COMMENTARY : Well, Sure, There Ought to Be a Lawyer

Paul Tagliabue (pronounced Paul Tagliabue).

Okay, now that we’ve got that straight, you’re all probably wanting to ask the same question:

Paul who-gliabue?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you your next NFL commissioner: Paul Tagliabue. Once again then for Bethesda, Md.’s Paul Tagliabue. Hey, you guys in the back, is this mike on? Testing, testing. I said, Paul “Mr. Excitement” Tagliabue. Lemme hear you say, “Yeah!”

But who is he?

He’s a Washington lawyer. (We’ll have a running start on an expansion team if Jack Kent Cooke moves the Redskins to Loudoun County, Va.) You might have even seen him on the Metro’s Red Line. He was the one in the gray pin-striped suit.

Q. Why does Washington have the most lawyers, and New Jersey the most toxic dump sites?

A. New Jersey had first choice.

Tagliabue is a partner in the prestigious megafirm, Covington & Burling, whose lawyers are known to be careful, studious, scholarly and, yes, wealthy; Tagliabue, it’s widely alleged by fellow partners, even has a keen sense of humor.

“Paul Tagliabue is quite tall,” said someone who has ridden in an elevator with him. “He seems to be a nice guy. He’s rather quiet. If you had a group of ten people, he might not say a word.”

Neither would Marcel Marceau, but the NFL didn’t pick him.

We don’t yet know Tagliabue’s NFL agenda. We don’t even know who he likes in Bud Bowl II.

It’s hard to say why the owners picked Tagliabue, other than that maybe he was standing in the hall when they originally decided they didn’t want to pick Jim Finks. (How about that Gang of Five committee? Didn’t take those puppies long to get a unanimous vote. Sic them on “War and Remembrance,” and you’ve got a one-parter.) Why Tagliabue, and not Kuppenheimer? If they held a Gallup Poll today, 99 percent of the American people either wouldn’t know him or would say a “tagliabue” is a Middle Eastern appetizer. Why would a league that had a world class schmoozer in Pete Rozelle, a league that invented and fine-tuned the concept of sports PR, why would that league pick a man who is so far behind the scenes he’s in the next building? All the reports say Tagliabue is a great lawyer. Correct me if I’m wrong, didn’t the NFL lose the cases to Al Davis and the USFL? On the other hand, Davis is back in the fold, maybe even heading back to Oakland, and the USFL is out of business. So who says you can’t lose the battles and win the war?

You’ve probably heard the one about the lawyer, the priest and the doctor huddled together in a lifeboat in shark-infested waters. One of them must swim for help, and the priest says, “I’ll go overboard, God will protect me.” Then the doctor says, “No, I’ll go. If I’m hurt, I’ll know how to take care of the wound.” But the lawyer says, “I’ll go,” and suddenly dives over the side. The priest and the doctor are amazed to see the circling sharks separate to form a neat aisle and shepherd the lawyer to shore. When he gets back, the others ask why the sharks were so helpful, and the lawyer says, “Professional courtesy.”

Not knowing Tagliabue personally, I turned to one of my colleagues who once spoke with him for 15 minutes: “He was telling me about antitrust. I didn’t understand a single word he said. I called a lawyer friend of mine, who told me, ‘No one understands anything Paul Tagliabue says. He has the most brilliant mind in law. His intelligence is thoroughly intimidating. Next time you get him on the phone just say, ‘Uh-huh’ a lot.’ ”

Thursday, I saw Tagliabue for the first time -- he looked a little like a man I once saw buying ties at Lord & Taylor -- when ESPN carried his news conference live. Not to make judgments, but ESPN, which is so starved for 24 hours of sports programming that if anybody in your neighborhood owns a “monster truck” they’ll come to your house and film a two-hour special, that same ESPN pulled the plug on Tagliabue, and returned to nine-ball billiards, on tape, from Trump Castle. (Memo to Pete: You got nothing to worry about. Just tan, baby.)

Tagliabue continues the current hiring trend of lawyers as commissioners; baseball’s Vincent, basketball’s Stern, hockey’s Ziegler. Kids, forget the batting cage, go to law school.

Q. Why is the National Institutes of Health considering replacing their laboratory rats with lawyers?

A. 1) Lawyers are more plentiful. 2) The technicians won’t get as attached to the lawyers. 3) There are some things even rats won’t do.

Covington & Burling isn’t generally known as a jock house. One wonders how they view Tagliabue’s decision? “I think the firm would feel more comfortable if he was leaving to become secretary of State or a presidential advisor,” said one observer of the Washington legal scene. “But they’re mostly men over there, and they were all boys once upon a time. Deep down they’re probably thrilled by it. At the same time they’re probably wondering why anybody would want to work for those guys.”

Those guys. Precisely.

In the next year the NFL will try to negotiate a new TV contract and a new labor agreement. This would be difficult if Tagliabue was the smartest man in the world, and he was working alone. But he has 28 bosses, and some of them include Bob “Gas N Go” Irsay, Joe Robbie, Bill “By The Time I Get To Phoenix I’ll Raise The Prices” Bidwill, Jerry “The Hillbilly Savant” Jones and Victor “I Like Fried Rice So Much I Decided To Buy China” Kiam. These charmers are the folks who supported Tagliabue’s candidacy, and they are the folks he’s beholden to. There’s got to be an easier way to make a living.