Vote on Commissioner Expected to Begin Today

NORTHBROOK, Ill., Aug. 7 -- The NFL's 32 team owners heard presentations Monday by the five finalists for the commissioner's job and set up procedures for a possible vote Tuesday to elect a successor to Paul Tagliabue, who is retiring.

The five candidates, including heavy favorite Roger Goodell, are to meet with smaller groups of owners on a rotating basis Tuesday morning at a hotel in this Chicago suburb. It takes at least 22 votes among the 32 owners to elect a new commissioner, and Tagliabue said he expects voting to at least begin Tuesday.

"I would think there will be some voting, yes," he said.

Most owners seem to believe that it will require more than one ballot for Goodell, the league's chief operating officer, or any other candidate to get the necessary votes, and the owners unanimously approved a set of voting procedures on Monday that enable Tagliabue and the eight-owner search committee that he appointed to decide when to begin paring the list of finalists.

Under the owners' resolution, all five candidates are to remain under consideration for at least the first three ballots by the owners, but Tagliabue and the search committee are empowered to drop the candidate or candidates with the lowest vote totals after that. Tagliabue and the members of the search committee also can decide when to switch from a secret-ballot format to an open roll-call vote.

"It's a normal process that you go through," said New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, a member of the search committee.

Two owners, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations are at a sensitive stage, said they arrived at this meeting believing that Goodell would be elected this week and remained convinced of that Monday.

"I don't think anything has changed," one owner said.

Both owners said they were uncertain about whether the decisive vote would come Tuesday or Wednesday. The meeting is scheduled to last until Wednesday. Tagliabue said he wasn't certain when a resolution would come but he believed it was likely that a new commissioner would be elected by Wednesday.

Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney, the co-chairman of the search committee, said: "I don't know about [Tuesday]. It may be the next day. I do think it will be resolved here."

The other finalists are Washington attorney Gregg Levy, the league's chief outside counsel; Cleveland attorney Frederick Nance; Robert Reynolds, the vice chairman and COO of Fidelity Investments; and Mayo Shattuck III, the chairman, president and chief executive of Constellation Energy in Baltimore. Levy is viewed by some owners as the most likely alternative if a snag arises in Goodell's candidacy.

Tagliabue has attempted to avoid the sort of contentiousness among the owners that led to a seven-month stalemate before he was elected in 1989. He has tried to make every owner feel included in the process and Tuesday's question-and-answer sessions, in which owners will be divided into four groups to meet with the candidates, are part of that attempt. Rooney said no owners expressed dissatisfaction during Monday's meeting with the selection process.

Said Tagliabue: "I think it's been a very balanced, thoughtful process, a businesslike process. I don't think there's been contention. There have certainly been different views, but I don't think anything out of the ordinary in terms of normal business operations."