PRO FOOTBALL : Tagliabue Carves Niche as Commissioner

As the Minnesota Vikings tell the story, they were still opposed to instant replay officiating last Monday--along with most other teams at the NFL convention--when their coach, Jerry Burns, and general manager, Mike Lynn, parted just before lunch.

Lynn had to attend a committee meeting across the hall. Burns stayed to hear one last lecture by Paul Tagliabue, the new commissioner, who had chosen that moment to defend the league’s instant replay program.

Those who heard the speech said afterward that if Tagliabue, who is a lawyer, had been defending a mass murderer that morning, the guy would have gone free.

At lunch, Burns told Lynn: “Well, we’re stuck with instant replay another year.”

“What do you mean?” Lynn said. “The other people don’t have the votes--and we haven’t even voted.”

“Don’t bother,” Burns said. “Tagliabue just killed us.”

In due course, the clubs voted, 21-7, to keep replay officiating this season, although, going into the NFL’s annual meetings, replay opponents had a majority--including five of the seven members of the influential competition committee.

It was an impressive stroke by the league’s new leader--but by the end of the week, it had paled into the rush of events as just another Tagliabue triumph.

This was his week.

Though he has been in office only five months, Tagliabue, 49, has taken charge with unsuspected strength and style.

He had come in as a compromise commissioner. He had failed to get a vote on the owners’ first ballot last April despite a strange truth: Most of these owners had known him for 20 years. He had been an NFL lawyer for much of his adult life.

Thirty years ago, his predecessor, Pete Rozelle, had arrived as a publicist by profession. And, as commissioner, he had succeeded so sweepingly that when he retired a year ago, the owners listed one job requirement for the new man: “Be another Rozelle.”

If Tagliabue isn’t that, he has started as fast as Rozelle did, leaving but one basic question unanswered: Will he have the same staying power?

As operators, the two are different. Rozelle was a cloakroom commissioner. After conferring with Tagliabue and particularly with former Dallas Cowboy President Tex Schramm, among others, Rozelle worked behind the spotlight until he had most of the votes for any given project, then went out front and hammered it home.

His early support for instant replay last year, when he had already decided to resign, was a conspicuous exception to the Rozelle way.

But in Orlando last week, moving fast and openly was the usual Tagliabue way.

A 16-hours-a-day worker, he had come to town as possibly the league’s best prepared expert on every key subject, and he left no doubt about his views on anything substantial. Thus, he was never crossed on anything substantial--from instant replay to steroid testing, which, as his most controversial feat, he ordered unilaterally without consulting the Players Assn.

If he keeps this up, there are dangers that Tagliabue might move too hard and too fast for some of the slower-paced ownerships. But in the NFL, there’s always something to worry about. Not long ago, the owners were a quarreling, divided bunch, and, at the least, Tagliabue has ended that perception. The brass left town pretty much unified.

The decisive test of Tagliabue’s first year will be the next one: Can he get along with players and owners alike?

The NFL has limped through the last three seasons without the union bargaining agreement it needs before it can do anything essential--expand, realign, even continue the college-player draft.

The demand by NFL veteran players for some sort of action on free agency is the issue that has separated them from the owners since September, 1987, prompting a disruptive strike-lockout one season.

Publicly, so far, Tagliabue has lined up with the league’s more conservative owners as a hard-liner. Nevertheless, those who attended the Orlando meetings say he is ready to accept some kind of free agency in principle--and thus bring the long labor fight to an end.

At the moment, in terms of the respect he has earned in the NFL, Tagliabue is at the top of his game. Whether he uses his prestige to get a labor settlement--on terms that won’t embarrass the players or seriously annoy the owners--will determine how long he keeps all that prestige.