SUPER BOWL XXI : THE NFL OWNERS : These Are the People Who Really Call the Signals

EDITOR’S NOTE

Who are the people who own the teams that compete in the NFL, and strive each year to make it to the Super Bowl? What kinds of people are they? Are they all rich? Are they all self-made? Do they own teams because they love the sport, or because the teams are good investments? The Times assigned staff writers Bob Oates and Earl Gustkey to research and write about the NFL owners with these, and other, questions in mind. Their stories appear in the adjoining columns. Oates writes about the AFC’s owners, Gustkey the NFC’s.

At a Waikiki Beach hotel a few years ago, when pro football’s club owners strolled in for an executive session, a bystander said: “There goes the most exclusive men’s club in the world--and the most unusual.”

Today, the club isn’t quite as exclusive as it used to be. Two women have since been admitted--Virginia Halas McCaskey of Chicago and Georgia Rosenbloom Frontiere of Bel-Air.

But as a club, it continues to be more exclusive than the U.S. Senate, which has 100 members. And it remains highly unusual.

For instance, it has 29 members, even though membership is rigidly limited to 28--or one for each franchise in the National Football League.

The extra membership has been awarded to the New York Giants.

They’ve got two seats because their co-owners, Wellington and Tim Mara, can’t stand one another.

Tim is Wellington’s nephew, and each has a 50% interest in the Giants, but they have yet to exchange a word, friendly or surly, in the 1980s.

At NFL meetings, they sit at different sides of the room.

That violates the NFL rule restricting each team to one representative in all executive or owner-only sessions.

Overriding the rule, the league simply gave the Giants two equal voices and said that Commissioner Pete Rozelle would break ties, settling anything the Maras can’t.

Nothing good has come of the feud, so far, except an NFC title and an appearance in Super Bowl XXI for the Giants.

Other than that, what’s different about the NFL men’s--er, mostly men’s--club?

Those who have looked into it suggest that there are more differences than similarities. Here are five little things:

--NFL Club members pay no annual dues. This is the only private club in the world that pays its members. By agreement with television, the league’s 28 teams are getting about $17 million apiece this year just for breathing.

--The NFL Club meets only in warm, romantic places. Its annual spring convention rotates among three resort areas: Hawaii, Palm Springs and a lush country club in the wilds of Arizona.

--While operating their teams, some members of the club have lost millions of dollars, and some, curiously, haven’t lost a cent.

Two of the strangest cases are both in the AFC’s Central Division, where, before the emergence of TV, Houston’s Bud Adams was losing up to $1 million a year. Meanwhile, Cincinnati’s John Sawyer has made a profit every year without exception. The value of Sawyer’s $3-million investment has jumped 10 times since 1968.

--Some members of the NFL Club were admitted for nothing. Some paid initiation fees of $70 million or more.

Denver’s Pat Bowlen was one who paid $70 million. But Miami’s owner, Joe Robbie, has never put up a cent. Despite this disparity, each owns his team outright.

--NFL franchise holders are members of the only private club in the world that has wholehearted commitments both to socialism and free enterprise.

When it pleases them to be socialists, they divide billions in television money equally.

But the race to the Super Bowl each year is mostly an exercise in free enterprise.

That conflict makes this a really crazy club. Consider:

On the one hand, three or four times a year, NFL owners must behave as gentlemen at league meetings. They must think collectively--and act interdependently--to make the decisions that will keep them safely ahead of others in the entertainment industry.

On the other hand, NFL owners tend to emulate robber barons. They must watch for their chances to destroy, say, the owner who only two months ago ruined their season by claiming a good athlete they were trying to sneak through on waivers.

In short, pro football is a neurotic, traumatic business.

The owners are mostly tough, ambitious people, survivors of a hard world. That is precisely what makes them different from the members of the usual men’s clubs, where many get in on social prominence or because they chose the right grandfather.

Particularly in the last 15 or 20 years, the NFL Club has admitted only the toughest--the wealthy entrepreneurs who could compete and win in big ways in free-enterprise jungles.

To such people, fraternizing with the enemy has always been abhorrent. Now, suddenly, they must sit down and vote on rules and policies that will benefit the league, very possibly at the expense of their individual teams.

The conflict makes them restless bedfellows in a strange bed. They thoroughly enjoy it there, to be sure, or they would kick off the sheets and jump out. But at the same time, it drives them bananas.

Who leads this club? Nobody and everybody. There are factions and cliques, of course, but nobody dominates, in the manner that George Halas and George Preston Marshall once did. The reality is that these are fiercely independent people, most of them success stories at home in other businesses.

Such people are used to leading, not following. Thus it often takes a year or more to get a consensus on such simple issues as roster limits and instant replay.

One stumbling block is the NFL constitution, which requires 21 yes votes on major issues. That means eight owners can block almost anything.

The most influential man in the room--Rozelle--is a nonmember.

Seldom far out in front of the electorate, Rozelle habitually works the cloakrooms until, on any issue that he deems major, he has a majority with him.

Then he goes public and, with carefully reasoned arguments, usually carries the day.

Said Raider owner Al Davis:

“I would say, first, that the thing that makes (this club) go is, the owners honestly love pro football. I mean they all do. The other thing is, most of the time, Rozelle points them in the right direction.”

Al Davis? With a good word for Pete Rozelle? It must be a crazy club.