
With all that said, and with all things considered, we think Tagliabue deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Under his leadership, the NFL crafted a long-term solution to the free-agency conundrum, which (perhaps inadvertently) gave rise to a hot stove league that has transformed pro football into a sport with no real offseason. The new system made players partners with the teams, earmarking a significant chunk of the gross revenues for the funding of their wages. And the installation of a salary cap has created a level of competition that no other professional sports league enjoys, with more teams in the hunt for the playoffs deeper into the season than ever before (and, thus, more people attending the games and watching them on television).
Tagliabue also has been a huge proponent of marketing the product to the billions of people who don't live in the United States. As the Dolphins announced on Wednesday, the first overseas regular-season game drew more than 500,000 ticket requests in 72 hours.
Multiple franchises are worth at least $1 billion, and the television contracts continue to break records every time they are renewed.
So what happened? As one league insider told us Thursday morning, it's a "classic case of a bunch of sportswriters being clueless."
And that brings us back to the point that one of our readers made recently. Why is it that sportswriters are the ones to decide who gets in and who doesn't?
In this specific case, we have a feeling that if the owners had a voice in the process, Tagliabue would have been the first one through the door last weekend.
