ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, December 7, 1996 TAG: 9612090064
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From Washington Post and Chicago Tribune reports
THE NFL IS THE sports extravaganza it is today because of the innovative thinking of Pete Rozelle.
Alvin ``Pete'' Rozelle was a masterful promoter, innovator and deal-maker who honed his skills as commissioner of the National Football League for almost 30 years.
He died Friday at his home in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., of brain cancer. He was 70.
As creator of the Super Bowl - the most-watched single event in television history - Rozelle was perhaps the most influential non-athlete in the history of American sports. Under his leadership, the NFL expanded from 12 to 28 teams (there now are 30) and replaced baseball as the country's most popular televised sport.
``It's the end of a great era,'' said Art Modell, owner of the Baltimore Ravens. ``What we enjoy every Sunday can be attributed to Pete's vision and talents.''
Rozelle gained early fame for suspending players Alex Karras of Detroit and Paul Hornung of Green Bay for gambling and for calling NFL founder and Bears owner George Halas on the carpet for criticizing referees.
A former public relations executive known for his smooth demeanor and perpetual suntan, Rozelle took a mom-and-pop operation based in suburban Philadelphia and turned it into a glamorous, multi-billion dollar industry, headquartered on two floors of a Park Avenue skyscraper in midtown Manhattan.
He began in 1961 by successfully lobbying Congress to authorize single-network television contracts by pro sports leagues, a triumph that protected the NFL from antitrust TV lawsuits and led to a revenue-sharing plan that ensured financial prosperity for all NFL teams.
``He was born to be commissioner of pro football,'' said Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt, one of the fathers of the American Football League.
Rozelle's greatest triumph came in the summer of 1966 when he traveled to Washington, settled into an apartment at the Watergate and began lobbying Congress to grant the NFL a limited antitrust exemption that would allow it to merge with the fledgling AFL. That exemption ultimately led to the Super Bowl. In 1970 Rozelle also helped develop ``Monday Night Football,'' a televised game that, like the Super Bowl, became an American institution.
Rozelle's leadership was controversial at times.
In 1963, he angered many Americans by allowing NFL games to be played two days after President Kennedy was assassinated. Rozelle later called this decision the biggest mistake of his professional life.
In the early 1980s, Rozelle was criticized for not acknowledging that illegal drug use by NFL players was a problem that needed to be addressed. ``My personal opinion is that this is not a major problem for us,'' he said in a 1980 interview. Rozelle later admitted he was slow to recognize the use of cocaine and muscle-building anabolic steroids.
Rozelle devised the Super Bowl as a January, postseason showcase, pitting the champions of the rival NFL and AFL. The first game in January 1967 was known as the AFL-NFL World Championship because Rozelle considered Super Bowl a ``corny cliche.'' In that game - witnessed by 61,946 fans in cavernous Los Angeles Coliseum - the NFL's Green Bay Packers defeated the AFL's Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10. The game was played before thousands of empty seats, a disappointment to Rozelle, who had fretted all along that the top ticket price - $12 - had been set too high.
``Our goal from the first was to make this more than a game, to make it an event ... even if it wasn't a competitive game,'' Rozelle told the Los Angeles Times in January of this year, before the 30th Super Bowl, where tickets sold for $350. ``We wanted people to have some fun.''
Rozelle often recalled with relish that the Super Bowl ``took off'' in 1969 when the AFL New York Jets, led by a flashy, cocky, long-haired quarterback named Joe Namath, beat the seasoned Baltimore Colts of the NFL. The Jets' victory brought instant respect to the AFL - and to the Super Bowl. The next year, Super Bowl IV set a record for TV viewers, surpassing even the first moon walk by Neil Armstrong.
In 1950, Rozelle graduated from the University of San Francisco and remained as assistant athletic director for two years. His ambition was to become sports editor of the Los Angeles Times, but Rams general manager Tex Schramm offered him a job as team publicist.
He was 33 when he was named NFL commissioner, replacing Bert Bell, who died while watching a game in 1959. Rozelle was a compromise choice after 23 ballots. But he moved decisively to upgrade the 12-team league, at a time when college football was more popular and the average NFL franchise was worth a mere $2 million.
One of Rozelle's first actions was to move the NFL's offices from a small building outside Philadelphia to New York, a short stroll to the headquarters of the major TV networks. Today, fortified by the league's billion-dollar TV contracts, NFL franchises are each worth in excess of $100 million.
``Pete was a mentor and a friend to many of us in the league,'' his successor, Paul Tagliabue, said. ``We will miss his quiet demeanor, his subtle sense of humor and his uncanny ability to form a consensus. He will always be the gold standard against which sports commissioners are measured.''
LENGTH: Medium: 96 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Rozelle was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fameby CNBin 1985, a unique honor because such selections almost always are
made after a candidate's retirement. color.