Without Rozelle, Landry and Schramm, NFL Has Different Look

The morning after 11 dissident owners had staged their rich people’s protest march on July 6 to block the election of Jim Finks as the successor to retiring National Football League commissioner Pete Rozelle, the mixture of disbelief and anger in the voice of Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell was self-evident.

He was having difficulty understanding how so many relative newcomers to the league could reject the selection of a six-member search committee with more than 200 years of NFL experience.

“This is my 29th year in the NFL,” Modell said. “I’ve served on every committee the league has known, and I was the only league president during the merger transition from from 1969-70. I don’t recall any committee as committed and dedicated to the NFL and its future as this search committee. Our one thought was, ‘What is best for the league?’ ”

The tone of Modell’s comments suggested a feeling that Rozelle’s retirement and the subsequent internecine power struggle in which the league finds itself marks the end of the NFL’s version of Camelot.

Yes, there have been two bitterly divisive strikes under Rozelle’s stewardship and enough lawsuits to last a lifetime. But the growth of the NFL during his 29-year term, spanning those of eight U.S. presidents, has gone beyond what anyone could have imagined when Rozelle was elected on the 23rd ballot Jan. 26, 1960.

To put it in perspective, Dallas Texans owner Lamar Hunt was elected president of the new American Football League on that same day. The 1960 season was the first in which the Vince Lombardi-coached Packers reached the playoffs and the only time they lost in 10 playoff games. The Cowboys also opened for business in Dallas that year with a coach named Tom Landry and a general manager named Tex Schramm.

What we’re talking about here is a sense of history. The feeling an era has ended was heightened when new Cowboys owner Jerry Jones fired Landry and Schramm as soon as he purchased the team last February.

Jones, who paid $140 million for the Cowboys, was firmly on the side of the dissidents, who are seeking a businessman rather than a football man to serve as commissioner and turn the league into a multinational marketing conglomerate. The World League of American Football, scheduled to begin play in 1991 with four franchises in Europe, is the most obvious step in that direction.

Describing the philosophy behind his moves, Jones said, “The NFL is about the ability to commit. You can’t have one foot in the past and one foot in the future.”

That describes the split between the owners as well as any statement. Ironically, Jones has as much right as any of the newer owners to call himself a “football man” because he played the game at Arkansas with Jimmy Johnson, the coach and general manager he hired to replace Landry.

Before the public was aware there was a Jerry Jones, there was ample reason to wonder whether Landry had lost touch with the game. The Cowboys were 3-13 last season, have not made the playoffs since 1985 and last won a playoff game folowing the 1982 season.

Landry’s 17 playoff appearances in an 18-year span from 1966-1983 were a monument to his consistency, but the monument gave way to the forces of erosion.

There are other signs that the game and its icons are changing. The Miami Dolphins’ Don Shula and the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Chuck Noll, whose teams dominated during the same period as Landry’s Cowboys, both were on the bottom of their divisions last season.

Unbelievably, the Dolphins are 2-14 in the AFC East over the past two seasons. It seems, too, that Raiders managing general partner Al Davis has lost his touch on the field, allowing his team to fall into disrepair while shopping it to the highest bidder between its past home in Oakland, Calif., its present home in Los Angeles and its potential future home in Sacramento, Calif.

If the reputations of those icons of the game have been tarnished in recent years, at least 49ers Coach Bill Walsh managed to go out on top after coaching his third Super Bowl championship team of the ‘80s. But his departure for the TV booth is just another symptom of the massive change sweeping the league, particularly because Walsh often found himself at odds with owner Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., who fancies himself at the forefront of the new group of movers and shakers.

Dramatic change also may affect two of the most successful coaches of the past decade. The Washington Redskins’ Joe Gibbs, who has a chance this season to tie Walsh’s record of three Super Bowl titles in the ‘80s, will be operating solo since creative general manager Bobby Beathard resigned and went to live in San Diego, which also will be Rozelle’s retirement home.

The Chicago Bears’ Mike Ditka ended his stormy relationship with Jim McMahon, the maverick quarterback who did so much to help Ditka attain the highest winning percentage of any coach in the ‘80s. Ditka traded McMahon to -- where else? -- San Diego.

Around the league, one of the most progressive changes is the seeming removal of prejudicial barriers against black quarterbacks. The success of the Redskins’ Doug Williams and the Houston Oilers’ Warren Moon has paved the way for the development of the Philadelphia Eagles’ Randall Cunningham and helped make quarterback an equal opportunity position.

The cycle of change in the way the game is played continues as teams experiment with the no-huddle offense, run-and-shoot offense and four-wide-receiver formations designed to challenge the multiple-front defenses developed in the past decade. Teams that were doormats a few years ago, such as the Cincinnati Bengals, Buffalo Bills, Oilers, New Orleans Saints and Eagles, now are knocking on the door of the Super Bowl.

Owners cut back to 80-man rosters as a money-saving measure this year, but player salaries escalated dramatically without a competing league or an existing collective bargaining agreement while the NFL Players Association pursues free agency in court. Be assured the new NFL will consider everything from more subscription cable to direct broadcast satellite to pay TV when the next round of television negotiations take place before the 1990 season.

As if all that isn’t enough indication that the NFL is undergoing cataclysmic change, consider this: former Jet Mark Gastineau performed his sack dance (albeit a modified version to avoid a penalty) for what appears to be the final time last season. At the same time, Bengals rookie running back Ickey Woods introduced the newest dance sensation, “The Ickey Shuffle.” Just as Gastineau did in an earlier time, however, Woods appeared in a national television commercial with his mom. Some things never change.