Rozelle

  a preseason game against the Raiders at the Coliseum on Septem-

  ber 21. When I told Rosenbloom what I was doing, he invited me to

  meet him at his Beverly Hills home and attend the game with him.

  Before the game I saw Al Davis in the tunnel leading to the

  field, and I told him what I was working on. He declined to be

  interviewed. He said, “That’s all in the past, and I’d rather not talk about it.” Then he wished me luck with the book and walked away.

  (Of course, he later sued the nfl— Rozelle in his view— twice and

  testified against it in the usfl antitrust trial.)

  After the game I went back to Beverly Hills with Carroll. We

  were sitting in his family room with Georgia, his wife, and Jonathan

  Winters, his friend, when Carroll suddenly turned to me and said,

  “Young Jerry, step outside onto the patio with me. We need to talk.”

  So there we stood. As I recall, we were facing the swimming

  pool, and Carroll was silent for a moment, as though he were about

  to reveal a great truth of some sort. Then he spoke in that deep,

  resonating voice that he always used when he knew he was right

  and you were wrong:

  The Failed Coups

  169

  Why in the world would you write a book about him [Rozelle]? You should be writing about me. I am the man who saved the National

  Football League. Without my agreement to move to the afl . . . which

  I never did for the money [although he pocketed a reported three mil-

  lion dollars] . . . I did it to protect the National Football League. And I will tell you now that I will not sit idly by and tolerate his arrogance, his usurpation of powers that belong to the owners, and his extrav-agant waste of our funds. He has built a palace on Park Avenue and

  made himself an emperor. Bert Bell ran this league out of his back

  pocket, his kitchen table, and a little office in Philadelphia, and we did all right under him.

  “Well, it was you who nominated Rozelle to be commissioner,”

  I replied.

  “Yes, I voted for him back then only because I thought he was

  just another harmless ass- kisser. Who really knew him? I didn’t.

  But listen, I pay 1/26th of his salary [based on the size of the league at that time]. He has an army of people in New York. Why should

  they be responsible only to him and not to the owners, and nobody

  knows what the hell is going on until something goes wrong?”

  He did not offer to fight him on the beaches and in the streets,

  but then he was never one to tip off his strategy. But he was itch-

  ing to give a small hint. “Can you come back tomorrow? If you

  can, I’ll give you a serious idea of what I’m about to do.”

  Would I come back for that? The Chinese Eighth Route Army

  couldn’t have kept me away.

  The following morning he took me into his den, turned on his

  speakerphone, and called Thelma Elkjer, Rozelle’s secretary and

  doorkeeper.

  “This is Carroll Rosenbloom,” he boomed into the phone in a

  voice loud enough to shatter all the stained- glass windows in the

  real Notre Dame. “I am calling to speak to Mr. Rozelle.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Rosenbloom, but the commissioner is very busy

  right now. He is not taking calls. Shall I have him return your call

  at this number when he can?”

  170

  The Failed Coups

  I don’t recall exactly what Rosenbloom said, but I do recall that his facial coloring changed from millionaire’s tan to apoplectic

  scarlet. As he walked me to my rental car, he put his arm around

  my shoulder and said, “Everything I told you last night, I told

  you because I trust you. It is exclusively for your information. We

  should talk again before you do the book.”

  Some exclusive. That was in mid- September.

  The following January 1 Rosenbloom gave out an “exclusive

  interview” to the San Bernardino Sun- Telegram that was imme-

  diately picked up (he knew it would be) by the Associated Press

  and sent nationwide. In it he referred to Rozelle as “His Majesty,”

  pointed to lost court decisions, and punctuated it with the charge

  that “the nfl has been beaten on all fronts.”

  He then added: “The commissioner is supposed to act in the

  best interests of the owners and the players. Because of Ed Garvey

  [the director of the nfl Players Association, or nflpa] the players

  don’t consider him as the commissioner. And because of the law-

  yers he’s been listening to, Rozelle hasn’t been helping the own-

  ers. He’s in limbo.”

  In regards to the five- thousand- dollar fine Rozelle had slapped

  him with for publicly criticizing game officials, Rosenbloom fired

  one more salvo when he volunteered that “there have been a lot

  of social changes lately that passed the commissioner by and free-

  dom of speech is one of them.” That was January.

  In February Accorsi got a call from an old friend and former

  coworker, Steve Rosenbloom, Carroll’s son and executive assis-

  tant. He wanted a lot of specific information about how the league

  office operated. He had twenty questions to get answered by going

  into the files and wanted Accorsi to telecopy the answers to him

  as soon as possible. Accorsi recalled:

  There was this squawk box behind all our desks, and when we first

  came Pete told each of us that if something comes up you feel urgently needs my attention, use it and you will get it— always.

  I used it as soon as that call ended. Pete and Kensil told me to get

  The Failed Coups

  171

  him everything they wanted. So I did and I call back, and they don’t take the call because obviously Carroll isn’t there and even I know

  he has to be on the other extension.

  I call back and tell Steve that I got everything, and what I didn’t get, Pete and Kensil filled in for me. And then this booming voice comes

  on and shouts, “what??? . . . you told rozelle and kensil???” . . .

  Of course it was Carroll, so I said, “Mr. Rosenbloom, I am as loyal

  to Pete as I was to you.”

  Later that month Rosenbloom rehashed his charges, and then

  obviously not to alienate whatever mysterious support he was count-

  ing on he tempered his charges with: “I’m not trying to destroy

  the commissioner, I just want him back doing his job.”

  And the commissioner? Well, when I asked him about the sim-

  mering war, he just smiled and said, “He loved me once, and I hope

  he will come to love me again.”

  So the battle was definitely coming. I wondered about what

  support Carroll could hope to muster. Well, there was Davis, of

  course. Al Davis, like Rosenbloom, remained a tough competi-

  tor and in many respects a brilliant tactician whatever the battle.

  When it came to Rozelle he would drop a word here . . . a phrase

  there . . . and the message was always clear but never put together

  in a way calculated to get headlines attributable to Al Davis. But

  what it came down to, therefore, in terms of support for Rosen-

  bloom was more under the heading of aid and comfort as opposed

  to bomb- throwing revolution. Rosenbloom was about to take on

  the role of self- appointed field marshal of what he incorrectly

  believed
to be signs of growing dissatisfaction among other own-

  ers, starting with the Patriots’ Billy Sullivan.

  A West Coast writer had somehow been fed the information

  that Sullivan would take an active part in the revolt. Not so. Sul-

  livan made sure the writer understood that. He personally con-

  tacted him.

  Max Winter of the Vikings? Max had once been miffed at Rozelle

  in the early days of the Vikings, before he had an office. Rozelle

  172 The Failed Coups

  had forbidden him from selling tickers out of his bar. But Max wasn’t that miffed.

  Who then? Surely not Gene Klein, he of the twenty- thousand-

  dollar fine, or Leonard Tose of the Eagles or Herman Sarkowsky

  of the newly minted Seattle team. They were the committee cho-

  sen to sit down with Rozelle and negotiate a new contract rumored

  to be in excess of three hundred thousand dollars a year.

  Now it was March 1976, and the lodge brothers had assembled

  at the post Del Coronado Hotel in San Diego to talk business. It

  was Rosenbloom’s first chance to go on the offensive. He offered

  a plan of rule by committee that would have heavily undercut the

  commissioner’s power.

  The owners called for a voice vote as to whether they should

  vote at all on the plan. From Oakland Rosenbloom got mild sup-

  port. From the rest of the room he got nothing but silence. As

  Jay Moyer, the nfl in- house counsel back then, recalls, no vote

  was taken.

  The next morning Rosenbloom returned to the meeting for an

  all- out assault. “I knew it was going to be a big thing,” Modell told me. “He was wearing that beautifully tailored blue suit he saved for

  special occasions, and he was all tanned and he had this damned

  speech he wanted to give. He even asked for a microphone, and

  he goes, ‘One . . . two . . . three . . . testing.’”

  “Then he gave this long, rambling speech,” Wellington Mara

  recalled. “The longer he spoke, the more emotional he got, and

  everyone was getting more and more upset.”

  “Wellington actually saved the day,” Modell said later. “Every-

  one was furious, and I don’t know what would have happened if

  Wellington hadn’t called for a lunch break.”

  After lunch George Halas called for the floor and delivered an

  impassioned speech in Rozelle’s defense. He was followed by Lamar

  Hunt, who did the same. Both men received standing ovations.

  Admittedly, a standing ovation by two dozen people is hardly a

  replay of Frank Sinatra at Madison Square Garden, but it was all

  the noise Rozelle needed to hear.

  The Failed Coups

  173

  Rosenbloom heard none of it. He had stalked out of the room at the lunch break and did not return. In the months that followed,

  he continued to bang away.

  In early October of that year, he fired off his most vocal public

  assault. One can only assume it was calculated to pick up support

  from the handful of Jewish owners.

  The Rams had been scheduled for a 4:00 p.m. game in Miami on

  October 3, which was also the eve of Yom Kippur, known to Jews

  around the world as the Day of Atonement. It is the holiest day in

  the Jewish religion. The holiday begins at sundown, and, with its

  late start, the game could not be finished before then. “This is a

  thing that was done with malice aforethought,” Rosenbloom told

  anyone within earshot. “They say ‘let’s put the Jew in Miami for

  Yom Kippur and see how he likes it.’ I just know Rozelle and his

  stooges were giggling about it the day they released the schedule.”

  Actually, the day they released the schedule had been back in

  April. The day Rosenbloom complained was more than five months

  later and almost on the eve of the game itself. His comments were

  picked up by newspapers around the country.

  Six years earlier when Rosenbloom owned the Colts, they had

  been scheduled to play on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

  He did not complain. He did not ask for an alternate date. He

  played the game without comment.

  Now it was October 1976 and the owners were back in New

  York for a second league meeting, and while they did not expect

  Rosenbloom to drop the matter without comment, they never

  expected the explosion that followed.

  They had assembled at league headquarters in what the staff had

  come to call the “fish room.” The first time you hear it described

  that way, you visualize a posh meeting room with a large and well-

  stocked aquarium built into the wall. But this had become the room

  the interior decorator never visualized. What happened was that

  during one of his deep- sea fishing trips Rozelle so enjoyed, he won

  a long, tough decision over a very large marlin that he immedi-

  ately had stuffed and mounted.

  174 The Failed Coups

  When the commissioner’s fish arrived at 410 Park Avenue, Thelma Elkjer, holder of the keys to the kingdom, was adamant:

  “Not in this office.”

  Hell hath no fury like a determined executive secretary. The fish

  was mounted instead in Pete’s conference room. Now, when this

  thing started, it looked as though Rosenbloom wanted to mount

  the commissioner himself.

  For the meeting he had brought with him the Rams’ general

  counsel, a prestigious entertainment lawyer named Ed Hookstrat-

  ten, known at times in show- biz circles as “the Hook.”

  Rosenbloom sat next to him with arms folded and snow- white

  hair, neatly coiffed. The attorney read aloud from a large yellow

  legal pad outlining Carroll’s charges against Rozelle. They ran

  the gamut from financial irresponsibility to abuse of power and

  so on, and so on. One man who was in the room said he seemed

  to recall a charge of anti- Semitism based on the infamous Yom

  Kippur game in Miami.

  In conclusion, Hookstratten said to paraphrase, “Mr. Rosen-

  bloom wants you to know that he will not set foot in this building

  again until Mr. Rozelle is removed as commissioner.”

  Then Rozelle stepped to the microphone, showing absolutely

  no emotion, and said before Rosenbloom and Hookstratten could

  leave the building, “Uh, if that’s about it, perhaps we should break

  for lunch.”

  nfl counsel Jay Moyer recalled that as he marched to the door

  with Hookstratten, Rosenbloom looked back over his shoulder and

  shouted, “If I can’t get you in here, I’ll get you out there.” Within

  a year the Internal Revenue Service (irs) had demanded to look

  at the nfl’s books. It was generally felt among the top nfl brass

  that Rosenbloom had used his well- known political contacts to

  force the investigation.

  During that lunch break George Halas, Lamar Hunt, Leon Hess,

  Wellington Mara, and one or two others crowded into Rozelle’s

  office and expressed their anger at the Rams’ owner.

  Halas said, “Somebody find out what plane Rosenbloom is on

  The Failed Coups

  175

  today, and we will get on the one after it, go out to his house at Beverly Hills, and tell him that if he can’t abide by the rules, we’ll throw him out.”


  Rozelle did not tell them to go. He did not tell them to stay.

  He didn’t comment at all.

  History does not record what Halas & Co. did, but it is a fact

  that Rosenbloom never reopened the subject.

  At long last he finally had the answer to the question he asked

  Paul Brown more than a decade earlier when he had agreed to

  nominate Rozelle for the commissioner’s job. His question had

  been “Who the hell is Pete Rozelle?” He never had to ask it again.

  176

  The Failed Coups

  12

  Power to the Tackles

  They [nfl owners] will stick together and work together . . . [and] punish anybody who won’t do it their way.

  —Ed Garvey, nflpa executive director, 1971– 83

  I think Marvin Miller [baseball] is clearly the best labor leader in sports.

  Marvin is not looking for a new career. He knows what he wants to be.

  Who knows about Ed?

  —Pete Rozelle, laying down the gauntlet

  In 1947 the Pittsburgh Steelers, a franchise that had lived through

  more tough years than Cassandra, staggered toward a meeting with

  the Philadelphia Eagles that could have brought them their first-

  ever divisional title. The losing of football games had been devel-

  oped into an art form by the Steelers, but suddenly these orphans

  of the storm found themselves in the unaccustomed role of flirt-

  ing with destiny.

  Their season had ended at 8- 4. Philadelphia was 8- 3 with one

  left to play. Should Philly win, they would break the ensuing tie

  with an extra playoff game against the Steelers the following week.

  So the Steelers waited, and while they waited, they practiced.

  Well, not exactly. Jock Sutherland, their coach, had made it clear

  that under no circumstances would they be paid for the extra week.

  When the owner, Art Rooney, reminded his coach that the play-

  ers just might need money for frivolities like food and lodging,

  Sutherland replied, “Those who need money are also those who

  need the practice.” And the owners at the time actually wondered

  why the players might like to have a union of their own.

  177

  Eight years later players representing every team except the Chicago Bears (who were painfully reminded that George “don’t allow

  no union playin’ ’round here”) presented to then commissioner

  Bert Bell what the owners considered a lot of arrogant demands,