Pete Rozelle

Pete Rozelle (born March 1, 1926, South Gate, California, U.S.—died December 6, 1996, Rancho Santa Fe, California) was an American sports executive who, as commissioner of the National Football League (NFL) from 1960 to 1989, oversaw a period of enormous growth for professional gridiron football. He negotiated lucrative deals with the television networks, doubled the size of the league, and helped to create the Super Bowl.

Following his graduation (1950) from the University of San Francisco, Rozelle became the publicity director and assistant athletic director at that school (1950–52). He was publicity director for the NFL Los Angeles Rams (1952–55), a partner in a San Francisco public relations firm (1955–57), and the general manager of the Rams (1957–60).

After the death of NFL commissioner Bert Bell, league owners met to elect a successor in January 1960. They deadlocked over two veteran league officials, and Rozelle—a compromise candidate—was elected. The new commissioner persuaded the owners to follow his vision of “league-think,” in which they viewed their teams not as separate businesses but as parts of a whole. That philosophy enabled him to negotiate a national television contract with CBS in 1962 that created greater revenue and greater exposure for each franchise. More lucrative broadcast contracts followed, including in 1970 a deal with ABC to broadcast Monday Night Football, a national “game of the week” played during the prime evening hours that became one of the most popular sports programs on television. He also established the NFL’s merchandising arm, NFL Properties.

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Rozelle presided over the 1966 merger of the NFL with the rival American Football League (AFL), then secured congressional action to make the merger exempt from antitrust prosecution; the merger became effective in 1970. He conceived of a game between the league champions that eventually became the Super Bowl, professional football’s supreme attraction. As a result of Rozelle’s leadership, the NFL had become so strong that it easily withstood challenges from the short-lived World Football League and the United States Football League.

Player salaries soared during Rozelle’s tenure as commissioner, and he was supportive of improving players’ benefit plan. He also strove to maintain a positive public image for the sport, suspending star players Paul Hornung and Alex Karras for gambling in 1963 and later instituting random testing for drug and steroid use. He was criticized for his inaction during disputes between the owners and the players’ union that led to strikes in 1974, 1982, and 1987. Rozelle also lost one of the key battles of his tenure when he and the NFL filed suit against Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis in 1982 in order to stop Davis from moving his team to Los Angeles, where a generous stadium package and a larger market waited. Rozelle believed this move would ignite an undesirable era of “franchise free agency.” Davis won the suit and moved his team; however, Rozelle’s warning proved prophetic when five teams moved in the next 15 years.

When Rozelle became commissioner in 1960, the NFL had 13 teams and an average attendance of about 47,000 per game; in 1989, the year he retired, the league had 28 teams and a per-game attendance of 65,000. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985.