Paul Tagliabue, who helped bring labor peace and riches to the NFL during his 17 years as commissioner but was criticized for not taking stronger action on concussions, died Sunday. He was 84 and died in Chevy Chase, Maryland, of heart failure, the AP reports. Tagliabue followed Pete Rozelle as commissioner from 1989 to 2006 and was succeeded by Roger Goodell. Tagliabue was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame as part of a special centennial class in 2020. "Paul was the ultimate steward of the game—tall in stature, humble in presence and decisive in his loyalty to the NFL," Goodell, the current commissioner, said in a statement.
Tagliabue oversaw a myriad of new stadiums and negotiated TV contracts that added billions of dollars to the league's bank account. During that time, Los Angeles lost two teams and Cleveland another, which migrated to Baltimore before being replaced by an expansion franchise. Los Angeles eventually regained two teams. Tagliabue implemented a substance abuse policy that was considered the strongest in all major sports. He also established the "Rooney Rule," in which all teams with coaching vacancies must interview minority candidates. It has since been expanded to include front-office and league executive positions. When he took office in 1989, the NFL had just hired its first Black head coach of the modern era. By the time Tagliabue stepped down in 2006, there were seven minority head coaches.
In a pivotal moment, per the AP, Tagliabue called off NFL games the weekend after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It was one of the few times the public compared him favorably to Rozelle, who proceeded with the games the Sunday after President John Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Tagliabue had detractors, notably over concussions. The issue has plagued the NFL for decades, though team owners had a major role in the lack of progress in dealing with head trauma. In 2017, Tagliabue apologized for remarks he made decades ago about concussions in football, acknowledging he didn't have the proper data in 1994. He had contended that the number of concussions in the NFL "is relatively small; the problem is the journalist issue."
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Tagliabue reached out to the players union, then run by Gene Upshaw, in one of his first decisions. Tagliabue had insisted he be directly involved in all labor negotiations, basically rendering useless the Management Council of club executives that had handled such duties for nearly two decades. There were no labor shortages during his tenure. Art Shell, a Hall of Famer and head coach who later worked Tagliabue in the league office, thought him the "perfect choice" for commissioner. "His philosophy on almost every issue was, 'If it's broke, fix it. And if it's not broke, fix it anyway,'" Shell said.
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