Paul Tagliabue, who served as NFL commissioner for 17 seasons because the league skilled super prosperity and development, died Sunday morning on the age of 84, his household introduced.
The obvious explanation for demise was coronary heart failure sophisticated by Parkinson’s illness.
Tagliabue grew to become commissioner in 1989, taking up for Pete Rozelle. He was succeeded by present commissioner Roger Goodell in 2006.
The worth of most of the league’s franchises elevated tenfold throughout Tagliabue’s time within the commissioner’s chair. When he left, greater than two-thirds of the NFL’s 32 groups had been both taking part in in or constructing stadiums that did not exist when he took over as commissioner in 1989. The league additionally added 4 groups — the Carolina Panthers (1995), Jacksonville Jaguars (1995), present-day Cleveland Browns (1999) and Houston Texans (2002) — throughout his tenure, going from 28 groups to 32.
He was elected to the Professional Soccer Corridor of Fame as a contributor in 2020.
“In analyzing what makes the NFL so compelling, I at all times return to the gamers who make the sport what it’s,” Tagliabue mentioned throughout his Corridor of Fame induction speech. “The athletes who thrive within the aggressive setting of the Nationwide Soccer League are typically intensely motivated people with clear values and distinctive targets. … We have to respect the gamers for having these qualities and for what they symbolize as leaders in sports activities and in society.”
Tagliabue was commissioner throughout two of the largest crises in current American historical past — the terrorist assaults of Sept. 11, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Tagliabue canceled the weekend’s NFL video games within the aftermath of Sept. 11, setting the tone for different sports activities leagues to observe go well with.
“I used to be satisfied that there was no actual historic analogue for the [Sept. 11] assaults,” Tagliabue wrote in his 2017 memoir “Jersey Metropolis to America’s Sport.” “… On a convention name Wednesday with our working group of homeowners, I advised them that ‘This isn’t the Kennedy assassination. This isn’t Pearl Harbor. It is worse.’ I knew that I couldn’t help taking part in any video games on that weekend.”
He additionally ensured that the Saints would transfer again to New Orleans after being displaced to San Antonio throughout the 2005 season due to Hurricane Katrina.
When he introduced his retirement in 2006, Tagliabue mentioned the largest accomplishment of his tenure was “constructing a robust relationship with the NFL Gamers Affiliation,” noting that “everybody concerned within the NFL within the ’80s noticed that as a unfavourable.”
Working with gamers’ union govt director Gene Upshaw and following recommendation from late Pittsburgh Steelers proprietor Dan Rooney to by no means give “an excessive amount of weight to anyone proprietor,” Tagliabue helped restore peace in owner-player relations after labor strikes in 1982 and 1987. There have been no labor stoppages throughout his 17-year tenure. The league additionally loved historic tv contracts, and below Tagliabue, free company and a wage cap had been launched.
“The system put each crew on a roughly equal footing within the soccer competitors, and it took an excellent participant and an excellent proprietor,” Tagliabue mentioned of labor peace. “It took a Gene Upshaw and a Dan Rooney to succeed in that type of a compromise and that type of an answer to a sophisticated drawback.”
Tagliabue mentioned his greatest remorse as commissioner was permitting each the Rams and Raiders to depart Los Angeles after the 1994 season — the Rams for St. Louis and the Raiders for Oakland earlier than transferring to Las Vegas in 2020. The Rams returned to L.A. from St. Louis for the 2016 season, with the Chargers becoming a member of them in 2017 after a transfer from San Diego.
Submit-retirement, Tagliabue was appointed by Goodell in 2012 to listen to an attraction by 4 gamers who had been suspended within the Saints’ “Bountygate” case. Tagliabue overturned the suspensions, saying that whereas three of the 4 gamers engaged in conduct detrimental to the league, the case had been “contaminated by the coaches and others within the Saints group.”
Tagliabue additionally served as chairman of the board of administrators at Georgetown College from 2009 to 2015.
Previous to his authorized profession, Tagliabue was a standout faculty basketball participant at Georgetown. Earlier than taking up the job of commissioner, Tagliabue was a league lawyer who spent a lot of that point because the NFL’s consultant and unofficial lobbyist in Washington.
He’s survived by his spouse Chandler, son Drew and daughter Emily.
ESPN’s Adam Schefter and The Related Press contributed to this report.