By BARRY WILNER and ROB MAADDI
NEW YORK (AP) — Paul Tagliabue, who helped convey labor peace and riches to the NFL throughout his 17 years as commissioner however was criticized for not taking stronger motion on concussions, died Sunday from coronary heart failure. He was 84.
NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy mentioned Tagliabue’s household knowledgeable the league of his dying in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
Tagliabue, who had developed Parkinson’s illness, was commissioner after Pete Rozelle from 1989 to 2006. He was elected to the Professional Soccer Corridor of Fame as a part of a particular centennial class in 2020. Present Commissioner Roger Goodell succeeded Tagliabue.
“Paul was the ultimate steward of the game — tall in stature, humble in presence and decisive in his loyalty to the NFL,” Goodell mentioned in an announcement. “I am forever grateful and proud to have Paul as my friend and mentor. I cherished the innumerable hours we spent together where he helped shape me as an executive but also as a man, husband and father.”
Tagliabue oversaw a myriad of latest stadiums and negotiated tv contracts that added billions of {dollars} to the league’s checking account. Underneath him, there have been no labor stoppages.
Throughout his time, Los Angeles misplaced two groups and Cleveland one other, migrating to Baltimore earlier than being changed by an growth franchise.
Tagliabue applied a coverage on substance abuse that was thought-about the strongest in all main sports activities. He additionally established the “Rooney Rule,” wherein all groups with teaching vacancies should interview minority candidates. It has since been expanded to incorporate front-office and league government positions.
When he took workplace in 1989, the NFL had simply gotten its first Black head coach of the fashionable period. By the point Tagliabue stepped down in 2006, there have been seven minority head coaches within the league.
In considered one of his pivotal moments, Tagliabue known as off NFL video games the weekend after the terrorist assaults of Sept. 11, 2001. It was one of many few instances the general public in contrast him favorably to Rozelle, who proceeded with the video games the Sunday after John Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. A key presidential aide had suggested Rozelle that the NFL ought to play, a call that was one of many commissioner’s nice regrets.
Tagliabue actually had his detractors, notably over concussions. The problem has plagued the NFL for many years, although crew house owners had a significant function within the lack of progress in coping with head trauma.
In 2017, Tagliabue apologized for remarks he made many years in the past about concussions in soccer, acknowledging he didn’t have the correct knowledge on the time in 1994. He known as concussions “one of those pack-journalism issues” and contended the variety of concussions “is relatively small; the problem is the journalist issue.”
“Obviously,” he mentioned on Discuss of Fame Community, “I do remorse these remarks. Trying again, it was not smart language to make use of to specific my ideas on the time. My language was intemperate, and it led to critical misunderstanding.
“My intention at the time was to make a point which could have been made fairly simply: that there was a need for better data. There was a need for more reliable information about concussions and uniformity in terms of how they were being defined in terms of severity.”
Whereas concussion recognition, analysis and remedy lagged for a lot of Tagliabue’s tenure, his work on the labor entrance was exemplary.
As considered one of his first choices, Tagliabue reached out to the gamers’ union, then run by Gene Upshaw, a Corridor of Fame participant and former star for Al Davis’ Raiders. Tagliabue had insisted he be straight concerned in all labor negotiations, mainly rendering ineffective the Administration Council of membership executives that had dealt with such duties for almost twenty years.
It was a clever choice.
“When Paul was named commissioner after that seven-month search in 1989, that’s when the league got back on track,” mentioned Joe Browne, who spent 50 years as an NFL government and was a confidant of Rozelle and Tagliabue.
“Paul had insisted during his negotiations for the position that final control over matters such as labor and all commercial business dealings had to rest in the commissioner’s office. The owners agreed and that was a large step forward toward the tremendous rebound we had as a league — an expanded league — in the ’90s and beyond.”
Tagliabue cast a strong relationship with Upshaw. In breaking with the contentious dealings between the league and the NFL Gamers Affiliation, Tagliabue and Upshaw saved negotiations respectful and centered on what would profit each side. Compromise was key, Upshaw all the time mentioned — though the union usually was criticized for being too accommodating.
Tagliabue had been the NFL’s Washington lawyer, a associate within the prestigious agency of Covington and Burling. He was chosen as commissioner in October 1989 over New Orleans normal supervisor Jim Finks after a bitter combat highlighting the variations between the NFL’s outdated guard and newer house owners.
But throughout his reign as commissioner, which ended within the spring of 2006 after pushing by a extremely contested labor settlement, he managed to unite these divided house owners and, in actual fact, relied extra on the old-timers who supported him than on Jerry Jones and most of the youthful house owners.
Tagliabue was born on Nov. 24, 1940, in Jersey Metropolis, New Jersey. He was the 6-foot-5 captain of the basketball crew at Georgetown and graduated in 1962 as one of many faculty’s main rebounders on the time — his profession common later listed just under that of Patrick Ewing. He was president of his class and a Rhodes scholar finalist. Three years later, he graduated from NYU Legislation College and subsequently labored as a lawyer within the Protection Division earlier than becoming a member of Covington & Burling.
He ultimately took over the NFL account, establishing a detailed relationship with Rozelle and different NFL officers throughout a collection of authorized actions within the Nineteen Seventies and Nineteen Eighties.
Tagliabue was reserved by nature and it generally led to coolness with the media, which had embraced Rozelle, an affable former public relations man. Even after he left workplace, Tagliabue didn’t measure up in that regard with Goodell, who started his NFL profession within the public relations division.
However after 9/11, Tagliabue confirmed a special aspect, significantly towards league staff who had misplaced family members within the assaults. He accompanied Ed Tighe, an NFL Administration Council lawyer whose spouse died that day, to Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, just a few blocks from the NFL workplace.
Artwork Shell, a Corridor of Fame participant, turned the NFL’s first modern-day Black head coach with the Raiders. He obtained to see Tagliabue up shut and thought him completely fitted to his job.
“After my coaching career was over, I had the privilege of working directly with Paul in the league office,” Shell mentioned, “His philosophy on nearly each concern was, ‘If it’s broke, repair it. And if it’s not broke, repair it anyway.’
“He always challenged us to find better ways of doing things. Paul never lost sight of his responsibility to do what was right for the game. He was the perfect choice as NFL commissioner.”
Tagliabue is survived by his spouse Chandler, son Drew, and daughter Emily.
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