NFL MEETINGS : Roster Limit Expected to Be 53

Because salary-cap problems are expected to affect the NFL’s 28 teams in unforeseeable ways, the league’s club owners will vote today to increase the 1993 roster limit from 47 to 53 players.

Paul Tagliabue, NFL commissioner, and Dick Steinberg, general manager of the New York Jets and a member of several NFL committees, made that prediction Monday.

On game day, they said, each team will be required to reduce to 45 active players plus a designated No. 3 quarterback--as it did last year. The difference will be that the inactive squads will be enlarged.

Each week this season, each club will be permitted to keep seven inactive players, compared to two last year. In another change effective this year, all players put on injured reserve will have to sit out the rest of the season. Previously, some with minor injuries could be brought back after sitting out four games.

Next season, the temporarily injured must be carried on the main 53-man roster.

“Cut-down dates will be the same,” Tagliabue said. “(In the last week of the off-season), the teams will cut down as usual from 60 players to 45, and then build back up to 53.”

Each club will be authorized to control 58 players, including a five-player practice squad.

“The new concept will give us greater flexibility,” Steinberg said. “For example, some teams might not want seven extra players. Or they might not keep all five practice players.

“They might decide to use the bulk of their cap money on the 45-man squad. The new numbers are simply the upper limits. The key word is flexibility. “

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Television network spokesmen have asserted in recent years that because of the state of the economy, they will pay less for NFL games in the new contracts beginning in 1994.

But Tagliabue disputed that contention Monday.

“I don’t think we’ll have a decline in (TV) revenue,” he said. “I believe that what we’ll (sign for) will be above the average of the last four years.”

Annual income from television during that span averaged $32.5 million per club.

Reminded that the networks are planning to cut back on costs for sports as a whole, meaning that some sports face dwindling revenues, Tagliabue said: “Some do. Not us.”

Network attempts to cut back NFL rights fees tapered off six weeks ago after the Super Bowl game, during which TV ratings held fast through all four quarters of a blowout. There was a record number of viewers.

Val Pinchbeck Jr., the NFL’s broadcasting vice president, confirmed that the networks haven’t sought financial rebates from the league this year after trying hard, and getting some, last year.

“We just informed them that our plans were in the best interests of the most people,” Pinchbeck said.

Tagliabue, speaking on the state of the NFL, said: “I’m comfortable with where we are, and where we’re going. We have the most attractive game, and the most widely viewed game.”

He added, in response to questions: “Baseball has its problems, none of which we have. . . . (As for the NBA), its highest TV rating this year, 14.3 for the All-Star game, was lower than our lowest-rated Monday night game.”

NFL Notes

NFL owners agreed to extend the contract of Commissioner Paul Tagliabue. Tagliabue had a year left on the five-year contract he signed Oct. 26, 1989, but many owners said he deserved an extension because of his work on the recently completed labor agreement. Tom Benson, owner of the New Orleans Saints and one of three owners who will negotiate the new deal, said the extension could stretch for as many as 10 years. It will certainly involve an increase in Tagliabue’s salary, estimated at $1.5 million including benefits.

Tagliabue said the competition committee recommended a 40-second clock, replacing the 45-second span between plays, by a 7-0 vote. The league will vote on it this week. Competition committee members, worried by statistics showing that more kickoffs were unreturnable last season than in any other NFL year, voted, 5-2, in favor of kicking off from the 30-yard line instead of the 35. . . . On the day that Phoenix was awarded Super Bowl XXX in 1996, the Cardinals acquired Washington Redskin receiver Gary Clark as a free agent.