ing, “Donald was always about Donald. When he first bought the
Generals, at the first meeting he was like a panther in the back of
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239
the room. He got up and showed everyone at the meeting all the press coverage he got from buying the Generals. He said it would
have cost him a million dollars to get this kind of coverage in the
real estate industry and added, ‘this is the greatest thing that has
ever happened to me.’”
So there was that factor, and there is little doubt he received pri-
vate encouragement from a strange source— Al Davis. He emerged
in the days leading up to the actual antitrust trial as a kind of 100-
yard version of Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger. All
that was missing was an a capella chorus of poltergeists chanting,
“He’s baaaack.”
Incredibly, Davis even agreed to testify against his own league in
the antitrust lawsuit. Rozelle was not surprised. Tagliabue, who
would join the outside counsel in this suit, was not surprised.
Davis, after all, was still Davis, and despite his constant protesta-
tions his animus toward Rozelle never abated. In this case there
came a moment a couple of days before he was sworn in as a wit-
ness in which he reached into his traditional arsenal to use the two
weapons that were his stock in trade— intimidation and evasion.
Shep Goldfein, the attorney who was closest to Frank Rothman,
the nfl’s lead attorney, recalls a meeting in which Davis played
his traditional intimidation card:
It was around July 4 while the trial was going on. We knew, of course, that he was coming to testify, so we called his lawyer Joe Alioto and
told him he owed us the courtesy to speak for us to speak to Al about
what he was planning to say and then we would set up a joint meet-
ing at the Regency Hotel [in Manhattan].
There was Frank [Rothman], Paul [Tagliabue], and myself. Bob
Fitch [another outside counsel] was supposed to be there, but he had
car trouble. We were in Joe’s suite, and he explained that Al would
join us. Joe told us that Al felt he needed to testify because he believed 240
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in the free- enterprise system and he felt because of that belief he was obliged to testify, and Joe added, “Well, it won’t be so bad.”
Then Al walks in, and he is screaming the minute he crossed the
threshold. He looked at Tagliabue, and he shouts, “I will sue you for
malpractice and giving bad advice to the league for years.” Then he
looks at Frank and yells, “You have an undisclosed ownership interest
in the Chargers with Gene Klein. You are a liar, and I’m gonna get you, too.” He looked at me like “Who the hell are you?” and then he turned
back to Frank and raises his voice even higher and screamed, “You ask
me a question on cross- examination, and I’ll drill you a new asshole.”
Joe got up and he said, “Al, Al, calm down,” and Al said, “Don’t
you ever tell me to calm down. You work for me.”
And then he walked right out of the room, and that was the entire
meeting. We just sat there and looked at each other, trying to figure
out what had just happened. Then, as we were walking to the door,
Joe stood up, and he said that Al didn’t want us to cross- examine him after his direct testimony. I remember he told us that it would be okay and we wouldn’t need to, because “Al isn’t going to hurt you.”
I knew why he didn’t want us to ask him anything on cross—
because there was so much we had about him, he knew he would be
in big trouble. But Frank really surprised me. He said not to plan to
cross Davis until he heard from me. He was going to talk to Cosell,
who desperately wanted to testify for the usfl, because he knew him
[and had once even been his lawyer], and he would call me after that
conversation and tell me what we were going to do.
The nfl legal team knew that the other side thought it had dis-
covered a “smoking gun,” probably planted in private conversa-
tion by Davis. It was based on the notion that Rozelle had talked
the other owners into keeping New York City open in the event
Leon Hess decided to bring the Jets back from New Jersey.
If this were true, it would effectively keep the usfl (read: Don-
ald Trump) out of New York and could have been a serious factor
in making the usfl’s case.
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241
While the nfl lawyers were trying to figure out how to handle that without a blistering cross- examination of Davis, Rothman
called Goldfein with a stunning decision: “We won’t do much of
a cross on Davis, if at all. I just spoke to Cosell, and this is what
we are going to do . . .”
He had decided that he could take the pomposity of both Cosell
and Trump and let them self- destruct during cross- examination,
and he felt that would be all the jury had to see and hear.
Davis’s testimony centered around the fact that he believed the
usfl’s Oakland team’s future existence was threatened by what he
believed to be a conspiracy between the nfl and the municipal gov-
ernment of Oakland. His “proof” seemed to convince nobody, but
during his testimony Myerson went in search of what he thought
was the smoking gun that could win the case.
Myerson’s questioning of him was constructed to allege that the
nfl and the Jets conspired to mislead New York City and state
officials into believing that the Jets were willing to return from
New Jersey. The purpose was to block the usfl’s New Jersey team
from moving to a new domed stadium (never built) in New York.
Davis, in response, modified the original idea that it had been
openly discussed, backtracking to say he believed there was an
“understanding” implied at a 1983 nfl owners’ meeting to keep a
usfl team out of New York. He could not say the strong words for
which Myerson was looking. Every other person in that meeting
emphatically denied it ever happened. And good- bye, smoking gun.
At one point Davis, who always portrayed himself as a man with
a great and dangerous (to you) secret, innocently indicated that
a set of minutes from an owners’ meeting was not the same set
he had received. A page or pages were missing, he claimed, from
what the nfl had put in evidence. He was directed by the court to
call his office and have the mysterious missing minutes faxed for
reading the next day. When it was submitted it simply contained
a single page that included a financial report and an agreement to
recess the meeting. There was nothing there about a request from
Hess to keep New York without another team . . . nothing about
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a tv conspiracy to keep the usfl away . . . nothing much of anything. And not a hint of a smoking gun.
But his fear of cross- examination was real. Bob Ley of espn was
quoted as saying: “During a brief recess in his cross- examination,
Davis was heard to tell nfl executives, ‘Be careful questioning me
here because there is a lot I’m not saying.’”
It was a panic- driven threat. Deep down he knew there was a
lot more that Rothman could be saying. Consequently, his testimony had not really hurt the nfl. Just as Alioto had hinted after
Al left the room at that crazy meeting, he was too afraid of a vigor-
ous cross. “I think,” Tagliabue recalls, “that he backed off because
he was really afraid of where Rothman could go. Basically, he had
tried to intimidate us, but when that failed he was still very much
afraid of what Frank could do to him on cross.”
Davis needn’t have worried. True to Alioto’s promise, Davis’s
testimony didn’t mean much. It was Trump and Cosell who held
the key, and Rothman played them like a violin. Cosell, as he
expected, self- destructed, and Trump’s arrogance had reestab-
lished Rozelle’s credibility when the commissioner was brought
back for a second shot by the defense.
And the way things went earlier on Rozelle’s first trip to the
stand, it needed to be reestablished. Myerson had surprised the
defense team a little when he called Rozelle as his first witness and
threw him off stride as only a brilliant lawyer could.
In retrospect, it is worth looking into the different styles of
Myerson and Rothman to understand the ebb and flow of the
entire trial. Each style scored points— Myerson with all the sub-
tlety of a bulldozer at the start, and Rothman with something akin
to death by a thousand cuts at the finish.
Myerson was up first. There were those in the legal profession
who referred to him as Heavy Hitter Harvey; others called him the
Agent Orange of all lawyers. Among the trappings of his lifestyle
were raccoon coats, footlong Cuban cigars, a Rolls- Royce, a wife in
a lavish home, and a longtime trophy blonde girlfriend on his arm.
As a litigator his delivery relied heavily on dramatic pauses and
Never Take a Knife to a Gunfight
243
phrases that sounded as if they had all been offered in capital letters. With Leon Hess, owner of the Jets, on the stand, for some
reason he felt he was putting him on the defensive through deri-
sive pronouncement, as in “Now, Mr. Hess.” At one point during
direct examination of Rozelle, he referred to him as “this monop-
olist.” The judge sustained Rothman’s objection, but Rozelle was
clearly angered by the jury hearing an accusation that he knew
the judge would strike from the record. In short, Myerson would
come off as advertised.
He had called Rozelle to the stand as a hostile witness. And he
was relentless. To quote Dan Rooney, owner of the Steelers and
now ambassador to Ireland: “I was there almost every day. Roth-
man was very good, but I still was worried how the jury might
react. You know they [Trump, Cosell, Davis] weren’t telling the
truth, and you had to have some faith that the truth would come
out, which it did, but I have to admit I was really concerned.”
Rozelle’s appearance as a hostile witness was not up to his usual
standard. Moyer, the nfl in- house counsel, put it this way: “As an
experienced trial lawyer, Myerson did what you would expect. He
made Pete responsible for just about every minute of his tenure
as commissioner. Pete did not blow it, but he struggled. But when
he came back on direct by Rothman, he was very, very good.”
Joe Browne, then the nfl executive vice president of commu-
nications and public affairs, was at the trial almost every day. He
explains Rozelle’s difficulty under Myerson’s original direct exam-
ination like this:
Well, during that phase his testimony was far from a 10. Myerson
hammered him about the so- called New York agreement that wasn’t
true because Davis had never proven it. His charges were outrageous.
Pete was on the stand for five days, and he was exhausted. But the big thing that upset him was that for the first time in his life as a witness, he had to play defense.
And then, as the usfl attorney . . . was hammering away about
Pete’s meeting with Trump, which Trump claimed was to offer him
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a franchise, you could see that Pete was angry because it wasn’t even true. Pete took care of that when Rothman had him later as a witness.
If you were there scoring this, Myerson et al. were winners of
that first round.
Myerson was insistent about a seminar given by a Harvard pro-
fessor entitled “How to Conquer the usfl,” attended by several
nfl officials. It was part of his plan to uncover a decisive “smok-
ing gun.” In cross- examination it would come out that Rozelle
had issued a memo when he learned of it, telling the staff not to
act in any way on anything that was suggested in the seminar and
do anything they were told there.
Myerson demanded to know if staying in the spring was so good,
why had the nfl never played in that season? Rozelle laboriously
gave the reasons an established league didn’t even have to consider
that thought, but if a new league could get television money that
way, then for them, it could work— if they properly managed costs:
myerson: Wasn’t it your view that playing in the spring would
have a minor league stamp on it?
rozelle: I think it was the best way to start a new league, to play
in the spring and not have the college competition and the end of
baseball season. When you are just starting something you can’t
expect to get a big television contract.
They argued over the usfl’s signing of underclassmen. Billy
Cannon, a Heisman winner, was the subject of the debate. He
had been signed by Rozelle when Rozelle was general manager of
the Rams. But of more importance was the following exchange:
myerson: And do you happen to recall of your own personal
knowledge who it was that signed Billy Cannon to a professional
contract prior to the time he graduated?
rozelle: I definitely do.
myerson: Who was that, Commissioner Rozelle? (and here he
dramatically demanded) Look at the jury and tell them.
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245
rozelle: I did.
myerson: You were the general manger of the Rams and the fact
of the matter is that you signed Billy Cannon under the goal posts
of the Los Angeles Coliseum prior to the time that he graduated
from college, isn’t that correct?
rozelle: No.
myerson: You didn’t sign him under the goal posts, you did not?
rozelle: No.
myerson: You don’t ever remember appearing with Billy Can-
non under the goal posts?
rozelle: No. I didn’t.
myerson: Weren’t disciplinary proceedings commenced against
the Rams by the nfl?
rozelle: Absolutely not.
myerson: And Commissioner Rozelle, if one of your owners
comes into the courtroom and testifies under oath that you quashed
those disciplinary proceedings as commissioner, he would be lying
wouldn’t he?
Can it be that Al Davis made promises to Mr. Myerson? Was
he the “nfl owner” in this case? If not Davis,
who else could it
be? Since nobody answered that intriguing question in court,
we’ll never know.
Myerson was relentless. Rozelle was frustrated, and his annoy-
ance bordered on anger. It went on this way for days. Myerson ques-
tioned him over the fact Hess had been on the board of directors
of abc, creating what the attorney implied was a conflict of inter-
est because he owned the Jets at the same time. Rozelle said he
didn’t see it that way. Myerson drilled away at what he indicated was
Rozelle’s part in a conspiracy to keep the usfl off autumn television.
In short, he continually attacked, and Rozelle tried to fight back
but grew more annoyed as the dialogue went on. As Dan Rooney
had feared, the usfl jumped out to an early lead.
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After Davis followed Rozelle, Donald Trump was called to the stand for the usfl.
The media billed him, along with Howard Cosell, as key wit-
nesses. He had created this suit. He had insisted that Myerson be
hired as the usfl’s lead attorney. And he was the one who could
recount what he insisted were his private conversations with the
commissioner— all of which could not be corroborated.
Trump claimed that at a private meeting between the two at the
Pierre hotel, Rozelle had offered him an nfl franchise in New York
if the usfl withdrew its suit against the older league. Among other
things to which he testified was his insistence that Rozelle was an
old friend who had turned against him after he joined the usfl.
He also claimed that Rozelle had told him he controlled net-
work sports television and implied that his (Trump’s) inability to
get a fall contract was because of that.
The nfl had set up a small headquarters near the courthouse
where their lawyers and owners would meet during the lunch
break. Tagliabue, Moyer, and Browne knew that Rozelle had made
notes after the meeting about which Trump testified. He still had
them and was prepared to bring them with him when Rothman
put him back on the stand.
Browne knew all about those notes and how they contradicted
everything testified to earlier by Trump. He also recalled for me
their conversation during the break that day. He says he asked
Rozelle, “Why would Donald Trump lie under oath about some-
thing like that?”
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