The League: The Rise and Decline of the NFL

Highlight reels and Hall of Fame inductions cement a player’s legacy into the minds and hearts of fans nationwide. Coaches are immortalized by life sized statues and by the historians that define their professional accomplishments with the term “genius.” Play by play and color commentators provide the distinguished voices to compliment a visually complex spectacle and capture the defining moments with heart felt enthusiasm and unforgettable catchphrases. These are the people that make America come together for the shared experience of watching a game that turns underdogs into champions and champions into underdogs. The ecstasy and despair is felt by all. For some, it lasts a lifetime. For others, it remains for only moments after the final kneel down. Regardless, this sensation we call football wouldn’t be possible without them.

There is an an exclusive few, however, for whom the vigor stems from the battles fought not only on the football field, but in the boardrooms, civil courts and executive offices of pro football’s elite. These are the men who cultivated the disorganized rust belt roots of pro football into the imperial sports empire consumed today. These are the men who refuse to be belittled, commanded or questioned by the league office or by their contemporaries. The men whose appetite for luxury is matched only by the sheer satisfaction of leading a championship franchise in America’s most profitably televised game. These men are the oligarchy of the NFL, the governing body of thousands of players, coaches and front office personnel that the public will rarely hear about or hear from.

These are the NFL owners, the men who measure dominance in dollars.

Keynoted journalist David Harris conducted numerous interviews with owners, confidential front office sources and researched league meeting minutes for three years that resulted in the publishing of The League: The Rise and Decline of the NFL in 1986, documenting the decades spanning conflicts and philosophical differences among the NFL owners and the man they elected to lead professional football into the New Frontier – Commissioner Pete Rozelle, and the repercussions that these difference would cause for the NFL.

Harris begins his recount at the 1974 annual meeting of the National Football League in the Americana Hotel in Bal Harbour, Florida, fourteen years after Rozelle’s inauguration. He describes Rozelle’s persona after nearly a decade and a half of unchartered success seen by a major professional sports executive in America. He was tan and fit. He was easy to underestimate with his “plain vanilla approach, though many would quickly learn that was a mistake.” He was “Madison Avenue slick,” a “consummate public relations man,” and, as Dallas Cowboys general manager Tex Schramm stated, “a man for the times.” At Pete’s core, he was a man with humble beginnings and modest expectations who saw a colorful future for a sport only seen in black and white.

In 1966, in the midst of the merger negotiations between the NFL and the rival American Football League, Rozelle established forward thinking principles to create a collectivist mentality among franchise ownership that would bring about financial and organizational prosperity for the NFL rather than a handful of big market franchises thriving through their own promotion and budgets. This approach would come to be recognized as “League Think.” To see this prosperity come to fruition, Pete Rozelle proposed four principle provisions to ownership standards to further strengthen the NFL’s place amongst the public’s favorite sport: no corporate ownership; no publicly owned franchises(with the exception of the Green Bay Packers, who were grandfathered under the commissioner’s policy); the “fifty one percent” rule (requiring all franchises to include someone with the bare majority of a franchise), and no person having operating control in a franchise in the National Football League can acquire control of a franchise in any other team sport enterprise or business.

Prior to 1966, Harris notes that these standards were, “little more than a loosely enforced, informal, and largely unarticulated understanding rather than a constitutional requirement, enforceable by the commissioner’s office.” By the 1974 annual meeting in Bal Harbour, Rozelle continued to fight for these principals, and though not all owners agreed with these bylaws, they made immense profits as the public relations savvy commissioner turned pro football into a national passion. His track record impressed the owners, and at this 1974 annual meeting, the owners approved two proposed amendments: To provide Rozelle with a ten year extension with a $500,000 a year salary, and to grant the commissioner “full, complete, and final jurisdiction” over internal football business disputes. Both proposals were passed and seemed as if Rozelle’s dominance was everlasting.

But as Harris observes, Rozelle’s dominance and League Think philosophy would be challenged and obstructed in the years to come. For with any sizable group of individuals, let alone a group of men with more money than God, conflicts are unavoidable, and can collapse a structure from the within.

Throughout the book, Harris provides background information on several of these owners, including how they became a franchise owner and how they came into wealth. Among the most notable names mentioned are ones that have been covered for decades: Lamar Hunt, the soft spoken, mild mannered son of a Texas oil magnate that created the American Football League after being denied access into the NFL; Art Modell, a pool hustler in his youth that made his fortune as a television producer before becoming the owner of the Cleveland Browns; and Al Davis, pro football’s anointed antagonist that by the end of this book defied Pete Rozelle’s progressive direction for the NFL that would create a lasting effect in the League’s ownership standards.

Also profiled, however, are the owners that are seldom remembered in the narrative of professional football. One of the more interesting profiles Harris creates is that of Gene Klein, a self- made charismatic businessman that purchased the San Diego Chargers from Barron Hilton, son of hotel tycoon Conrad Hilton, in 1966. Klein, the son of a Bronx rag salesmen, established himself in Los Angeles after being discharged from the Army Air Corps and started a used car lot business in the San Fernando Valley. Having used his hearty and bluff personality to promote the business on local television, he became the west coast distributor for the Volvo auto manufacturer and later sold his business for millions. His understanding and experience in the broadcasting business would land him on the board of directors for National Telefilm Associates, a distribution company that was a forerunner in the practice of syndicating film libraries to non-affiliated television stations, most notably from the B-movie studio Republic Pictures and the industry stalwart 20th Century Fox (which would include Art Modell on their board of directors). Klein eventually fulfilled his childhood dream of owning a football team when he purchased the San Diego Chargers for a then record $10 million. After learning that running a football team was unlike his other business ventures, Klein gained respect amongst the owners and became a Rozelle advocate. Along with Rozelle and Modell, Klein would be a part of the Broadcast Committee that negotiated the multi billion dollar television rights with the three major broadcast networks and brought about the sensation that would become Monday Night Football.

Along with Klein, Harris captured the unlikely rise of one of the NFL’s poorest owners and a man that would be one of Rozelle’ detractor; Miami Dolphins owner Joe Robbie. Robbie was a trial attorney and tobacco lobbyists that unsuccessfully ran on the Democratic ticket for the governor of South Dakota. Robbie was a man with very powerful connections, maintaining friendly correspondence with names such as Hubert Humphrey, Jack Kennedy, and American Football Commissioner Joe Foss. When a friend of Robbie asked him to negotiate with Foss about an AFL expansion team in Philadelphia, Foss recommended he look to Miami, to which the syndicate he represented was not enthusiastic about. While Miami was also not Robbie’s ideal city for an expansion team, he convinced his colleagues to enter into a limited partnership with him in which he would claim responsibility for running the team’s operations and debt while his investors bore no personal liability. It was a structure that Robbie utilized for many years until accumulating enough money to own the team independently. His first few years as an owner were defined by penny pinching strategies. One owner said, “He runs a $2 million business like a fruit stand.” Harris also points out that he was not terribly popular among the owners, nor with the city of Miami. An NFL executive once said, “If someone killed Joe Robbie, the list of suspects would be the Miami phone book.”

Many other names appear in Harris’ book. Names such as Clint Murchison, phantom owner of the Dallas Cowboys that delegated his franchise operations to Tex Schramm, and Hugh Culverhouse, the financial wizard of the League and owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The “old guard” owners like George Halas, Art Rooney and Wellington Mara served as the voices of wisdom to a new group of men that are transforming a sport into an industry. Regardless of upbringing and professional experiences, each man was wealthy in his own right. Some inherited money, while others were self-prosperous. In any circumstance, each man put up the finances for his own team and felt the right to be in the room with one another.

But as their checkbooks got bigger, so did their appetite for power.

Intraleague lawsuits grew to become a normal means of communication among the owners. The disputes primarily stemmed from Rozelle’s rules of cross ownership and having a majority owner. Various minority partners across the NFL felt the fifty one percent rule diminished the input and transparency of having multiple owners with equal stake. In 1976, Gene Klein, having endured multiple losing seasons and being held responsible for the first major drug scandal in professional football, was facing a lawsuit from his minority partners, led by the original Chargers owner Barron Hilton, to regain the majority stake in the franchise on grounds of poor management. Klein expressed his fury to the San Diego Union: “I paid Barron Hilton many millions of good American dollars, and now he wants to come back and run the club again. This is quite stunning to me… Most people know Barron doesn’t have an overabundance of brains. The smartest thing he ever did was choose his father.” Klein and the partners would eventually come to an amicable settlement.

Another owner that faced a hostile minority partner was Art Modell. Robert Grise Jr., a Browns minority partner, battled Modell in court over a transaction that Modell made when he purchased land for the hopes a constructing a new super stadium due to his displeasure and constant bouts with the city of Cleveland over the maintenance of the Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Modell, however, didn’t notify Grise of his investment, nor the fact that he accumulated large amounts of debt in the process of procuring the property. After nearly a million dollars in legal fees for both parties, Modell settled with Grise and bought out his stake in the franchise.

F. Wayne Valley, a real estate developer and described as a “football nut” by his fellow owners, was part of syndicate that founded the Oakland Raiders franchise. As each investor began to exit the franchise, Valley and his other managing partner, Ed McGah, were left in control of the organization. In 1962, Valley hired Al Davis as the general manager and managing partner, agreeing to give Davis 10% stake in the franchise. Davis would later approach McGah in 1972 about voting Valley out of the partnership, motivated by Valley’s disagreement over Davis’ contract extension as managing partner. McGah colluded with Davis, and then Valley filed suit against Davis. Valley would eventually grow tired of the four year legal battle and agreed to sell his stake in the Oakland Raiders. Davis acquired majority control of the organization by 1976.

What was arguably more infuriating within the ownership circle, however, was the restrictions of cross ownership, as numerous owners held investments in other professional sports entities, most notably the North American Soccer League, which would prove to be a thorn in Rozelle’s side. Soccer, while not gaining anywhere the same public interest as the sport of American Football, did garner the attention of a few owners that saw the potential for a game that could reach modest popularity. It would, however, pit the owners against one another, and the owners against the commissioner.

Lamar Hunt was an original investor in the Dallas Franchise in the North American Soccer League and faced criticism for his lack of urgency to divest his interest in the club. Much of the impatience and verbal attacks to Hunt came from Leonard Tose, the flamboyant owner of the Philadelphia Eagles whose affinity for high luxury and frequent trips to Atlantic City left him drowning in debt by the time he sold off the franchise in 1983. Tose’s anger came from the fact that Hunt had met with a Philadelphia contractor to aid in the formation of a NASL franchise in the city. Tose felt Hunt stepped on his toes by coming to his city to promote another sport. Tose voiced his disapproval of Hunt’s actions to the Philadelphia Inquirer: “I don’t have the vocabulary to tell you how disgusting that is to me.” Hunt would remained unruffled and claimed he would give his “best efforts” to divest.

Pete Rozelle’s insistence on outlawing cross ownership landed him on court in 1980 when the NASL filed suit against the NFL, claiming the NFL was violating the Sherman Act by reducing competition among sports leagues. Joe Robbie’s wife, Elizabeth, was the owner of the Fort Lauderdale Striker’s franchise of the NASL, and Harris states that Robbie would “personally serve as an ex-officio member on two of the NASL’s internal committees.” These committees included the labor relations committee and the planning committee. It was later discovered that Robbie was using League documents and information to educate NASL owners on how to operate a professional sports franchise. Naturally, the commissioner and other owners took objection to this.

Though not technically against Rozelle’s rule, the commissioner saw Elizabeth’s ownership is the NASL as a “conflict of interest.” Robbie remained persistent that his wife should be able to own a franchise in another league if she so pleases. When taking the stand to be cross examined by the NASL, Robbie claimed, “I told them [NFL owners] that we stood to lose substantial money to sell of the [NASL] Ft. Lauderdale Strikers as a result of the [NFL’s] family policy.”

The judge, however, would rule in favor of the NFL, validating Rozelle’s belief that the success of the NFL is based on the economic interdependence of multiple clubs to put forth a sustainable product. The ruling would later be overturned in 1982 after the NASL filed an appeal in their last few years of existence. But in 1980, with the judge ruling in favor of the Sherman Act for the NFL, it gave Pete Rozelle and the other owners that favored League Think reason for hope, as they were currently fighting the most consequential battle in pro football’s history: LAMCC v. NFL.

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum was the home of the Los Angeles Rams until 1979 when owner Carroll Rosenbloom moved the team to Anaheim Stadium in 1980. Harris points out that the relationship between Rosenbloom and the commissioner became very cordial over the decades of Pete’s reign after a tumultuous period (Rosenbloom disliked Rozelle so much at one point that he was rumored to have asked a pair of IRS agents to investigate Pete Rozelle for any wrong doing, only for them find out that his only vice was chain smoking cigarettes). Rosenbloom, having grown dissatisfied with the Coliseum, began negotiations with land developers in Anaheim to construct a new super stadium. Rosenbloom had hinted the consideration of moving to Pete Rozelle on a few occasions. Once Rosenbloom’s intentions were apparent, Pete, who started his pro football career with the L.A. Rams public relations department, felt a sentimental attachment to the Coliseum, and asked Carroll to reconsider due the League’s longstanding history with the stadium. Rosenbloom decided to proceed with the move. Pete Rozelle didn’t challenge the decision, since the Rams would still be in the city of L.A.

Once the move was publicized via press conference at the new stadium, Bill Robertson, president of the Los Angeles County Coliseum Commission and chairman of the Mayor’s Pro Football Search Committee, along with the aid of L.A. politician Kenny Hahn, reached out to the commissioner’s office with the hopes that Rozelle was interested in engaging in expansion talks with individuals that wanted to bring another franchise to Los Angeles to play at the Coliseum. Rozelle wrote a formal letter expressing that the League wasn’t currently interested in expansion, nor would he encourage another franchise to reallocate due to the “residue of ill will” that has tainted franchises in other sports after relocation by alienating passionate fanbases. Bill Robertson was furious. He felt that Rozelle was disrespecting the city of Los Angeles. He was desperate to get another franchise by any means.

And as fate would have it, Robertson had heard that Al Davis was considering moving the Raiders to Los Angeles due to his dissatisfaction the Oakland Alameda County Stadium and the desire to be in a bigger TV market. After numerous meetings and negotiations with Robertson, Al Davis had written a formal letter to the League office in 1980 to confirm his intentions. Rozelle reminded Al of the League’s constitution that franchise relocation must approved through a unanimous vote by the League. Davis refused to cooperate.

Davis’ well documented feud with Rozelle stems long before the two ever met. Numerous historians and NFL insiders claim Davis was envious that Pete Rozelle was named commissioner of the NFL once AFL and the NFL merged, a transaction that Davis was adamantly against and reportedly had no knowledge that these discussions were taking place. Davis, who was the acting AFL commissioner right before the merger, believed that if there was to be one league, he should be the commissioner. From the beginning Davis would fight Rozelle tooth and nail, defying him in the boardrooms and in the press. A famed example that Harris recounts occurs in 1974, when Davis had invested money in a strip mall with a San Diego real estate developer named Allen Glick. Glick was rumored to have been connected to various underworld figures in the Chicago Outfit once he purchased the Hacienda Hotel and Casino in 1973, allegedly procuring the hotel with a loan from the Teamster’s Union Pension Fund. It would later surface that Glick was under investigation from the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Strike Force, the Nevada Gaming Control Board, the Labor Department, the Securities Exchange Commission and the Internal Revenue Service. Once being made aware of Glick’s rumored associates, Rozelle urged Al Davis to divest his interests in the shopping development and severe professional ties with Glick. Davis refused and claimed Rozelle was using this matter to damage his public image. The league had no further comment.

By the time Davis was preparing to move the Raiders to Los Angeles, the bad blood multiplied tenfold – not only with commissioner, but with his fellow owners. Many were unhappy with how Davis cut out Wayne Valley from the Raiders partnership, and now that Davis was going against League bylaws to move his team without a unanimous decision from the League, many of the owners were prepared to fight, though Davis anticipated that many of them would eventually back down. Dan Rooney gave the League response: “I think he’ll find that we’re committed to all the way on this thing. Our constitution, our League, is at stake.”

The league provided Davis with a court ordered injunction to prevent the move. LAMCC added Davis as a co-plaintiff in the suit. The lawsuit was filed claiming the NFL was violating the Sherman act, saying it was illegal for the NFL to restrict teams from moving and that it was anticompetitive by not allowing stadiums to compete for teams. Davis also claimed that Rozelle gave him an oral contract that he could move his franchise at a league meeting back in Chicago on October 4th and 5th of 1978. Furthermore, Davis retaliated with a lawsuit against Pete Rozelle, Gene Klein and Georgia Frontier, the remarried widow of Carroll Rosenbloom and owner of the L.A. Rams. Davis claimed that Klein and Frontier didn’t want competition in the Southern California market, and then accused Rozelle of preventing the move because he believed that Rozelle wanted to own an L.A. franchise after his reign as NFL commissioner concluded (these charges would be dropped for lack of evidence and would not be submitted to a jury). To make matters even more personally vindictive, Davis accused Rozelle, Klein and Frontier of organizing a ticket scalping scheme, an accusation that Rozelle did not take lightly.

When the LAMCC v. NFL trial was underway in 1981, it was clear that the lawsuit was posing a threat to the psyche of the league at the time when it was also fighting a pending player’s strike and facing competition for talent from the upstart United States Football League. Harris cites quotes from various owners on the impact that this was having, such as High Culverhouse when he said, “the Davis suits strikes the crux of the League’s ability to govern itself.” Art Modell called “the Davis Litigation” a “deliberating process, especially for Pete.” Rozelle, being drawn in to a battle that many felt was made personal by Al Davis, took the conflict hard, feeling his character was being wrongfully tarnished in a public forum with Davis calling Rozelle “scurrilous” and a “fraud.” After a hung jury in the first trial, the second trial featured Joseph Alioto, Davis’ attorney, badgering Rozelle relentlessly, eventually getting him to admit that there were other constitutional violations by other owners that went unpunished. Matters did not help when the judge said that even though NFL defended itself as a single entity, it is ultimately “an association of separate business entities rather than one single entity.”

After the retiral, the jury found that the NFL violated the Sherman Act, and that the league breached it’s contractual duty of good faith and fair dealing with Davis. Furthermore, the NFL was to pay $50 million and damages and nearly $10 million in legal fees. The league appealed to the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

The new standard had been established. Shortly thereafter, Bob Irsay would move the Colts from Baltimore to Indianapolis without the league consent; Bill Bidwill moved the St. Louis Cardinals to Phoenix, Arizona (and threated to sue Rozelle if he attempted to block the move) and the words of wisdom from the likes of Dan Rooney and Wellington Mara would be disregarded as the “New Guard” was hell bent on doing things their own way.

“League Think” had met it’s demise.

David Harris’ intensively researched book about the NFL’s power brokers gives the readers an unparalleled view of how the NFL as an institution enjoyed the fruits of it’s labor for so many years. While many biographies will point to the star power and the advent of television as being the reasons for the NFL’s popularity, The League offered an original insight to the organizational tactics, financial acumen and legal defense that made the NFL larger than life. Harris also analyzed the divisive side of these business dealings that pit the owners against one another over concepts of free enterprise, business ethics and self-satisfaction both advanced and deteriorated the NFL.

Today, the NFL is making more money than some of the owners profiled in this book could possibly have imagined at the time, making The League sound outdated. But what Harris refers to as a “decline” isn’t a reference to a financial downfall, but rather a reference to how the NFL had abandoned the foundations that took it to new heights. Pete Rozelle feared that the men who were more concerned with individual franchise success as opposed to cumulative success for NFL would create an unstable future for the most powerful brand in sports, with the most disastrous fear of all being the disengagement of fanbases. Along with the media covered internal disputes and conflicts between ownerships and the players, the ratings declined and public opinion of the NFL in the 1980s became horrendous. Rozelle’s nightmare came to be realized.

In the end, Rozelle’s utopian view for the league grew into conflict with the changing times, both in sports and in commerce. The more money the league made, the more ambitions the decision makers became. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man,” and for nearly three decades, the NFL was Pete Rozelle. And under Rozelle, football went from being a game to product that was reaped for fortunes.

And the men who reaped those fortunes made up their own rules.