Tagliabue deserves HOF nod for reaching labor peace

	After pushing through the latest labor deal, Paul Tagliabue is rumored to be considering retirement. AP
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I know I could write about 320 different things today -- the raid-the-bank-vault opening weekend of free agency with teams a combined $530 million under the new salary cap, the breaking up of the Triplets (which we all knew was going to happen, even if Edgerrin James didn't), the brilliant first night of The Sopranos, the Redskins going after Lance Alworth (sorry, I guess I got confused because they're chasing every other sub-six-foot receiver in NFL history), the offer sheet of the highest salary for a guard in NFL history and the inevitable signing of Drew Brees with the Dolphins.

Is this one of the busiest football weeks out of season ever? I can't think of one that's been more intense.

As one of the 39 voters for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, I am not much on voting suits into immortality. Suits don't play. Suits earn. Who gives a darn about earning, unless you're a capo for Tony Soprano?

But I now will vote for Paul Tagliabue, if I'm still on the committee when he next makes the final 15. My guess is that will be next February, a month or two or three after he sets his succession plan in place.

I thought he had the kind of performance last week that sets the standard for future commissioners in all sports. When there's billions of dollars at stake, it should be easy to make a deal with your laborers. But in 26 years in this business, the one true thing I've found out is that the more money on the table, the more problems you have making a deal. I'm not going to bore you with a lot of details, but what made Tagliabue good last week, as New England president Jonathan Kraft told me, is that "he figures out how to be six steps ahead of everyone in the decision-making process. The man's skill set is amazing. He analyzes, processes, manages a diverse group of people almost all with divergent interests, and he can get them to think in the same direction.''

Tagliabue's goal when the league met in Dallas last Tuesday was to somehow save the idea that had helped the game grow so monumentally in his time as commissioner. In 1992, when the league faced the imposition of a free-agency system by a federal judge in Minneapolis, Tagliabue and the union sat down and figured out an equitable way for players to be free when their contracts expired after a minimum of four years of accrued service, along with a salary cap to make sure no one Steinbrenner-ed the game. And though, with revenues of at least $150 million per team now, there was no danger a team would go out of business, there was a danger that some teams would soon have to spend 70 percent or so of their total revenue on player costs, which would mean some teams would soon stop being profitable and the golden goose would not be only a well-fed goose. It wouldn't kill the game, but it would certainly affect it negatively in places like Buffalo and Jacksonville.

And so he gave the best speech of his tenure, according to Pittsburgh owner Dan Rooney. In the speech, Tagliabue told me Saturday, his voice hoarse and weary, he laid it on the line in stark language. "I told them, 'This is the last chance you'll have for an agreement where all teams spend to a salary cap,'" the commissioner said. "'You'll have some other system, but it won't be the system that helped make the league what it is today.'''