NEW YORK (AP) -Five weeks before Paul Tagliabue's retirement date, there remain more than a dozen candidates for his job.
But the real favorites remain Roger Goodell, the league's chief operating officer; Jeff Pash, its in-house counsel; and Rich McKay, the Atlanta Falcons' general manager. One or two others, perhaps from outside the league, remain in the mix.
Things will become clearer in 10 days and a new commissioner should be elected by Aug. 9, allowing Tagliabue to retire on Aug. 18, his target date. The owners meet July 24 in Detroit to try to get down to a final four. Then they gather in Chicago two weeks later for a three-day selection meeting.
``I'm very optimistic we'll come out of there with a commissioner,'' said Pittsburgh's Dan Rooney, the co-chairman of the eight-member selection committee.
Still, nothing is guaranteed: 22 of the 32 teams must agree on the choice, and history says that won't be easy. A continuing division over revenue sharing coupled with resentment over the new labor agreement approved in March at the last possible moment could make it difficult to find a consensus.
Historically, favorites don't get elected, although it's a small sample - the NFL has had just three commissioners in the past 60 years.
Pete Rozelle, a complete outsider, was elected on the 33rd ballot in 1960 to succeed Bert Bell. And in 1989, it took nearly four months after what was supposed to be the final selection meeting to elect Tagliabue over Jim Finks, then the New Orleans general manager.
Tagliabue has tried to avoid the problem that occurred during his election, when the selection committee was stacked with Rozelle insiders and outsiders rebelled at their recommendation of Finks. This time, the committee includes a smorgasbord of high-revenue and low-revenue owners and includes such mavericks as Oakland's Al Davis and Dallas' Jerry Jones.
And the committee has gone out of its way to be quiet - one normally talkative committee member said he didn't want to discuss the process because he didn't want to indicate that he knew ``too much or too little.''
Rooney spoke in generalities. He said this week that the list of candidates remains large and added: ``I don't know some of the people that other owners are considering, and they don't know mine.''
Still, the general consensus among those familiar with the search is that the new commissioner almost certainly will be an insider.
The NFL commissioner after all, is hired by 32 CEOs and is both their boss and their employee, something unique to sports and hard to grasp for even the most skilled executive from outside sports. Moreover, those 32 are both partners and rivals - on the field, obviously, but also financially.
``I don't see how anyone from outside, no matter how qualified, could step into that job and get started without spending a long time learning,'' said Gene Upshaw, the executive director of the NFL Players Association, who has consulted with the committee and Korn/Ferry International, the search firm the league hired.
``With all the different personalities involved and all the different issues, it probably would take him two years just to figure out who he's dealing with.''
That's one reason the early favorites remain the late favorites, and political figures from Bill Clinton to Condoleezza Rice are out.
Goodell does have political genes, though.
He is the son of Charles Goodell, a longtime congressman and U.S. senator from New York, and started with the NFL as an intern in the public relations department more than 20 years ago.
He has become Tagliabue's point man on many business issues, including stadium construction and the league's attempt to get a team back to Los Angeles. For the past half-dozen years or so, he has been considered the heir apparent, and, like Tagliabue, is close to Upshaw, two factors that could make him a target for owners disenchanted with the labor and revenue-sharing agreements.
Pash is also an insider but hasn't been as visible as Goodell, and his legal background gives him a credential that seems to go with commissioners' jobs these days. McKay, the son of the first coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, has both a football and legal background and is co-chairman of the league's competition committee, a position Finks held when he was the favorite over Tagliabue.
Another contender with solid credentials is Dick Cass, president of the Baltimore Ravens with a background as a Washington lawyer, which is what Tagliabue was. But the owners have said they want someone who can serve 12-15 years, and Cass is 59 - while Goodell, Pash and McKay are 50 or younger.
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