Commissioner Issue Divides NFL Owners

In Norman Braman’s four years as the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, he has moved steadily upward as a National Football League leader.

And this summer, Braman has taken another key step.

Along with 10 other owners of pro clubs, he challenged the NFL establishment last week and won.

So, what’s next?

Now that the establishment’s plans for a quick installation of NFL old-timer Jim Finks as commissioner has been blocked, what do the rebels want?

“We think we should have an opportunity to consider (candidates) from outside the (confines) of the league,” Braman said from his Florida office Monday, speaking for Mike Lynn of Minnesota, Hugh Culverhouse of Tampa Bay, and the eight other club presidents who spoke against the single candidate slate last week in Chicago.

Their quarrel is not with Finks as such, Braman indicated, but with the committee that nominated the 61-year-old NFL veteran from New Orleans.

“This is a large country with many able (executives),” said the Miami-based owner of the Eagles, who also heads an organization that runs a string of car dealerships across Florida and Colorado.

“We should be taking an in-depth look at some of these talented individuals from outside the league,” Braman said, meaning corporate types who might be interested in an NFL position paying about $1 million a year.

“The job (as Pete Rozelle’s successor) is too important to be handling the (search) the way it’s been done.

“That’s one thing, as we see it.

“Secondly, we’d like to have additional representation on the (search) committee.

“Finally, we all need much more information than we’ve been given about the (candidates). They should be interviewed with a set of predetermined questions, and a stenographer should be there to take down their answers.

“Then, that information should be made available to all of us a number of days before the next meeting.”

This is a blueprint for major change in the NFL, which doesn’t call many changeups. Its rules and procedures often seem to be written in stone, and the six-man search committee, which represented old-line clubs exclusively, followed the rules to the letter.

Indeed, the co-leader of the establishment group, Lamar Hunt of Kansas City, spoke up immediately and firmly for the status quo.

“We have taken no steps to either expand or contract the (search) committee,” Hunt said on behalf of Wellington Mara of the New York Giants, the other co-chairman. “Our candidate is Jim Finks. We were for him unanimously going in, and we still feel that way.”

Thus the outlines of a fight--one of the most heated owners’ battles in league history.

The factions are divided between the old-guard and a group of challengers who, Braman said, do not want to be called the new guard.

“I don’t know what you’d call them,” said Paul Brown, the 81-year-old leader of the establishment-oriented Cincinnati Bengals. “I don’t see how you can call them the Young Turks. Joe Robbie (of Miami) is older than I am.”

This isn’t true, but Robbie, who strongly supports the new group, said he will never see 70 again.

Some NFL people have called the dissidents the 20th Floor Gang, in recognition of their unorganization before a day-long organizational meeting last Thursday in suite 2006. That was Denver Bronco President Pat Bowlen’s suite at a hotel near Chicago, where, at a six-hour NFL meeting that night, Finks was blocked.

A significant result is that some of America’s most powerful businessmen are at odds in pro football.

Siding with the establishment are such stalwarts as Jack Kent Cooke of the Washington Redskins, a Virginia billionaire, and William Clay Ford of Detroit, a member of the motor car family.

Hunt is a member of the Texas oil family.

On the other side is the richest man in the league, Edward J. DeBartolo.

Eddie DeBartolo, president of the San Francisco 49ers, is in fact one of the four leaders of the rebel group with Culverhouse, Braman and Lynn.

Mathematically, the old guard can outvote the opposition, 17 to 11. But ten club owners can block any nominee for commissioner.

And, today, there are a firm 11 dissenters in an issue in which the varying views seem irreconcilable:

--The establishment owners chose Finks, the dissidents say, simply because they are more comfortable with one of their own, and because no other league person is qualified. NFL old-timers have worked with Finks for three decades, throughout which he has a commendable record, taking three different teams to the playoffs.

--Braman’s group, most relative newcomers to pro football, are determined to find out if, somewhere out there, there is a better candidate. They suggest the search committee was too comfortable with Finks to conduct a thorough search.

NEW FORCE

The rise of a new NFL power group this month has taken the league by surprise.

There had been nothing but murmurs of discontent in the first several months after the committee was appointed when Rozelle resigned last March.

But there was a major rift.

To many old-timers the rift didn’t immediately seem serious, but it’s clear now that they underestimated their colleagues.

As recently as last Wednesday, the day before the NFL’s Chicago meeting, the dissidents appeared to be disorganized and leaderless. In private conversations, they grumbled to one another, but as a group they had never met to consider courses of action.

All that changed abruptly last Thursday. From their day-long meeting in Bowlen’s suite, the owners appeared united and strong enough to get the attention of the establishment, knocking Finks down if not out.

In a sense, the new-force leadership was moving into a void left with Rozelle’s retirement and the departure of Tex Schramm--the longtime Dallas president who was ousted this spring by the Cowboys’ new owner, Jerry Jones. The NFL had lost its two most influential leaders of the last 30 years.

Hunt, Mara, Brown and Art Modell of Cleveland had taken the lead in some areas. But in pushing Finks for commissioner, they were not persuasive.

And now the new leadership has a toehold.

It’s mostly a young and vigorous bunch--young as the NFL measures time. Braman is 55, Lynn 52, DeBartolo 42. At 70, Culverhouse is the dean and senior adviser to about half the league, the younger half.

Theirs is a league that is now badly divided between two different kinds of club owners. In one corner are the owners who got aboard at mid-century or earlier. In the other corner are the owners who have taken charge of NFL franchises in the last 15 years.

The old guard paid little or nothing for NFL memberships. In most cases, the newer owners have paid $60 million or $70 million and up.

Numerically, the groups are almost evenly split.

Of the league’s 28 franchises, 13 have changed hands in only the last 15 of the NFL’s 70 years.

And of the 11 Chicago dissidents, 10 came from this new half of the league.

The breakdown:

--Six members of the 20th Floor Gang represent ownerships that took over in the 1980s--Braman of Philadelphia, Lynn of Minnesota, Jones of Dallas, Bowlen of Denver, Victor Kiam of New England and Ken Behring of Seattle.

--Four gained control of NFL clubs in the 1970s--Culverhouse of Tampa Bay, DeBartolo of San Francisco, Robert Irsay of Indianapolis, and Ram owner Georgia Frontiere, who succeeded her late husband, Carroll Rosenbloom, in 1979.

--Only one of the 11 rebels is a pre-1970s owner--Robbie of Miami, long an NFL independent.

By contrast, only one old-guard supporter, Cooke of Washington, gained franchise control as recently as 1974.

Basically, the NFL’s old-guard are just that. They represent teams that joined the league in the half-century before 1970. Some franchises have been in the same family since the 1920s. Many owners were part of the American Football League merger two decades ago.

TWO CHOICES

On the eve of training camp, the ball is in the old guard’s court. And the dissidents are watching to see the way it bounces.

At the moment, the majority owners can count on either 16 or 17 of the league’s 28 votes, depending on the direction taken by Bud Adams, the Houston owner who missed the Chicago meeting.

That’s either two or three votes shy of the 19 they need to elect Finks.

Their options:

--They can strong-arm some of the presumably weaker rebels to try to convert two or three to the majority side.

--Or they can make a genuine effort to accommodate the new owners by conducting a legitimate out-of-league search.

If the establishment tries to go forward and install their candidate on a 19-9 vote, they will have stomped on some powerful opponents who have the will and resources to be troublesome on future issues.

It’s a strange fact that the club owners who blocked Finks never criticized him. They raised no objections at all. Indeed, some had recommended Finks to the search committee.

They merely abstained from voting for him.

“I’ve never seen so many abstentions at one time,” said Rozelle, who has been counting NFL votes for 30 years.

But this seems to be one of those situations that actions speak louder than words. Whereas all 28 teams will apparently accept Finks if it’s demonstrated that he is the best of all possible candidates, there are at least 11 owners who want a choice.

“(This) is too important to all of us to choose an individual just because we’re comfortable with him,” Braman said. “We owe it to ourselves to look at other individuals. The decision we make now will influence this league well into the next century.”