NFL Meetings : Old-Guard Owners Move to Head Off Rift Over Commissioner

Members of the National Football League’s old-guard acknowledged Wednesday that a rift has opened in the league in recent months. And they moved to do something about it:

--First, they came up with a roster of 11 semifinalists in the search for a new commissioner, they made sure that the candidates favored by both sides are represented.

--Second, they withheld the names of all 11 in order to restrict early electioneering. Lamar Hunt, president of the Kansas City Chiefs, said the 11 names are known only to six NFL owners, fellow members of the search committee.

--And third, they decided to reduce the list to about three finalists in the next three or four weeks and present the names of all three to the other owners at the league’s election meeting late next month.

At that time, it will take 19 of a possible 28 votes to elect Pete Rozelle’s successor for a term of five to 10 years.

“I think this is wise, politically,” Rozelle said. “If the (search committee) recommends (a single) candidate, it will look like they’re trying to jam the new guy down people’s throats.”

Rozelle’s use of the word “politically” was an indication that trouble has come to his league, and indeed it has.

“There’s a dichotomy in the (NFL) today,” Art Modell, owner of the Cleveland Browns, confirmed. “And I am sorry about that.”

In the NFL, the division is between two kinds of club owners--those who bought into pro football for a song in the 1960s or before and those who paid $50 to $100 million in recent years.

Eight clubs have changed hands in the last five years--Denver, Philadelphia, San Diego, New Orleans, Seattle, Minnesota, New England and Dallas.

The owners of these hugely expensive establishments are concerned that the new commissioner might ignore them and their debt structures if he is selected by old-guard owners.

Hence the care that is being taken this week by the search committee--which is an exclusively old-guard committee--to ensure that the active participation of all owners in the selection of a new commissioner.

As Modell said, speaking as the senior owner present and a member of the search group: “We’re making sure that the (new owners) are part of the process.”

Defending the committee’s decision not to disclose the names of the 11 semifinalists, Wellington Mara, the old-guard owner of the New York Giants, said:

“The (candidates) deserve confidentiality. The proposers deserve confidentiality.”

In particular, the new-wave proposers.

Three candidates with NFL credentials are believed to head the list. They are former congressman and quarterback Jack Kemp, who has served on NFL charity committees for many years and in other assignments for Rozelle; Jim Finks, general manager of the Saints, and Paul Tagliabue, often an NFL attorney.

Rozelle, speaking from experience, said: “The (new commissioner) should either be knowledgeable about the inner workings of the league and its traditions or a quick study. He (should be) familiar with sports, preferably football.”

Even so, said Hunt, “There are (several) highly qualified (non-football) men on the list.”

If some of the names are mentioned publicly in the next few weeks, a committee member said, the leaks will come from the candidates themselves when they are interviewed--not from any NFL owner.

A professional search firm will screen and interview the candidates before they are interviewed again by selected NFL owners.

NFL Notes

The new commissioner will probably be on the job before the first exhibition games this summer, Lamar Hunt said. . . . The secretive search committee declined to make public its list of qualifications expected of an NFL commissioner. “Integrity,” Wendell Mara summed up. Other owners added, in this order: youth, intelligence, energy, patience and imagination. . . . After retirement, Pete Rozelle said, he will serve as a consultant both to the NFL and the new Worldwide American Football League. . . . A committee headed by Dan Rooney, president of the Pittsburgh Steelers, is trying to structure the WAFL to be a league that is independent but still not an NFL competitor. “These won’t be NFL farm teams,” he said, but added that the NFL will use its WAFL connection to develop some players. . . . The WAFL will capitalize, Rozelle said, on the end of Common Market trade restrictions after 1992. “By then there will be as many television sets (in Europe) as there are here,” he said. “And they’ll need programming.” As always, the NFL will only be there to help. . . . The WAFL commissioner, Tex Schramm, is there now lining up London and three or four other overseas franchises.