With Roger Goodell, NFL Returns To Its Sports Marketing Focus

When NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue was selected 17-years ago it was the first time the league went for a legal-head rather than a media or PR expert. Commissioner Tagliabue was a lawyer for the league and in my view, his selection was right for its time: the NFL needed a sharp legal mind to cope with the complicated issues of franchise movement, Super Bowl event price gouging problems, and more and more complex television relationships.

Paul Tagliabue ushered in the era of the lawyer in sports. But as much as he did this, Roger Goodell represents a new time, when the NFL and other sports leagues have staffs advanced enough such that one can be employed from within and to the job of commissioner.

Roger -- as I've personally referred to him for several years, and now must call him Commissioner Goodell -- was groomed for the position of NFL Commissioner. None other than ex-Oakland Raiders Executive Assistant Al LoCasale told me this over lunch in 1997, when he was teaching me NFL politics and history. "He's going to be commissioner some day," LoCasale said with great certainty.

He was right -- but then he always was.

But lets think about what it means to be "groomed." It means that Roger had a mentor -- Paul Tagliabue. It means that Roger either sat in on, or eventually ran, meetings on very important matters, from the TV contract to realignment, to collective bargaining. It means that Roger's seen every aspect of not just the operation of the NFL, but the negotiations and planning that shape the World's most successful professional sports league.

It also means that in Roger, the league not only gets continuity, but a return to its sports marketing focus. I don't expect big immediate changes in how the league does what it does, but I do look for more innovation in its new media efforts, and more expansion -- into Europe and China, but not so much that the league over extends itself.

I also expect the set of power relationships between owner and commissioner to change. The one thing I noticed was that Commissioner Tagliabue had more conversations at league parties I attended with more established NFL Owners like Pat Bolen, who owns the Denver Broncos, than with Seahawks owner Paul Allen.

Goodell will certainly alter this just a bit just by his style and orientation; I look for owners like Dallas Cowboys' head Jerry Jones to have more influence and be more of an insider given his historically aggressive push for more and greater revenues from marketing and sponsorship -- something Goodell himself has focused on.

The one question that remains is how Roger's going to handle the matter of getting a team into LA. My read is that Mike Ovitz is wrong -- Roger does want a team in LA, but under NFL terms: public money, and a renovated LA Coliseum. A newly created NFL expansion franchise is what Roger wants to see, but absent that, I'm willing to bet he'll back the Raiders return to Los Angeles, especially if the City of Oakland doesn't get it's act together.

Getting a team in LA is something I know Roger wants to do. Getting it done will be the first success in what will be a career full of them.