NFL’s Election of Finks Is Blocked by 11 Owners

Eleven National Football League club owners got together here Thursday night and blocked the election of the old guard’s candidate for commissioner to succeed Pete Rozelle, who resigned three months ago.

In the center of the storm was Jim Finks, general manager of the New Orleans Saints, who, as the only candidate yet nominated, is still in the running for an office that the league expects to fill at a later meeting this summer .

When they refused to vote him in, the dissidents seemed to be shooting not at Finks, but at the old-line owners who backed him.

As Hugh Culverhouse, president of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, said the other day, the NFL’s newer owners have been outraged lately by what they called the high-handed tactics of the league’s old guard.

At a stormy six-hour meeting, the representatives of 27 NFL clubs took only two ballots on Finks, both secret, and got the same count each time, 16 ayes and 11 passes.

To elect a commissioner, 19 votes are required.

Ram owner Georgia Frontiere’s representative, John Shaw, was one of the 11 who abstained from voting for the nominee.

Raider owner Al Davis voted for Finks.

The four leaders of the dissidents are Culverhouse, Norman Braman, Edward DeBartolo Jr. and Mike Lynn. The last three are the presidents of, respectively, the Philadelphia Eagles, the San Francisco 49ers and the Minnesota Vikings.

The ownerships of all four clubs are comparatively new, as time is measured in the 70-year-old NFL. Others voting with the dissidents were the new owners of the Denver Broncos, the Seattle Seahawks, the New England Patriots and the Dallas Cowboys.

In addition to Frontiere, the owners of two other old-line teams, Joe Robbie of the Miami Dolphins and Robert Irsay of the Indianapolis Colts, lined up against Finks.

But their stands were not a surprise. Frontiere often votes with Culverhouse. The other two, Robbie and Irsay, are considered independents rather than old-guard regulars.

Braman, taking charge of the dissidents in the absence of Culverhouse, said the group spent most of the day in meetings here ahead of the NFL session that began at 4:30 p.m., CDT.

“We considered boycotting the session,” he said. “But at the last minute, we decided to attend.”

Rozelle had stepped in as peacemaker. Informed at 3:30 by a petition from the dissidents that they weren’t ready to vote for a commissioner, he persuaded them to come down and make their case in person.

The establishment people could have gotten a 17th aye, if necessary, from the absent owner of the Houston Oilers, Bud Adams, but that would still have left them two votes shy.

“No other candidates were nominated,” Braman said. “This wasn’t that kind of meeting.”

Asked when the owners will convene again, Art Modell, president of the Cleveland Browns, said: “Sometime this summer on seven days’ notice from the commissioner.”

The dissidents had objected that they had only six days’ notice this time and that four of those days were over a national holiday.

This was one of their many objections. The others included:

--First, three months ago, they had made a strong protest against the membership of the search committee, which is exclusively staffed by old guard members and headed by Wellington Mara of the New York Giants and Lamar Hunt of the Kansas City Chiefs. The newer owners had wanted at least one of theirs on the committee, but the old guard failed to oblige.

--Second, the rebels had expected a slate of three or four candidates. The committee came up with only one.

--And third, that candidate turned out to be a favorite of the old guard, Finks, who has spent the last three decades working with long-established NFL owners.

All this was too much for the dissidents.

Said Rozelle: “Their main concern was (this) process. No criticism of Finks was expressed by anyone.”

Hunt agreed. Said the Kansas City owner of his hand-picked candidate: “Jim is very much alive when we (vote again at the next meeting). I spoke with him a few minutes ago, and he’s still very much interested in the job.”

Whether the search committee will nominate further candidates at the next meeting is still uncertain.

“Finks is our candidate,” Hunt said, speaking for the committee. “We were for him unanimously going in, and we still feel that way.”

Whether this point of view will be satisfactory to the rebels was in doubt.

They seem ready to take charge of the league, if they can, unless the older owners pay more attention to their wishes and demands.

The rupture is the most serious in the history of a league whose members have often enough disagreed in other years--but never before brought the machinery to a halt.

What’s different now is the cost of the franchises. When the older clubs--the Chicago Bears, the Giants, the Green Bay Packers, the Browns and the others--came in, their owners paid little to enter pro football.

By contrast, the eight owners who have joined in the 1980s paid up to $100 million apiece. And even in the late ‘70s, franchise prices were staggering in contrast with those of the 1960s and earlier.

The new gang is of the opinion that the old guys aren’t sufficiently interested in their problems, which are to a large extent financial. Most of them put up many millions and borrowed many millions more to become NFL owners, and their debt structures prompt them to look at most NFL problems in a different way.

They’re angry that the established owners don’t understand this--but until just a few hours ago, that anger was mostly misdirected. Indeed, the rebels lacked leadership as recently as last week, except for Culverhouse, and they lacked any semblance of organization as well.

Mainly, most of the new owners have been too busy in their own businesses to work up any NFL plots.

The difference Thursday was that Braman finally got them organized, and the NFL may never be the same.

Voting with the old guard were two new owners, Alex Spanos of the San Diego Chargers and Tom Benson of the Saints. Spanos often votes with the Raiders’ Davis. Benson defected because he liked the idea of having his own man, Finks, in the commissioner’s office.

The other teams that voted the establishment way were the six from which the search committee was chosen--the Giants, the Chiefs, the Browns, the Packers, the Buffalo Bills and the Pittsburgh Steelers--plus the Washington Redskins, the Bears, the Detroit Lions, the Phoenix Cardinals, the Atlanta Falcons, the Cincinnati Bengals and the New York Jets.