NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, asked during a...

NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, asked during a news conference at the annual convention of the Assn. for Women in Sports Media why Zeke Mowatt hadn’t yet paid his fine from the Lisa Olson incident, said that fear of lawsuits had become a factor in the league’s disciplinary system.

Mowatt was fined $12,500 by Tagliabue as a result of the harassment incident on Sept. 17, 1990, when he was with the New England Patriots, but appealed the decision. Tagliabue put aside a ruling until Olson’s civil suit was settled in February, but still has not made a final decision.

“The best thing you can do in exercising authority is not pushing to the point of drawing blood and finding out the blood you’ve drawn is your own,” he said in New York.