Are You Ready for Some Football? : Commissioner: All Tagliabue’s rowdy friends are peaceful again, so attention is turned to thwarting the field goal.

With peace having descended upon the NFL’s business side, Commissioner Paul Tagliabue announced Friday that he will be taking his next crusade to the field.

Are you ready for two-point conversions?

And one-point field goals?

A quarterback who wears a microphone?

How about kickoffs from the 30-yard line.

Judging from Tagliabue’s remarks, expect at least two, if not all of those ideas to become rules in March at the league meetings.

“In this off-season, we will finally be able to focus on the game itself,” Tagliabue said with a smile during his annual state of the NFL address.

For the first time in several years, Tagliabue did not use this forum to discuss labor, television or even expansion.

Instead, he focused on recommendations he will make to the league’s competition committee in hopes of dealing with:

--Downgrading the field goal and upgrading the touchdown.

“Field-goal kickers have gotten so good, we need to do something to balance it out,” Tagliabue said.

He says a two-point conversion after touchdowns, a rule that has made the college game more exciting, would work.

“When you can go for a touchdown and get eight points, that will make you think again about going for a field goal and three points,” he said.

Although he can only make recommendations to the league’s competition committee in March, Tagliabue said conservative co-chairman Don Shula has agreed to discuss the two-point conversion.

Considering that Jerry Jones, the Dallas Cowboys’ owner and a powerful committee member, also supports the change, it has a good chance of passing.

Tagliabue’s other attack on field goals involves reducing the points awarded.

Some owners, he said, would like to give one point for field goals from inside the 20-yard line, two points for field goals between the 20 and 40 and three points for kicks longer than 40 yards.

But other owners consider that to be penalizing a team for penetration. They want an opposite scale, with one point for a field goal of more than 40 yards.

Expect Jones to recommend returning the ball to midfield after a missed field-goal attempt, no matter where the ball was kicked from.

And it is understood by many owners that kickoffs will be moved from the 35- to the 30-yard line, in hopes of increasing returns.

--The timing and pace of games.

“We’re looking at several technological features, including the audibilizer,” said Tagliabue, referring to a microphone that fits inside a quarterback’s helmet and helps teammates hear his signals.

The audibilizer, developed in Newport Beach, was successfully tested last summer and will be tried again in the Pro Bowl.

Tagliabue also said that a microphone could be developed that allows quarterbacks to communicate with their coaches.

The major topic during Friday’s question-and-answer session involved the league’s neutrality in the flag flap here.

Tagliabue explained why his office has not protested the flying of the Georgia state flag--a part of which is the Confederate Stars and Bars--outside the Georgia Dome before the Super Bowl. The flag is offensive to some.

“I’ve talked to a lot of people . . . many African-American leaders . . . and the one thing they had in common was the suggestion that we not interfere,” Tagliabue said. “It is a state flag, and we’re not a political issue here. The advice we received is to leave the flag issue to the people of Georgia.

“To say anything would be counterproductive.”

When asked why the league was active several years ago in protesting Arizona’s refusal to honor Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday--the NFL denied Phoenix a chance to host the Super Bowl--Tagliabue said pro football was also avoiding local politics in that instance.

Although players have been reluctant to protest the flag, local activists have been outspoken in their opposition.

Black journalists covering the event are also planning some form demonstration before the game, perhaps turning their back on the American flag when the national anthem is played.