Son of Former Congressman Worked His Way Up the Ladder

For two decades, the money machine has churned, spitting out billions for the men and women who own the NFL's 32 teams. Professional football didn't simply blossom in Paul Tagliabue's reign as commissioner, it became a multimedia behemoth, lavished with the richest television deals in sports, unblemished by labor strife and blessed with lucrative sponsorships.

And the man partly responsible for much of this wealth is Roger Goodell, the son of a former senator from New York, who has run the league by Tagliabue's side in relative anonymity.

"His fingerprints are all over every transaction the league has entered into the last 10 years," said Dean Bonham, the president of the Colorado-based Bonham Group, which has negotiated for and against the NFL in marketing deals.

Said Denver Broncos owner Pat Bowlen, "On all the major decisions, whatever they were, Roger has been on the leading edge of those issues."

Apparently satisfied with the opulence of their league, the owners elected Goodell commissioner yesterday, making him only the third man to hold the job in the last 45 years.

Then again, it would have been hard for them to say no. Over the last two decades, the 47-year-old maneuvered his way through countless negotiations with television networks, foreign countries, gigantic corporations, hostile municipalities and union executives to push the NFL to its position as easily the most successful sports league in the country.

"We're continuing something that has gone very well," New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft said after the announcement. "Roger said he got his MBA from Pete Rozelle and Paul Tagliabue. That's pretty good."

Goodell's star rose in the mid-1990s. He was still in his early 30s when he was placed in charge of the league's marketing arms -- NFL Properties and NFL Trust. He was a key negotiator in generally peaceful bargaining sessions with the NFL Players Association, ran the expansion process in the 1990s that created millions of dollars for each existing team and secured the name "Browns" for the new team in Cleveland.

"The NFL is not as successful as it is now without Roger Goodell," said John Wildhack, ESPN's senior vice president for programming whose network will carry the league's showcase event, "Monday Night Football," starting this fall.

TV Deals Drew Notice

Success has eluded him only a few times. Goodell's most public role over the past decade has been as the league's point man in talks on returning the NFL to the Los Angeles area. But the nation's second-largest media market remains without a team despite talks with various Southern California cities. Goodell also has been largely responsible for establishing the NFL overseas, but the league has been unable to match the global penetration of some other sports, most notably the NBA in China.

Goodell's biggest triumph might be the work he did to nurture negotiations in 1998 that culminated in the league's astounding eight-year, $17.5 billion deal with ABC, ESPN, Fox and CBS. Two years ago, he was also heavily involved in the negotiations that added NBC and will eventually bring the league another $8 billion.

Many in the NFL believe Goodell proved himself so well in these talks that Tagliabue began grooming him several years ago as his replacement. Bowlen said he could tell in recent seasons that Goodell came to want to become commissioner.