NFL Remains a House Divided : Owners May Vote Again Tonight, but They Still Seem to Be Split

The owners of the 28 National Football League clubs will make another run at an elusive target here today.

Still divided after six months of in-fighting, they will interview four candidates for commissioner and try to vote one into office tonight. Or Wednesday.

Or Thursday. Or someday.

Their new search committee has turned up only one new candidate in the last three months--J. Patrick Barrett, a Syracuse, N.Y., investor, businessman, and politician.

As a businessman, Barrett sold the Avis rental car business to his employees two years ago. As a politician, he heads the Republican party’s state central committee in Albany, N.Y.

Others still in the running for commissioner were all recommended by the NFL’s original search committee last July. And the front-runner since then, Jim Finks, general manager of the New Orleans Saints, still holds the support of most old-line clubs.

So the question today is whether the owners are about to polarize into a Barrett faction and a Finks faction.

If so, the Barrett group, presumably, would include some or all of the 11 dissident owners who, after declining to accept Finks at the NFL’s July meeting in Chicago, have been calling for a commissioner with a business-firm background as a chief executive officer.

It was in Chicago that Finks won 16 of the 19 votes necessary for election. He would have had 17 votes if owner Bud Adams of the Houston Oilers had been able to get his plane off the ground that day in Texas.

“From the start, my two candidates were Finks and (housing secretary) Jack Kemp,” Adams said. “And Kemp took himself out (of the race).”

A stalemated 17-11 convention could lead to the election of a compromise commissioner, possibly one of the two other candidates here for interviews, NFL lawyer Paul Tagliabue and NFL Hall of Famer Willie Davis, now a Los Angeles businessman.

Pete Rozelle, the present commissioner whose wish to retire--as expressed last March--precipitated the present fight, was a compromise choice 30 years ago, when his election ended 10 days of fruitless balloting.

Said Cleveland Browns’ owner Art Modell: “I fear we’re pretty well stalemated again.”

A leader of the Chicago 11 faction, Norman Braman, who owns the Philadelphia Eagles, has been trying to pull the sides together.

“I hope we elect someone (this week),” Braman said. “Speaking for myself, I won’t abstain again, and I’d hope no one will.”

Few, however, have made up their minds. They can’t even agree on whether it’s essential to replace Rozelle now or after the season.

“The league needs to start moving ahead (with a new commissioner) as soon as possible,” said Lamar Hunt, owner of the Kansas City Chiefs and co-chairman of both NFL search committees. “There are too many uncertainties in any business when the (top man) is in question.”

Taking the other side, Pat Bowlen of the Denver Broncos proposes that a committee of owners replace Rozelle temporarily.

“The most important thing is to get the right man,” Bowlen said. “That’s more important than to choose a new commissioner today just to have one.”

The feud that has split the league is between factions of multimillionaires who have operated NFL teams for various periods of time:

--Fifteen owners have been in the league 15 years or more, most of them 20 years or more.

--Thirteen have bought their NFL franchises in the last 15 years, many in the last five years.

The old guard charges that the newer owners don’t understand the sport and are just out to maximize their investments.

The Young Turks charge that the old guard is without sympathy for them and their problems, which are financial for the most part, stemming from large franchise investments. They also accuse the old guard of having failed to maximize the NFL’s marketing potential.

All candidates for commissioner must stand up and be interviewed here.

One prospect has already withdrawn, rather than subject himself to the process. He is Robert Mulcahy, head of the Meadowlands complex in New Jersey, who pulled out Saturday night when told of the interview format.

“Do you think Jack Kemp would audition for us?” one NFL owner asked. “No top-level person would.”

With Rozelle as a lame-duck commissioner, the owner added that the league has become critically weak.

“The irony is that NFL football has been so spectacular all season,” he said. “Our product has never been better, and our organization has never been weaker.”