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Officially speaking Tagliabue could -- and should -- save the day
Updated: Sunday August 26, 2001 2:37 PM
It has been a marvelous few months for the NFL. The league beat back Al Davis and his wrong-headed lawsuit, extended labor peace through 2007 and uneventfully realigned into eight four-team divisions for 2002. Commissioner Paul Tagliabue deserves to take a bow. But now comes another major test for his leadership atop the strongest pro sport in America. He needs to get involved on the front lines of the league's dispute with its game officials now. The league has begun the process of hiring replacements for its 119 officials, guaranteeing them a minimum of $4,000 even if they never work a game. Unless an agreement is reached with the incumbents before next weekend, the new officials will work the final preseason game and prepare to work the opening of the regular season Sept. 9.
The officials want between a 400 and 500 percent increase from their current regular-season salaries, which officials negotiator Tom Condon says range from $21,000 for first-year crew members to $69,000 for the most veteran of referees. The league wants to phase in a 100 percent raise over the next three years. The league views the officials as part-timers; the officials want full-time pay. The chasm is huge. Yet when I asked Condon whether he had any reason to think a deal could get done to avoid the potential atrocity of using minor-league officials, he said: "I'm guardedly optimistic. The commissioner wasn't in the meeting on Monday. I think before it's over he'll get more involved. He's done a great job with this league over the years and has earned great respect from everyone in the game. Hopefully he can step in and work something out." Now, I'm not claiming Tagliabue is Henry Kissinger. He can be cold and aloof. But you can't argue he doesn't have the best interests of all the disparate parts of the league at heart. He has been impartial in meting out justice to his closest allies, like Pittsburgh owner Dan Rooney in the Steelers' 1999 salary-cap violation case. And the best interest of the league, right now, is avoiding what could be a tremendous black eye. If the regular officials do not work in Week 1, there could be low-level college officials working Opening Day. Condon tells me a junior-college official in Nevada is one of the league's recruits. That's scary. That's cause for the commissioner to step in. While the league has gotten rich, the officials' pay has virtually stagnated since the mid-'90s. The regular officials should not be paid like full-time officials while they hold full-time jobs in other lines of work, but there can be a happy medium here. Tagliabue could ride in on his white horse and phase in, say, 70 percent of the officials' demands over a five-year period instead of doing it all at once. A first-year official doing NFL games should make $60,000. A 20-year vet at the top of his game deserves $175,000 for all the control and authority he has over the game. How much would that cost NFL owners? Maybe $300,000 more per team per season than they're paying officials now. That seems a small price to pay for keeping the integrity of the game intact. The keeper of that integrity, the commissioner, needs to act to make sure the regular officials don't miss a single Sunday. Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL beat for the magazine and appears each Sunday on CNN's NFL Preview.
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