Pete Rozelle

Pete Rozelle

Muhammad Ali, Albert Einstein, and Bill Gates are all very influential people in American history. However, Pete Rozelle is also a very equally qualified candidate for the most influential. Rozelle did some things that most people thought could not be done. He was once the commissioner of the National Football League. Rozelle also invented the Super Bowl, and Monday Night Football. Some would say that is enough to get you nominated as the most influential person in modern day history. Rozelle however obviously didn’t think so because in 1960 he merged the NFL and AFL into one big league. In the following paragraphs I will explain why I think Pete Rozelle is one of most influential people in history.

First of all, what does the word commissioner mean, and what does he do? Well people who were close to Rozelle had a very different opinion of him then what the coaches, players, and fans thought. Until Rozelle died in 1996 he was dwarfed in every way by owners, coaches, and players. They saw him pretty much as the hired help whose job was to order the stuffed mushrooms for the party after the game. Well that was not Rozelle at all. He was a shrewd promoter of his sport. Like stated earlier Rozelle invented the Super Bowl. Rozelle did not stop there however; he then sold the rights to the first game to both NBC and CBS forcing them to compete for viewers. Rozelle also invented Monday Night Football, the second longest running prime-time show on American television, after 60 Minutes. Monday Night Football is still running today and just this past year decided to change stations to ESPN. One thing that Rozelle did not like was the phrase “Super Bowl”. This phrase was coined by son of Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt. This is now a commonplace for a regular-season game to attract higher ratings then playoff games in other sports such as baseball, and basketball. The reason for this is Pete Rozelle.

There is another view of Rozelle besides the view of those close to him, or those involved in the league. This view is the view from the people who watched him work. They viewed him as an iron-willed tycoon who was the business model for every single professional sport. He also found a way to make the NFL far more valuable than other sports, even America’s pastime, baseball. He also recognized that a sporting event was more then a game, it was a valuable piece of programming. Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch used that strategy to build entire networks. Rozelle did them one better. In the long discussions about all of the money that surrounded pro sports, the structure of the businesses receives little attention. The structure that was designed by Rozelle was largely responsible for the money. This structure we know in just one word, a cartel. Some people felt that this was an outrageous violation of old-fashioned American free-market principles. Rozelle was probably the only one who understood that the key to attracting fans was fierce competition. And the key to fierce competition was every team having roughly the same amount of money to spend on players. That is why Rozelle persuaded NFL owners, two dozen raving megalomaniacs, to share their television spoils equally.

This probably only worked because unlike so many would-be power brokers, Rozelle did not look like a man who wished to wield so much power. Of course the gifts to pull this off aren’t usually the ones associated with empire building. They are the gifts of a diplomat. The word diplomat, in this sense, means a man with a talent for dealing with megalomaniacs. During each year that Rozelle was commissioner another owner published his autobiography claiming how he was behind the rise of pro football and the NFL. Year after year these things were published and year after year Rozelle laughed and let them enjoy their press, because he knew the true reasons for the rise of pro football.

In 1960 the NFL was facing some serious competition from the newly formed American Football League (AFL). This league was bankrolled by one of the richest men in America, Lamar Hunt. Rozelle however showed that he still