Programming note: Tune in to 'Beyond the Scoreboard' today at 5:30pm on CSN Bay Area when former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and 49ers CEO Jed York join host Rick Horrow to discuss the business of the Super Bowl.
When I succeeded Pete Rozelle as NFL Commissioner in November 1989, I’d had a variety of Super Bowl experiences -- some professional as counsel to the league, some personal as a sports fan.
Here are a few moments that stand out...
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SIGN UP HERE - In 1969, shortly after Joe Namath led the Jets to his “guaranteed” victory in Super Bowl III, Commissioner Rozelle was considering whether Namath should separate himself from Bachelor’s III, a place in New York that Rozelle felt was not appropriate for Namath. As a young attorney, I worked with the commissioner on this, and learned a lot about his approach to protecting the integrity of the Super Bowl, and NFL football generally.
- In the early '70s, I spent many months as league counsel in litigation in New Orleans involving the TV “blackout” of the Super Bowl telecast in the region where the game was being played. In the ‘80s, among other things, I helped the commisssioner deal with requests from US senators and President Reagan’s White House to honor Mother Theresa during the Super Bowl halftime show. Rozelle respectfully declined, and noted “at least they seem to recognize that football is religion for many of our fans.”
- Living in Washington in the ‘80s, our teenage daughter, like her schoolmates, caught Washington fervor (or fever) during the 1987 season, and my wife Chan, daughter Emily and I were lucky to travel to and from San Diego on the team’s plane for Super Bowl XXII as guests of owner Jack Kent Cooke. We experienced not just another Super Bowl but Doug Williams' extraordinary performance in leading Washington to its 42-10 win, and being named MVP as the first African-American quarterback to lead a team to Super Bowl victory. As if it were yesterday, we all now recall Emily’s inexplicable excitement on getting autographs from Doug and all of the "hogs” who blocked for him.
- But when I became commissioner, I quickly came to appreciate how little I knew about the complex mix of ingredients that make the Super Bowl one of the globe’s preeminent sporting events. My learning began when we decided to rescind the conditional award of a Super Bowl to Arizona after the state’s voters declined to approve the Martin Luther King holiday. This, we concluded, had been a critical element of the award and could not be squared with the values of the league and its teams.
- My understanding of the Super Bowl’s complex structure of programming, events, values, constituents and messages accelerated as we were preparing to play Super Bowl XXV in January 1992 -- when America was preparing to send its armed a forces into Iraq to thwart Saddam Hussein’s takeover of Kuwait. And our experiences and decisions then sharply changed the way “the Super Bowl” has been structured and presented ever since.