SUPER BOWL XXV : NEW YORK GIANTS vs. BUFFALO BILLS : Not Tired of Being Retired : Football: Pete Rozelle helped make the Super Bowl what it is today, but after almost 30 years as commissioner, he doesn’t regret stepping down.

Pete Rozelle has been invited to flip the coin that will be the ceremonial start of Super Bowl XXV Sunday at Tampa Stadium.

That’s a gracious gesture to extend to a private citizen.

For almost 30 years, though, Rozelle was commissioner of the National Football League, a period of surging growth and acceptance by the American public.

Rozelle, who became acquainted with the game while running errands at the Rams’ training camp at Compton College, left an indelible mark on a sport that is, arguably, as much a national pastime now as baseball.

Retired now for 14 months, Rozelle’s office is only a few yards from the track where Wayne Lukas and the late Eugene Klein trained their thoroughbreds.

On a nearby hilltop, Rozelle, from his office, can see the house that will be completed and ready for occupancy at the end of this month for himself and his wife, Carrie.

Rozelle had a long run as one of the most visible and articulate supervisors in sports, and he says he has no regrets about stepping off the fast track.

“I’ve been very lucky in my life, doing the things I love right from the start,” he said. “So why not enjoy retirement, see what type of life that is. It wasn’t any one thing that drove me out, or caused me to make up my mind (to retire). I just thought 30 years was enough.”

As a spectator at Sunday’s Super Bowl, Rozelle can reflect on its low-key inception. No one, not even Rozelle, could have envisioned that it would become a national spectacle.

The NFL and AFL officially merged on June 8, 1966, and a championship game was determined for the following January.

But there were some problems.

“We had to get Congress to approve the merger, exempting it from antitrust action,” Rozelle said.

That wasn’t accomplished until Oct. 21, 1966.

Then, Rozelle had to resolve a television problem. CBS had the rights agreements for NFL games, and NBC had the same for AFL games.

Rozelle said it was finally decided that both networks would carry the game.

Super Bowl sites are now selected years in advance. The first Super Bowl was scheduled for Jan. 15, 1967, but it wasn’t until Dec. 1, 1966 that the Los Angeles Coliseum was designated as the site.

Rozelle and his staff, notably Bert Rose, a league executive, then had to hurry to secure hotels and attend to many details that are now accomplished far in advance. It was, indeed, a rush job.

The first Super Bowl party for the media and guests was a very modest affair at a downtown hotel.

“I think we served cold cuts,” Rozelle said.

And only 500 reporters were accredited for the game, half of them television personnel, Rozelle said.

Rozelle estimates that 3,000 media types have been accredited for this year’s game. And the lavish Super Bowl media party that has been held at the Queen Mary and Universal Studios has become a harder ticket to obtain, Rozelle said, than for the game.

The game was officially called the NFL-AFL World Championship game. Rozelle acknowledges that it was a cumbersome title.

“However, I thought that ‘Super’ was a corny cliche, but, in time, it had a life of its own,” Rozelle said.

Rozelle said that Lamar Hunt, owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, pushed for the name Super Bowl because his daughter had a popular toy of the day, a “super ball,” one that bounced very high into the air.

Rozelle knew he had a hit show by Super Bowl IV, which had, at the time, the highest television rating, even exceeding the first moon walk by astronaut Neil Armstrong.

As a Californian, Rozelle has returned to his roots. And he traces the start of his career to the summer of 1946.

“I had just been discharged from the Navy and was attending Compton Junior College, doing some publicity for the school,” he said.

“The Rams had just moved here from Cleveland and were training at the school. They had that fantastic cast of Bob Waterfield, Tom Harmon, Kenny Washington and Woody Strode. I became a go-fer for Maxwell Stiles, the Ram public relations man at that time.

“Through that association I got to do their game programs in 1946 and 1947. I got 50 bucks a program, but I’d hate to look at them today. They sold for a quarter and probably weren’t worth it.”

Rozelle later attended the University of San Francisco, where he was the sports publicist for the school.

It could have been an obscure job at a small school if it hadn’t been for the emergence of the 1951 football team that featured Ollie Matson, Bob St. Clair and Gino Marchetti.

“The team was unbeaten, untied and uninvited (to a bowl game),” Rozelle recalled.

But while the team was in New York to play Fordham, Rozelle, as a young publicist, made contact with Grantland Rice, the famous sportswriter.

USF was just a blip on the college football screen then, but Rice selected Matson on his All-American defensive team, even though Matson was more accomplished as a running back.

That was Rozelle’s first coup as a P.R. man, but he said he failed in a greater sense.

“Matson, Marchetti and St. Clair are all in the (pro football) Hall of Fame along with their lousy P.R. man, who couldn’t get them into a bowl game,” Rozelle observed.

The Rams remembered Rozelle, though, and he became their public relations representative from 1952 through 1954, before he joined a private public relations firm in San Francisco as a junior partner.

Then Rozelle’s career veered in another significant direction.

Dan Reeves, the Rams’ owner, was wrangling with his partners, Edwin Pauley, Fred Levy and Hal Seley. Bert Bell, the NFL commissioner at the time, was arbitrating a dispute as to who would be named the club’s general manager, replacing Tex Schramm, who had accepted a position with CBS.

Rozelle’s name was brought up as a compromise candidate. He got the job in 1957, prompting Bell to say to Rozelle, “You’re the first thing they’ve agreed on since (President) Garfield was shot.”

Rozelle’s tenure as Ram general manager was brief, and his career soon spiraled into an even higher orbit.

Bell died at a football game in October of 1959 and the NFL owners met the following January to select his successor.

Then, as now, they agreed only that they disagreed.

The owners were divided into two camps, those from the East, who insisted the league office should be in their area, and those from the West, who were supporting the candidacy of Marshall Leahy, an attorney representing the San Francisco 49ers.

Rozelle recalled that Leahy had five daughters in school and didn’t want the league office to be located in the East.

So arguments raged in meeting rooms and Rozelle recalled that Frank McNamee, president of the Philadelphia Eagles, tried to end the deadlock.

Said Rozelle: “McNamee stood up and said, ‘Obviously, we’re in a terrible impasse after nine days. But we have someone in this room who would make an outstanding commissioner. He not only has an outstanding football background, but he’s intelligent and innovative.

“ ‘I’m speaking of Paul Brown (owner of the Cleveland Browns). Paul, would you accept the job as commissioner of the National Football League?’ ”

Rozelle said that Brown replied that he would take the job on only one condition: “ ‘The league office has to be in San Francisco.’ ”

So it was back to Square One for the embattled owners.

On the 10th day of the deadlock, Wellington Mara, owner of the New York Giants, after discussions with Reeves and Brown, approached Rozelle.

“He said, ‘Pete, we’re going to discuss you as commissioner.’ I was just stunned,” Rozelle said. “He said, ‘Just absence yourself.’

“So I went to the bathroom while they discussed me. When anyone came in, I’d just be washing my hands. Mara then came in and said they got someone to switch his vote and I was elected commissioner. I was only 33 years old. It was quite a surprise.”

Rozelle said that on becoming commissioner, he met with Reeves, who had a significant impact on his career.

Said Rozelle: “He knew I was a Californian and he said seriously, ‘You know, Pete, you should be aware of something. Only the most important people can get by in New York without wearing a hat.’

“I paused and said, ‘Well . . . ‘, and he laughed.”

During his reign, Rozelle was actively involved with league expansion, an extended playoff formula leading to the Super Bowl, the advent of Monday night games on television, the legal battles with Raider owner Al Davis and the United States Football League, confrontation with the players’ union and, of course, the ongoing drug problem.

Asked what stands out in his mind now in his retirement, Rozelle said:

“Obviously, the Super Bowl. It has been a lot of fun, too. The other would be television. In 1959, there were 12 clubs in the NFL. They were making under $2 million total from television. They all had individual contracts.

“It became clear that we had to get a bill through Congress, antitrust immunity, packaging them together.

“The colleges were making twice as much as the NFL. We got the bill through Congress in 1961, antitrust exemption from pooling the rights through a package.

“From that start we now have 28 clubs getting an average of $32.5 million.”

There have been negative aspects, especially in the last 10 years, perhaps making retirement more appealing to him.

“I’ve enjoyed so many of the people, the players, owners and general managers. And I still miss many of them,” Rozelle said. “The bad part was the last 10 to 12 years when I wasn’t able to see those people and do the things I did before because of all the litigation we were involved in.”

The NFL has been criticized for dragging its feet in addressing the drug problem.

Rozelle agreed with that assessment, saying, “The problem was that the players’ association fought any enforcement of drug policies. When we formulated a drug policy, they forced it to arbitration and an arbitrator ruled out random testing and so forth.

“Steroids is an area we began testing the year before Paul Tagliabue became commissioner and he has done a lot with steroids, too.”

As for the game itself, the use of instant replay has seemingly divided the public and media. Is it necessary? Does it disrupt the flow of a game?

“I feel that anything than can eliminate serious mistakes in football is good,” Rozelle said. “I say this because if you stop instant replay, you’re still going to have a problem.”

As for criticism that instant replays slow the games, Rozelle added: “That’s a matter of mechanics. They’ve improved on it this year, but it’s a serious problem.”

Serious problems with the league are no longer dumped in his lap, even though he remains a consultant to the NFL.

“I look out my office window and see my home that will soon be completed. I’m renting a half-mile from there,” Rozelle said. “I’m going to play tennis again, and I find myself keeping up on correspondence.

“As a consultant for another six years, I do whatever Tagliabue wants me to do and I keep in touch with him.

“But he’s his own man and he will make the decisions. That’s one of the reasons I retired. His first year has been very difficult (Martin Luther King Day controversy in Arizona, drafting of college underclassmen, player harassment of a female reporter, etc.), but I had those things for 30 years. It’s nice to see someone (else) having those problems.”