Rozelle

  so much. It was easier if I let them have their family. I decided that’s what I’d do. But Dad managed to make it a point to have dinner with

  me once a week. I do think he was happy in the beginning, but, you

  know, things did change for him. He couldn’t see his friends the way

  he used to see them. After the glamour wore off, it wasn’t the per-

  fect marriage.

  “I think she was good for him,” Joe Browne says, “in that she

  personally added positives to his life. But she came with baggage,

  as most people do. He went from a nice Manhattan apartment

  with his daughter to a house in Westchester with four kids who

  had some problems.”

  The unexpected baggage was real. At least two of the three

  boys were dyslexic. Rozelle had always wanted a son, and now he

  had three. He had always managed to solve his daughter’s prob-

  lems, but this was too much. He tried, but he solved almost none.

  According to Anne Marie, they were in and out of schools—

  sometimes for academic reasons and sometimes for social reasons.

  They flunked out or were thrown out. The biggest favor he asked

  for them was help in getting Philip into Cornell Law, and Rozelle

  told him, “Please, don’t let me down.”

  “But Philip,” she said, “was there for a very short time, and then

  he quit suddenly without even telling anyone. And Jack (the old-

  est) had far more serious problems.”

  Anne Marie said he had drug problems, and she believes they

  were at least a partial cause of his death. There was that and the

  fact that he was an alcoholic. At Super Bowl XXII in 1988 in San

  Diego, he showed up at the commissioner’s party and demanded to

  see his mother. His condition was such that security removed him.

  264 The Final Battles

  Those who knew him best cited his severe learning disability and overwhelming sense of failure as the likely root causes of his

  alcohol and drug problems. He was the grandson of Jack Kent

  Cooke and bore his name, and his friends felt that he was forever

  a disappointment to his grandfather (and perhaps to himself) when

  measured against his grandfather’s expectations. All of this had

  led Carrie Rozelle to establish what is now the National Center

  for Learning Disabilities— a group that she and Pete continued

  to work hard to support until they died.

  A year after Jack’s brush with security at the Super Bowl party,

  Carrie, Pete, and Anne Marie were together at the next champi-

  onship game. Because Pete had a lot of serious labor business to

  conduct, they did not stay at the league headquarters in Miami.

  Instead, they were at the Doral Hotel in Miami Beach.

  The official commissioner’s party is always held on Friday.

  When they returned to the hotel that night, the message light

  in the Rozelles’ room was blinking. The horrendous news on the

  voice mail said that Jack had been found dead that night alone in

  his apartment in Glendale, eight miles north of Los Angeles. The

  coroner would later say he had been dead for three days. He was

  twenty- six years old.

  “I was there with my dad,” Anne Marie recalled. “I saw Dad

  cry. My father had tried so hard to solve all the kids’ problems. But

  he couldn’t. I am sure he felt Jack’s death was a failure for him.”

  The next morning Hugh Culverhouse, representing the nfl

  Management Council, and Gene Upshaw, the nfl Players Associa-

  tion executive director, had an 8:30 appointment with the commis-

  sioner to finalize a new four- year collective bargaining agreement.

  When Rozelle opened the door to the suite, both men recoiled

  in shock. “He was as pale as a ghost,” Upshaw would later tell

  Tagliabue. “Tears were streaming down his face. All he said was,

  ‘I can’t talk. My stepson is dead.’”

  The Super Bowl was just a day away. Carrie flew back to Los

  Angeles. Nothing was announced. That night Joe Montana drove

  the 49ers ninety- two yards in three minutes to beat the Bengals.

  The Final Battles

  265

  Rozelle presented the postgame trophy. The millions watching on television and the Niners’ players, coaches, and front- office personnel had no idea of the pain he had gone through since Friday night.

  There was little joy left in being commissioner for him. Paul

  Tagliabue, his eventual successor, recalls having dinner with Car-

  rie and Pete and Tagliabue’s wife, Chan:

  It was 1986 or ’87, and all of a sudden he said, “You did a hell of a

  job over the years. There is no way we would be where we are today

  without you. I want you to know I appreciate it.” And then he turned

  to Chan and he added, “I know you had hell to pay as much as he

  was away working, and you trying to raise a few kids. Believe me, I

  know that’s tough.”

  Then Carrie inserted herself into our conversation. She said, “I

  tell Pete many times that you did so much, you should have his posi-

  tion when the time comes,” and Pete says, “We didn’t come here to

  talk about this, but what Carrie said has a lot of truth to it.”

  I don’t know whether she put the idea in his head, but on a cou-

  ple of occasions later he said right after his retirement that he hoped this [selecting the new commissioner] would work out the way he

  wanted it to work out.

  I’m telling you this because I believe with all he had been through,

  he was now thinking about retirement, and Carrie, who wanted that,

  seemed to be telling him, “The guy is sitting right here, so why are

  you waiting?”

  It was just before a regular league meeting in March 1989 in

  Palm Desert, California, that the commissioner finally acted on

  a decision that had been percolating in the back roads of his mind

  since October. He had already spoken about it with Wellington

  Mara and Leon Hess and given them a heads- up after pledging

  them to secrecy. Now he told Tagliabue. “I am going to announce

  my retirement today,” he said as they were prepping for the for-

  mal league meeting. “I don’t want this repeated until I do it, but I

  want to be sure you are there because I want someone there tak-

  ing clear notes as to what I am going to say.”

  266

  The Final Battles

  He had already written a memo to his staff, but would not release it until after the meeting. The memo was typical of him.

  It was an apology for keeping them in the dark all those months,

  but he explained that he did not want a full season as a lame- duck

  commissioner because there were things that had to be done. “I

  wanted everything solved on a high note with no outstanding lit-

  igation,” he would say. “But eventually I just realized this job can-

  not be like that anymore. There is always going to be something.”

  He had closed as many loose ends as he could while never even

  hinting at retirement to anyone on his staff. Nobody even sus-

  pected. He would announce his decision in March and stay until

  a successor had been found in October.

  He and Carrie had already decided that when the time came,

  they would move to California. The key reason was thei
r friend-

  ship with Gene Klein and his wife, Joyce. Klein, who owned the

  San Diego Chargers, also shared a love of horse racing with the

  commissioner in transit. His brilliant filly Winning Colors had

  won the Kentucky Derby. He was instrumental in the building

  of Rancho Santa Fe, home to the wealthiest home owners in San

  Diego County.

  Klein sold him a choice lot for what was said to be seven hun-

  dred thousand dollars, overlooking his thoroughbred training cen-

  ter. Carrie would drive to California, move into rental property,

  and have the new house built to her specs. Carrie headed for Ran-

  cho Santa Fe in July 1989, and Pete, with a new commissioner in

  the job, would join her in November.

  After the home was built, the plan was to travel extensively

  with the Kleins, who had become their best friends. But a year

  after the move, as the two couples were preparing to vacation on

  a Pacific island, Klein died of a heart attack. Now a widow, Joyce

  would move away.

  The very reason they had chosen their retirement locale had

  disappeared. Some (including Rozelle’s friend Bob Tisch) said that

  from a health standpoint, Rozelle would have done better staying

  in the East. But all of that was in the future.

  The Final Battles

  267

  Now, at the meeting in March 1989, the most powerful people in all of pro football sat in stunned disbelief while the man who

  had risen from “commissioner by accident” to the role of “lord high

  innovator and problem solver” delivered his totally unexpected

  valedictory. The best way to describe their reaction was a kind of

  shock and awe— shock that the moment had actually arrived and

  awe at their realization of what his stewardship had meant.

  The brief announcement rocked the room. His tears as he exited

  were real. As he made his way toward the exit, he received a stand-

  ing ovation. The owners generally sat in the same seats at each

  league meeting. Davis always sat in the back on the left- hand side.

  Pete left through the door on the left. There are varied accounts

  of the instant when he walked past Davis. There are those who

  talk about Davis’s rush to embrace him.

  This is what actually happened, according to Joe Browne, who

  was there. “He did leave on the side where Davis, Mike Brown

  [Bengals], and Tom Benson [Saints] sat. They all shook his hand

  as he passed by. He was crying. Davis did not embrace him.”

  The emotionally bloody, pressure- filled battles were over. Soon,

  the owners would decide between Tagliabue, the trusted legal

  counselor, and Jim Finks, the former player and general manager,

  as the new commissioner. Rozelle would settle into his new role as

  consultant. There were no more wars to fight. Or so he thought.

  Before the year ended, he would take yet another emotional hit

  that would jolt him to the core. It would come from the man who

  had been one of his best friends . . . the man who hired him as a

  kid at Compton Junior College to put out the Rams’ preseason

  programs . . . the man whom he helped get the general manag-

  er’s job at the newly minted Dallas Cowboys . . . the man who

  had been his presenter when he was inducted into the Pro Foot-

  ball Hall of Fame.

  This least expected last battle was joined shortly after Jerry

  Jones, the new owner, had fired Tom Landry as coach and was

  about to do the same to Tex Schramm, the Dallas Cowboys’ gen-

  eral manager. “Ever since we had won the usfl trial,” Tagliabue

  268

  The Final Battles

  recalled, “Pete had been thinking about whether the usfl would have been viable had it stayed in the spring. He told me, ‘I’m not

  all that hot on the idea, but some smart people say spring football

  could survive on the right scale. Maybe we should do it as a kind

  of development league.’”

  A month before Jones was about to fire Schramm, Rozelle offered

  him a job as the president and commissioner of a development

  league that would be called the World League of American Foot-

  ball. Some of its franchises would be in Europe and one in Canada;

  others would be in those American cities he could test as poten-

  tial nfl franchises of the future. Since he was going to launch the

  league in any event, it would give Schramm a face- saving job at

  a reasonable salary.

  Pete saw it as a venture wholly owned by the nfl with Schramm

  in charge, and the former Cowboy general manager accepted on

  those terms. But then Pete got a strange telephone call from him.

  “I’ve got a little different plan than we discussed,” Schramm said.

  “It’s better for everyone. You are going to love it. Come on down

  to Washington and meet me.”

  “I don’t think I like what I’m smelling here,” Rozelle told

  Tagliabue. “I want you to fly down there with me.”

  They met at 5:30 p.m. in the bar of the Willard Hotel. Sitting

  next to Tex was a venture capitalist from Austin, Texas, named

  Richard Rainwater, who had his own plan.

  “This is great,” Tex said. “Rainwater puts up all the money

  and sells off thirty teams at ten million each, and I get 15 percent

  equity, and the nfl puts up the players and no money and becomes

  a minority owner . . . no money down by the nfl . . . a great deal

  for everybody. Am I right or am I right?”

  The more Tex talked, the hotter Rozelle got. After an hour

  Rozelle was steaming, but he kept his poker face, and he told Sch-

  ramm, “I’d like to sleep on this. Let’s say you come to my suite

  tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. for breakfast, and we’ll talk it over. And,

  Tex, you come alone.”

  The next morning Tex walked into the suite, and he was rub-

  The Final Battles

  269

  bing his hands together, and he said, “Hell of an idea, Pete. What do you think?”

  And Rozelle, who rarely cursed, let loose a barrage for the ages:

  “You fuckin’ son of a bitch. Who the fuck do you think you are?

  You’re a fuckin’ idiot! For twenty- five years you and I are work-

  ing for this league, and you work out a deal where you are going

  to make millions, and this Texas asshole is going to own the thing

  and the league gets minority interest, and you expect me to go

  back and tell that to twenty- eight owners who are going to put

  up all the players? You go down to that bar and tell your Texas

  friend there’s no deal.”

  And when Rozelle finally took a breath, Schramm shot back,

  “You don’t want to do it? Fine. We don’t need you. We’ll do it on

  our own.”

  Rozelle was livid. He was yelling now and told Schramm, “No

  you won’t. Just the fact that you can bring the nfl this fucked-

  up deal and then look me in the eye and tell me you will do it on

  your own . . . well . . . here’s what you are really going to do on

  your own. You are going down to that bar, and you will tell your

  friend he’s out. Forty years together in the trenches, and you dare

  to pull this crap on me.”

  To save his new job, Schramm went
down to the bar and told

  Richard Rainwater that the deal was dead. But it was only a tem-

  porary reprieve. In Rozelle’s eyes, Schramm had betrayed him. He

  said as much later to Dan Rooney, one of the owners who would

  oversee the new league. Rooney waited until Pete left for Califor-

  nia, and then he fired Schramm, replacing him with Mike Lynn,

  a vice president of the Minnesota Vikings.

  Indicative of how furious Rozelle was, Joe Browne, who saw

  him just about every day after Joe was promoted out of the mail-

  room, said he could recall only two times in all those years when he

  heard Pete raise his voice in rage. He and Schramm made up before

  Rozelle’s death, but it was never quite the same between them. As

  Anne Marie said when she heard the story, “You can make up, but

  deep down in your heart you don’t forget something like that.”

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  The Final Battles

  So now the days until departure time were dwindling to a precious few. One of those who wanted to say good- bye and thanks

  was a man in a similar position. His name was David Stern, and,

  as commissioner of the nba, he had learned from Rozelle’s exam-

  ple. With that model, Stern had saved his league from being con-

  signed forever to the limbo of cable television. Stern said:

  He is held up as the paragon of what a commissioner must be in the

  modern world, and I think those who say that are absolutely right.

  He taught us how to use television and how to get the most out of

  sponsors. nfl Properties led the way for nba Properties, and both of

  us led the way for the other sports.

  He had the experience, and I had the legal background, and we

  constantly shared views. I wanted him to know how much I appreci-

  ated him, so I took him out for a farewell lunch.

  I told him that one day I would be planning my own exit, and I

  wanted to know exactly how he felt. And now that the time had come

  for him, I asked him how badly he wanted to leave.

  “I can answer that,” he said, “with a joke I once heard. It pretty

  well sums it up for me. There was this girl who always wanted to

  play comedy in the movies, and she met this producer who told her

  he could help if she slept with him. So she did, and the next day he

  called back to her that now she had to sleep with the director. So she did that too and got the job.