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6 The Perfect Television Game The engine that powered the new National Football League was television. All else seemed to derive from it, as for three decades television provided at least half of the annual revenue flowing into the league. It was the Great Enabler for the league, the owners, the players, and for all those ancillary enterprises associated in any way with the NFL. While television money was important, perhaps even critical, to the AFL, it became increasingly important to the NFL. During the ’60s the NFL and television developed a relationship in which the senior partner was not always easy to identify. Was television dependent on the NFL? Or was the NFL dependent on television in a way the AFL clearly was? Or were these two partners locked in an embrace that both enjoyed, and which neither could afford to terminate? As was made clear during the 1950s, the embrace was an enticing one. The NFL provided television with dramatic content at an inexpensive rate, while television provided the NFL entrée to the American home and psyche. It seemed like a win-win situation as these two new entertainment entities grew together. It was reality television before there was such a genre. Pete Rozelle came from a public relations background and seemed to have a genius for dealing with television, and indeed with all media. He built upon the foundation laid by Bert Bell and quickly established the NFL as the senior partner in its relationship with television. His adeptness and growing reputation served the NFL very well and created an aura of awe around the commissioner. When Rozelle relocated the NFL offices to Rockefeller Center, he placed the NFL at the epicenter of Madison Avenue and the television networks , and adjacent to the money men of Wall Street. The move was a claim to status and power, and a message to all that the NFL was ready to operate at the highest levels of the new economy. Crepeau_text.indd 92 7/1/14 11:29 AM 93 T h e P e rf e c t T e l e v i s i o n G a m e Rozelle seized control of the NFL, creating a clear sense that all league business ran through his office, and all owners were obliged to rally around the league rules and regulations. David Harris called this “League Think,” and it built upon Bert Bell’s notion that the individual interests of the teams were best served by financial sharing, a notion first put to the test in building the business relationship with television. In a number of accounts, Pete Rozelle is credited with the idea of a unified national television contract with shared revenue. A recent biography of Bert Bell indicates that Bell was the first to propose the concept, and that he persuaded the key major-market owners—Halas, Mara, and Marshall—to support it. In his autobiography George Halas indicates that he, along with Bell, Mara, and Marshall, proposed revenue sharing. As the plan developed, Bell died of a heart attack before any action was taken, and nothing more happened until Rozelle was chosen commissioner. Actually, television revenue sharing was first proposed by baseball’s Bill Veeck and was picked up by both Bell and Lamar Hunt. Behind this policy was a belief that, across the nation, many fans would be NFL fans, not simply supporters of particular teams. In the end, regardless of whose idea it was, this first television contract, argues Michael Oriard, “more than any other single factor . . . made the NFL what it has become.”1 In late April of 1961, the commissioner reached an agreement with CBS on a two-year deal worth $9.3 million to broadcast all NFL regular-season games. Shortly thereafter the U.S. Department of Justice filed a civil suit over the contract, arguing that it violated antitrust law, and that the ruling by Judge Grim in 1953 allowing the blackout did not give the league the authority to negotiate a collective television contract. The NFL asked for a rehearing, and that request was denied. The commissioner then sought relief in the U.S. Congress. Using his political contacts, which included presidential press secretary Pierre Salinger, as well as Carroll Rosenbloom’s Kennedy connections and help from a number of other sports organizations, Rozelle proved effective. The NFL argued that an antitrust exemption was needed for the television contract so that the American public could watch...

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