Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 13, 1990 TAG: 9003133063
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ORLANDO, FLA. LENGTH: Medium
The 21-7 vote, exactly the three-quarters needed, came a day after only two of the seven members of the league's competition committee had voted to renew it.
Another year of replays was approved with one major amendment - a two-minute limit on the time the replay official may take to review a call. While NFL officials said the average delay per game last year was 1 minute, 55 seconds, some delays lasted as much as five minutes. The delay factor was cited by opponents of the rule.
The approval represented a victory for Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and Jim Finks, president of the New Orleans Saints and chairman of the competition committee.
Coincidentally, Finks and Tagliabue were the finalists for the NFL commissioner's job in October.
In addition to the time limit, there was one more change in the replay - a blackout of the commentators' sound in the booth to prevent the replay official from being influenced by broadcasters.
Most of the votes against the replay came from teams that had voted against it in the past. George Young, general manager of the New York Giants, said "we'll keep voting against it into the next century."
The other "no" votes came from Buffalo, Cincinnati and Kansas City, all of whom voted against it on the competition committee. Phoenix, Chicago and Tampa Bay also voted against it.
Earlier in the day, the talk was about expansion and realignment. Tagliabue suggested that a committee look at expansion and realignment of divisions to make them more logical, geographically and economically.
"Is Phoenix better off developing a rivalry with Denver or San Diego or staying in the same division with things in the East," he said following his "State of the NFL" talk to owners. "Those are the kind of the things we want to address."
Those issuses probably will be addressed by a pre-expansion committee including the heads of the various league committees - Finks of competition; Cleveland's Art Modell of television; Tampa Bay's Hugh Culverhouse of the management council and several others.
They would determine the basis for expansion. Like his predecessor, Pete Rozelle, Tagliabue insists the league won't expand until it has a contract with the union, something it has not had since a 24-day strike in 1987.
But he suggested that realignment could be determined before expansion - although nothing would be done until the new television contract expires after the 1993 season.
Under the new contract, CBS paid for more than 58 percent of the Sunday package, compared to about 42 percent for NBC.
That's because outside of New York and Los Angeles, where each conference has a team, CBS has the larger NFC markets such as San Francisco, Washington, Chicago, Philadelphia and Detroit.
What that means is realignment would break up conferences - Tagliabue said there had been suggestions for three 10-team conferences if the NFL, as expected, expands by two teams to 30. It might also do that by simply adding a team to the two four-team divisions, the NFC West and the AFC Central.
Keywords:
FOOTBALL
by CNB