Goodell's the guy;owners tab chief operating officer as NFL commish

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NORTHBROOK, Ill. -- Roger Goodell, who started his pro football career as a lowly intern in the National Football League's New York office, completed a 24-year climb up the National Football League ladder Tuesday when owners elected him to succeed Paul Tagliabue as commissioner.
The eighth chief executive in the 86-year history of the league beat out NFL attorney Gregg Levy, Cleveland attorney Frederick Nance, Fidelity Investments vice chairman Robert Reynolds and Constellation Energy chairman Mayo Shattuck III. It was never much of a contest, because a small group of lower-revenue owners could never muster nearly the 11 votes it would have taken to block Goodell's election.
In the end, the win came at about 5:25 p.m. CDT time in a hotel ballroom in the Chicago suburbs, and it was unanimous, though Oakland owner Al Davis said the meeting was occasionally contentious. Any owners who opposed Goodell knew it was fruitless to continue to work against him. Goodell's coronation came on the fifth ballot, by a vote of 32-0. Search committee co-chair Dan Rooney then went upstairs to Goodell's room in the Renaissance Hotel and told him the good news. When Goodell entered the ballroom, he hugged Tagliabue, and the owners stood as one to applaud their new leader. "A very emotional moment for me,''' Goodell said.
"It's an extraordinary feeling,'' Goodell said after a news conference here, walking down a hallway and palming an official NFL football, a ball that will soon bear his signature. "I'm thrilled by the challenge, and I'm excited for the opportunity. I thank the owners for their confidence in me.''
The 47-year-old Goodell, who has a five-year contract, said he and Tagliabue had not talked in detail about plans for succession, but he will probably take office sometime before the Sept. 7 start of the NFL season.
Goodell is the son of former New York Republican Sen. Charles Goodell, who was appointed in 1968 to serve out the term of the assassinated Sen. Robert Kennedy. He has business and economics degrees from Washington and Jefferson College in Pennsylvania and joined the NFL in 1982 as an intern. He rose through the ranks and was named the NFL's chief operating officer in 2001, handling disparate and complex business negotiations. "You can't draw up the job experience for this job better than Roger has experienced,'' said New York Giants president John Mara. "He paid his dues and was an ideal candidate from the beginning. There was no reason not to vote for him.''
"Roger has two great qualities that a commissioner needs," said Broncos President and CEO Pat Bowlen. "He's smart and honest."
"He's shown a passion for the NFL, which is important to me,'' said Davis. "We're excited that a man who has made the NFL his career will get this chance. Roger will do well.''
Goodell had been Tagliabue's trusted lieutenant. He'd been given increasingly major tasks within the league over the last few years, including riding herd on the NFL's negotiations to put a franchise in Los Angeles, taking an active role in the recent negotiations that led to a $24 billion TV contract with the networks, and assisting in the rancorous talks that led to the extension of the collective bargaining agreement with the NFL Players Association last spring.
"It's a great day for the NFL," said a close observer of league affairs, Mark Ganis, president of Chicago-based Sportscorp. "Roger looks at the league not as a sports business, but as a great American business, like McDonald's. He's very good at looking at other vistas, other opportunities. You will see him be very focused on innovations and technology. Under Roger I think the league will continue to be the envy of every sports business on the planet."
When Goodell made his case to the ownership on Monday, he stressed that he didn't want to be what he called a "status-quo commissioner,'' but that he wanted to work with the 32 teams to move the league forward. "My theme was that this wasn't time for the status quo,'' he said. "I said we needed to keep innovating.''
Goodell will have a very short honeymoon in the job he has wanted badly but never campaigned publicly for. "If he's commissioner for 20 years,'' said one longtime team general manager, "his toughest three years will be the first three. We've got significant disagreements inside the league with how we share revenue and how big a gap there is between the top- and bottom-earning teams.''
Many in the league believe the new CBA will be dissolved in 2009, the first year either side can opt out of the agreement, because it won't address the financial shortfalls of the low-revenue teams. Goodell will have to address the problems of the teams lower on the financial totem pole by attempting to ratchet up the revenue-sharing level from rich to not-so-rich from sources such as new media and stadiums.
His election came on the second day of a scheduled three-day meeting. "I was surprised,''' said Mara. "I packed to stay through Wednesday.'' The fact that there were several limousines waiting outside the hotel ready to take owners to O'Hare International Airport seemed to be a sign the voting process might be short, and relatively speaking, it was.
Each candidate gave a 45-minute presentation to the full group on Monday. On Tuesday the 32 owners began meeting, in groups of eight, with each candidate at 8 a.m. The five candidates spent one hour apiece, rotating from one group of eight to the next. Just after 2 p.m. the owners gathered in a hotel ballroom to begin the voting process. The five candidates, by league dictum, remained on the rolls for at least the first three secret ballots, with Tagliabue and the eight-man commissioner search committee then permitted to drop at least one candidate with the lowest vote total.
Entering the vote, it was thought that if there would be a roadblock to Goodell's election, it would be the owners who feel disaffected by the last round of collective bargaining with the players. Small-market owners such as Cincinnati's Mike Brown, Buffalo's Ralph Wilson and Jacksonville's Wayne Weaver feel the league did too little to bridge the growing revenue gap between big-earning teams like Washington and lower-revenue teams like Cincinnati and Buffalo.
Tagliabue was elected in 1989, the process took seven months because the late Jim Finks entered the process as the favorite to succeed Pete Rozelle. But after 12 ballots, including six in the final meeting of the process at a Cleveland hotel, Tagliabue got the required two thirds of the vote.
But here, in another Midwestern city, the process was infinitely easier. The NFL hopes Goodell can have the staying power and success of his two predecessors. Rozelle served for 29 years and brought the NFL into the modern era of sports. Tagliabue oversaw the commitment of 21 new stadiums and the rise in TV money from a $4 billion contract to a $24 billion deal.

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