Pete Rozelle

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Pete Rozelle

(born March 1, 1926, South Gate, Calif., U.S. — died Dec. 6, 1996, Rancho Santa Fe, Calif.) U.S. sports executive and commissioner of the National Football League (NFL). He graduated from the University of San Francisco and initially worked in public relations. Named commissioner in 1960, he doubled the league's size, helped create the Super Bowl, and negotiated lucrative television deals with the networks. In 1966 Rozelle secured an agreement to merge the NFL with the rival American Football League. In 1970 he persuaded ABC to broadcast Monday Night Football, which proved a huge success. NFL attendance more than tripled during his tenure, which lasted until 1989.

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Biography: Pete Rozelle

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Pete Rozelle (1926-1996) served as commissioner of the National Football League (NFL) from 1960 until 1989, leading the League to unprecedented profitability and popularity.

Born in the small California town of South Gate, outside of Los Angeles, on March 1, 1926, Alvin Ray "Pete" Rozelle took an early interest in sports. He played basketball and tennis for Compton High School, from which he graduated in 1944. Upon graduation, Rozelle enlisted in the U.S. Navy, serving until 1946. He then enrolled in Compton Junior College and returned to the world of sports as the college's athletic news director. Rozelle also covered high school basketball for local newspapers. The same year that he entered Compton Junior College, the NFL's Cleveland Rams moved to Los Angeles and chose the college as the site of their training camp. Rozelle showed an interest in the team and became an assistant to Maxwell Stiles, the Rams' public relations director. Rozelle made a good impression on the Rams' administration, but his position was strictly temporary. In 1948, he left to finish his degree at the University of San Francisco (USF).

Rozelle graduated from USF in 1950 and became the University's athletic news director, a part-time position. He was able to attend major sporting events and made many contacts that would help him professionally in the years to come. One such contact was Tex Schramm, general manager of the Los Angeles Rams, who hired Rozelle to serve as the Rams' public relations director in 1952. Rozelle remained in that position until 1955, when he left to join the public relations firm of P.K. Macker in San Francisco. While in this capacity, Rozelle represented Australian athletes and sports firms during Australia's hosting of the 1956 Olympic Games.

While Rozelle advanced his career in public relations, the Los Angeles Rams were experiencing administrative difficulties. Fifty percent of the team was owned by Dan Reeves, and the other half was owned by two people who could not get along with him. To escape this strife, Schramm left the Rams in 1957, and the club was without a general manager. NFL commissioner Bert Bell offered the position to Rozelle, who overcame initial misgivings and took the post before the end of the year. He proved an immediate success with the Rams, using his talents as a public relations professional to soothe the turmoil within the organization. In the process, he greatly impressed Reeves.

State of the Game

The popularity of football had increased steadily throughout the 1950s. In 1958, the sport received a gigantic boost when one of its first nationally televised championship games (featuring the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants) turned into one of the most well-played and exciting games of all time. Although interest in football had increased, a 1960 Gallup poll revealed that 34 percent of Americans named baseball as their favorite sport, with just 21 percent preferring football.

When the owners of NFL franchises met for their annual meeting in 1960, their league faced serious challenges. Bell, who had served as commissioner of the League since 1946, had died suddenly the previous year, and a rival professional league, the American Football League (AFL), had been established. The AFL promised to compete with NFL teams for both players and markets. Various factions among the 12 NFL owners advanced candidates to fill Bell's position as commissioner, but after ten days and 23 ballots, no candidate had secured a majority. Finally, Reeves put forward his employee, Pete Rozelle, as a compromise candidate. Rozelle was elected, but was opposed by some of the NFL's most established and influential owners.

"League Think"

Upon becoming commissioner, Rozelle immediately set out to revolutionize the administration of professional football. Borrowing from the stated intention of the AFL owners, Rozelle proposed that all NFL teams pool revenues they received from television contracts and advertising, and then distribute them evenly. This approach to the distribution of media revenues was not popular with owners in large markets such as New York and Los Angeles, but Rozelle saw a collective approach as essential to the survival of teams operating in smaller markets, such as Green Bay, Wisconsin. Furthermore, by presenting a collective front, the NFL would be able to secure better national television contracts. Rozelle referred to his collective approach as "League Think." Although League owners soon saw the benefits of Rozelle's tactics, legal obstacles to his plan still existed. In order to pool their television revenues, the NFL would need a partial exemption from the Sherman Antitrust Act, which prohibits monopolistic business practices. Rozelle argued the NFL's case before the U.S. Congress and secured the required exemption in September 1961.

Rise of the AFL

Under Rozelle's leadership, NFL television revenues tripled between 1962 and 1964 to $14 million per year, and the popularity of football began to increase rapidly. The AFL had also benefited from football's increased popularity and soon began to pose a serious threat to the NFL's prosperity. Competition between the leagues resulted in greatly increased salaries for players, which in turn began to effect the financial health of both leagues. The situation had become intolerable by 1966, and Rozelle was forced to act. First, he convinced the team owners in both leagues to allow the AFL to merge into an expanded NFL. Rozelle then convinced Congress to grant a further Sherman Antitrust Act exemption for the NFL to enable the merger to proceed. This merger also resulted in the creation of an end-of-season game between the champions of the NFL and the AFL, which soon became known as the Super Bowl. The first Super Bowl, matching the Green Bay Packers of the NFL and the Kansas City Chiefs of the AFL, was played in January 1967.

Prosperity

The reconstituted NFL enjoyed unprecedented popularity throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Television revenues continued to rise and Monday Night Football, first shown on the ABC network in 1970, soon became a national institution. Gallup conducted another poll in 1972 that revealed football was the favorite sport of 36 percent of Americans while just 21 percent favored baseball. Despite the growth of the NFL during the 1970s, new challenges emerged. Players threatened to strike in 1974 for the right to become free agents when their contracts expired. Also, another rival league, the World Football League (WFL), came into existence the same year, but went defunct in 1975 due to insufficient financial backing. By 1980, the NFL comprised 28 teams, up from 12 in 1960, and had reached new heights in both profitability and popularity.

Labor and Legal Challenges

Rozelle's "League Think" strategy had succeeded beyond the owners' wildest dreams, but the economic realities of sports were beginning to change again in the 1980s. Although the NFL's television revenues continued to rise, reaching an all-time high of $2.1 billion for the 1987 season, the importance of stadium leases, concessions, and the sale of "luxury boxes" became an increasingly important part of team revenues. Luxury boxes were private blocks of seats featuring amenities including televisions, bars, and buffets, which are normally sold to corporate clients for an entire season. Older stadiums, which lacked luxury boxes and were often owned by the home team's city, generated far less revenue than newer venues. Furthermore, cities desperate for a professional football franchise were willing to build stadiums at public expense and offer generous payments to teams willing to leave their traditional markets. Owners received offers they literally could not refuse. One of the League's most storied and profitable franchises, the Oakland Raiders, moved to Los Angeles after securing a favorable stadium lease in 1980. Rozelle opposed the move in the courts, as did the city of Oakland, but they were unable to prevent the Raiders from moving. The courts eventually ruled that the NFL would violate antitrust laws if it barred its owners from moving their franchises to secure more lucrative arrangements in new cities. Following the resolution of this case the Baltimore Colts, another of the NFL's most famous teams, moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, for the 1984 season.

The contractual rights of players continued to haunt the NFL during the 1980s. Throughout the League's history, players had, in effect, been the property of their teams. When a player's contract expired, he was forced to renegotiate only with his own team, rather than being able to market his skills to all NFL teams. This meant that players were forced to take whatever salary their teams were willing to pay, which had the effect of holding salaries down. In the heyday of the AFL, a sort of free agency had existed, since AFL teams felt free to offer contracts to NFL players, and salaries had risen dramatically. Following the incorporation of the AFL into the NFL, competition between franchises for players became almost nonexistent once again. Rozelle had done his best to secure this arrangement by instituting what became known as the Rozelle Rule, which required any team that signed a player previously belonging to another team to offer compensation for the lost player. The effect of the Rozelle Rule was to make signing a free agent a very risky prospect for a team, which would only find out after the fact what type of compensation they would be required to make to the player's original team. Under these circumstances, player salaries stagnated throughout the 1970s and the mood of the players became increasingly militant. Players struck in 1982 and 1987 to secure some form of free agency, or at least a modification of the Rozelle Rule. Eventually, a very controlled form of free agency was put into place, a salary cap installed, and the Rozelle Rule suspended. This compromise solution is still in effect today, although it had been made with some acrimony, alienating fans and hurting the League's popularity.

In addition to its labor and legal troubles, the NFL was increasingly confronted with the problem of substance abuse among its players. The use of steroids to enhance on-field performance, which had been condoned by many teams, became anathema due to public outrage and the discovery of the physical side-effects of steroid abuse. Additionally, off-the-field use of recreational drugs by players caused a seemingly unending series of embarrassing incidents. Rozelle was shocked by the pervasiveness of drug abuse in the League, as was the public, and by 1986, the NFL's television ratings were beginning to drop for the first time during his tenure.

Another Rival

A new rival professional league, the United States Football League (USFL), came into existence in 1981. The USFL enjoyed far more secure financial backing than had the WFL, including among its owners multi-millionaire Donald Trump. Despite the fact that the USFL avoided direct competition with the NFL by playing its games in the spring, the very existence of the new league had the usual effect of creating a form of free agency and causing players' salaries to rise dramatically. The USFL enjoyed several years of prosperity before eventually moving its games to the fall in an attempt to compete directly with the NFL. It combined this move with the filing of an antitrust lawsuit against the NFL, seeking $1.5 billion in damages for what it alleged was the NFL's restraint of trade within the business of football. Under Rozelle's direction, the NFL successfully defended itself against the USFL's competitive and legal challenges. The new league folded shortly after it lost the preliminary judgment in its court case against the NFL in 1987.

Rozelle guided the NFL through the troubled 1980s, with television revenues per team climbing from $69 million to $493.5 million between 1977 and 1986, but at a high personal cost. By the end of the decade, he was having difficulty sleeping and was smoking three packs of cigarettes per day. Rozelle's influence and effectiveness were officially recognized when he was elected to the NFL Hall of Fame in 1985. Despite this honor, the perception that the League's popularity and profitability were stagnating was beginning to undermine Rozelle's support among owners in the late 1980s. In 1989, with more than two years remaining on his contract, Rozelle decided that he had had enough and resigned as commissioner of the NFL.

Rozelle served briefly on the board of directors of NTN Communications, Inc. of Carlsbad, California, in 1994, before retiring due to his failing health. He died of cancer on December 6, 1996 in Rancho Mirage, California.

Pete Rozelle
Pete Rozelle (left) and George Halas (right) in the early 1980s.
Date of birth	March 1, 1926(1926-03-01)
Place of birth	South Gate, California, United States
Date of death	December 6, 1996 (aged 70)
Position(s)	NFL Commissioner General Manager
College	University of San Francisco
Honors	1963 SI Sports MOY
Team(s) as a coach/administrator
1957-1959 1960-1989	Los Angeles Rams (GM) NFL commissioner
Pro Football Hall of Fame, 1985

Early life

Rozelle was born in South Gate, California and grew up in suburban Lynwood, California during the Great Depression. He graduated from Compton High School in 1944, lettering in baseball and basketball. He was drafted into the Navy in 1944 and served 18 months in the Pacific on an oil tanker. Rozelle began his career at the University of San Francisco, working as a student publicist for the school's football team. He had already worked in public relations for the Los Angeles Rams front office and while in the athletic office at USF he marketed the Don's National Invitation Tournament championship basketball season of 1949 into a national media event. He graduated from USF in 1950.

He held a series of public relations jobs in Southern California, marketing the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia for a Los Angeles based company. He joined the Los Angeles Rams as its public relations specialist. By 1957, Rozelle was offered the GM job with the Rams. He turned a disorganized, unprofitable team, lost in the growing LA market, into a business success.

Commissioner

1960s

After Bert Bell's death in 1959, Rozelle was the surprise choice for his replacement as NFL commissioner. According to Howard Cosell in his book I Never Played the Game, the owners took 23 ballots before settling on Rozelle as NFL Commissioner at a January 26, 1960 meeting. When he took office there were twelve teams in the NFL playing a twelve game schedule to frequently half-empty stadiums, and only a few teams had television contracts. The NFL in 1960 was following a business model that had evolved from the 1930s. NFL sources credit Rozelle with originating gate and television profit-sharing. However, it was the rival American Football League which initiated both concepts at its formation in 1959. The revenue-sharing was a major factor in stabilizing the AFL and guaranteeing the success of its small-market teams. Rozelle recognized the value of such an arrangement, and following the lead of the rival AFL, Rozelle negotiated large television contracts to broadcast every NFL game played each season. In doing so, he not only deftly played one television network against the other, but also persuaded NFL team owners — most notably Carroll Rosenbloom of the Baltimore Colts and George Preston Marshall of the Washington Redskins — to agree to share revenues between teams, as the American Football League (AFL) had done since its inception. His business model, which emulated that of the AFL, was essentially a cartel that benefited all teams equally, from revenue sharing to the player draft.

JFK assassination

The AFL

By 1965, the rival American Football League was firmly established, with a new NBC-TV contract, and a new superstar in Joe Namath. After an NFL team (the Giants) had signed an AFL player (the Buffalo Bills' Pete Gogolak) in early 1966,American Football League commissioner Al Davis had shaken the NFL. Davis had immediately started signing NFL stars such as Roman Gabriel, John Brodie and Mike Ditka to contracts with AFL teams. Fearful of their league's collapse, NFL owners, without the knowledge of Rozelle, approached AFL owners (without the knowledge of Davis) and requested merger talks. AFL and NFL executives including Lamar Hunt, founder of the AFL and owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, completed a plan. Rozelle is erroneously credited with forging the merger. In October 1966, he did testify to Congress to convince them to allow the merger, promising that if they permitted it, "Professional football operations will be preserved in the 23 cities and 25 stadiums where such operations are presently being conducted."; and "Every franchise of both leagues will remain in its present location." The merger was allowed, but despite Rozelle's promises, numerous NFL teams have since moved, or used the threat of moving to have cities build or improve stadiums. Following the urging of American Football League commissioner Al Davis, Rozelle also agreed to the creation of the Super Bowl and later supported the concept of Monday Night Football. NFL sources have since aggrandized Rozelle's part in both the merger and Monday Night Football.

1970s

The 1970s saw Rozelle at the peak of his powers as a sports league commissioner. He presided over a decade of league expansion. Monday Night Football became a staple of American television viewing, and the Super Bowl became the single most watched televised event of the year. During this decade, the upstart World Football League organized, pushing player salaries higher even as it ended up in bankruptcy. Towards the end of the decade, labor unrest and litigation over issues such as the NFL Players Association and team movement to new markets foreshadowed Rozelle's decline as commissioner.

1980s

The 1980s saw drug scandals and further struggle with powerful owners over team movement. Rozelle, again according to Monday Night Football commentator Howard Cosell, pushed the NFL into an internecine struggle with Al Davis concerning the movement of the Oakland Raiders franchise to Los Angeles. Other owners, such as Leonard Tose of the Philadelphia Eagles, sought to move their franchises elsewhere. Ultimately, the NFL lost its court case with Davis, and the Oakland franchise moved to Los Angeles. The sports world was very aware of the men's dislike for one another. In 1981, the Oakland Raiders won the Super Bowl. As commissioner, Rozelle handed the Super Bowl Trophy over to Al Davis. It was said by some^[who?] that he used both hands to give Davis the trophy so that he wouldn't have to shake his enemy's hand. Additionally, the United States Football League formed, pushing player salaries higher, and ultimately embroiled the league in further legal troubles.

Personal life, retirement and death

Rozelle married his first wife, an artist named Jane Coupe, in 1949. The couple had one child, Anne, born in 1958: however, Jane's problems with alcohol meant that Pete (along with his lifelong secretary, Thelma Elkjer) was his daughter's primary caretaker, unheard of in that era. It was not uncommon to see Anne at owner's meetings (some joked that her love of Joe Namath was a reason behind the AFL-NFL merger) or for Pete to take off early to help her with schoolwork or to take her out on the town. Rozelle and Coupe divorced in 1967 (with Rozelle awarded full custody of Anne), and he remarried in 1974 to Carrie Cooke, daughter-in-law of sports impresario Jack Kent Cooke, who owned the Washington Redskins. This time, the two stayed together until his death on December 6, 1996 in Rancho Santa Fe, California.

Under Rozelle the NFL thrived and had become an American icon, despite two players' strikes and two different upstart leagues. He retired as commissioner on November 5, 1989. By the time of his resignation, the number of teams in the league had grown to 28, and team owners presided over sizable revenues from U.S. broadcasting networks.

Rozelle died of brain cancer at the age of 70 on December 6, 1996 in Rancho Santa Fe. The following month the NFL honored his death by wearing a decal on the back of the Green Bay Packers and New England Patriots helmets during Super Bowl XXXI that had the NFL shield with Pete written in cursive on it. Pete Rozelle is interred at El Camino Memorial Park in San Diego, California.

Honors

While still serving as commissioner, Rozelle was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985. The institution's annual Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award was established in 1989.

References

^ ^a ^b Brady, Dave (November 24, 1963). "It's Tradition To Carry on, Rozelle Says". The Washington Post: p. C2.

External links

Links to related articles

Sporting positions
Preceded by Dan Reeves	Los Angeles Rams General Manager 1957–1960	Succeeded by Elroy Hirsch
Preceded by Austin Gunsel (interim)	Commissioner of the National Football League 1960-1989	Succeeded by Paul Tagliabue

v • d • e NFL Commissioners and presidents

1920–1921: Jim Thorpe • 1921–1939: Joseph Carr • 1939–1941: Carl Storck • 1941–1946: Elmer Layden • 1946–1959: Bert Bell • 1959–1960: Austin Gunsel • 1960–1989: Pete Rozelle • 1989–2006: Paul Tagliabue • 2006–present: Roger Goodell

Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year

1954: Roger Bannister · 1955: Johnny Podres · 1956: Bobby Joe Morrow · 1957: Stan Musial · 1958: Rafer Johnson · 1959: Ingemar Johansson · 1960: Arnold Palmer · 1961: Jerry Lucas · 1962: Terry Baker · 1963: Pete Rozelle · 1964: Ken Venturi · 1965: Sandy Koufax · 1966: Jim Ryun · 1967: Carl Yastrzemski · 1968: Bill Russell · 1969: Tom Seaver · 1970: Bobby Orr · 1971: Lee Trevino · 1972: Billie Jean King & John Wooden · 1973: Jackie Stewart · 1974: Muhammad Ali · 1975: Pete Rose · 1976: Chris Evert · 1977: Steve Cauthen · 1978: Jack Nicklaus · 1979: Terry Bradshaw & Willie Stargell · 1980: U.S. Olympic Hockey Team · 1981: Sugar Ray Leonard · 1982: Wayne Gretzky · 1983: Mary Decker · 1984: Edwin Moses & Mary Lou Retton · 1985: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar · 1986: Joe Paterno · 1987: Bob Bourne, Judi Brown King, Kipchoge Keino, Dale Murphy, Chip Rives, Patty Sheehan, Rory Sparrow, & Reggie Williams · 1988: Orel Hershiser · 1989: Greg LeMond · 1990: Joe Montana · 1991: Michael Jordan · 1992: Arthur Ashe · 1993: Don Shula · 1994: Bonnie Blair & Johann Olav Koss · 1995: Cal Ripken, Jr. · 1996: Tiger Woods · 1997: Dean Smith · 1998: Mark McGwire & Sammy Sosa · 1999: U.S. Women's Soccer Team · 2000: Tiger Woods · 2001: Curt Schilling & Randy Johnson · 2002: Lance Armstrong · 2003: David Robinson & Tim Duncan · 2004: Boston Red Sox · 2005: Tom Brady · 2006: Dwyane Wade · 2007: Brett Favre · 2008: Michael Phelps

v • d • e Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 1985

Frank Gatski • Joe Namath • Pete Rozelle • O. J. Simpson • Roger Staubach

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