Pete Rozelle: A Guide to American Football
Most people think of Pete Rozelle. If they think at all of Pete Rozelle, they probably recall a genial fellow with a balding pate and the ready smile of a car salesman who popped up at the end of the Super Bowl. He was the commissioner of the National Football League, but what did that really mean? The players played, the coaches coached, the owners owned, the fans stomped and hollered, but what does a commissioner do? Commission?
Until his death in 1996, Rozelle was dwarfed in every way by owners, coaches and players, and it was impossible for the viewer innocent of the inner workings of pro sports to view him as much more than a functionary. The hired help. The guy whose job was to order the stuffed mushrooms for the party after the game.
Pete Rozelle:美式足球指南
大多数人会想到皮特·罗泽尔。如果他们想起皮特·罗泽尔(Pete Rozelle)，他们可能会想起一个和蔼可亲的家伙，秃顶的脑袋，超级碗(Super Bowl)结束时突然出现的汽车销售员的爽快笑容。他是国家足球联盟的专员，但这到底意味着什么呢?球员们在比赛，教练们在指导，老板们在拥有，球迷们在欢呼雀跃，但是裁判该怎么办呢?佣金?
在1996年去世之前，罗泽尔在各方面都被球队老板、教练和球员远远超过，而对于那些不了解职业体育内部运作的观众来说，他们不可能把罗泽尔看成是一个工作人员。雇来帮忙的。他的工作是为比赛后的聚会订购填馅蘑菇。
Looking back, his career was built on his talent for: 1. persuading rich men who were unfamiliar with not having everything they wanted to take less than they deserved and 2. preventing full-scale revolt, the minute the stakes became high. A member is more inclined to cheat the group, the more successfully the group drives up his price.
By today's standards, he was vastly undercompensated, given the wealth he created for the NFL's owners. He was a special case: the business giant who didn't lust for financial fortune and overt personal dominance. He replied that if you took all the egos in pro sports - the players', the coaches', the viewers' - and averaged them out, his ego was just…
Probably it helped that unlike so many would-be power brokers, Rozelle did not look like a man who wished to wield power. Of course the gifts required to pull this off aren't the ones normally associated with empire building. They are to a large extent the gifts of a diplomat. Diplomat in this case is another word for a man with a talent for dealing with megalomaniacs. Each year that Rozelle presided over the NFL, another owner published his autobiography explaining how he was the visionary behind the rise of pro football. Rozelle seemed to have been the sort of spectral tycoon who took his satisfaction in managing other people without their knowing it.
或许这有助于Rozelle不像许多潜在的权力经纪人，他看起来不像一个想掌权的人。当然，实现这一目标所需的天赋并不是那些通常与帝国大厦有关的天赋。他们在很大程度上是外交官的天赋。在这种情况下，外交家是一个有能力处理自大狂的人的另一个词。罗泽尔主持NFL的每一年，另一位老板出版了他的自传，解释了他是职业足球崛起背后的远见卓识者。罗泽尔似乎是那种沉默寡言的大亨，他对管理别人很满意，却不让别人知道。
Rozelle's next big move was to weld the owners of the new, expanded league into a cartel. This too required an exemption from the antitrust laws, which Congress granted. "When the networks put up as much money as they did for the rights, they felt they had to promote the game, and by promoting the game ,the game grew." The combined revenues of the NFL and the franchises were less than $20 million in 1960. The NFL this year projects combined revenues of nearly $4 billion. Similarly, the Cowboys and Vikings were each sold for about $1 million in Roselle's rookie year. The newest NFL, franchise, was auctioned for $530 million last year.
罗泽尔的下一个重大举措是将新的扩大联盟的所有人焊接成一个卡特尔。这也要求豁免国会批准的反垄断法。”当网络为权利投入了和他们一样多的资金时，他们觉得必须推广游戏，并且通过推广游戏，游戏增长了。“1960年，NFL和特许经营权的总收入不足2000万美元。今年NFL项目的总收入接近40亿美元。同样的，在罗塞尔的新秀年里，牛仔和维京人的售价都在100万美元左右。最新的NFL特许经营权去年以5.3亿美元拍卖。
But the structure, as designed by Rozelle, had been largely responsible for the money. It was a cartel. In Morita's own words they make Sony the Cadillac of electronics.
但是这个由罗泽尔设计的建筑在很大程度上是为了钱。这是一个 企业联合 。用森田自己的话说，他们使索尼成为电子产品的凯迪拉克。
The football league Rozelle inherited in 1960 was a fragmented collection of 12 franchises each ran more or less as a stand-alone business. The squabbling owners faced serious competition from the newly formed American Football League, bankrolled by one of the richest men, Lamar Hunt. Rozelle's first trick, one that Rockefeller would have admired, was to put an end to the unprofitable competition. He persuaded Congress to grant the NFL the first of two exemptions to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
1960年继承的罗泽尔足球联盟是一个由12个特许经营权组成的分散的集合，每个特许经营权或多或少作为一个独立的企业经营。争吵的老板们面临着来自新成立的美国足球联盟的激烈竞争，这个联盟由最富有的人之一拉马尔亨特提供资金。罗泽尔的第一个技巧，洛克菲勒会钦佩的，是结束无利可图的竞争。他说服国会批准NFL《谢尔曼反托拉斯法》两项豁免中的第一项。
But there was a third view of Rozelle espoused by those who watched him work: he was a iron-willed tycoon who created the business model for all of professional sports. He recognized that a sporting event was more than a game - it was a valuable piece of programming. In the long-winded discussions about the money sloshing around professional sports, the structure of the businesses received little attention.
但第三种观点是罗泽尔受到了那些观看他工作的人的拥护：他是一个意志坚定的大亨，为所有职业体育创造了商业模式。他认识到体育赛事不仅仅是一场比赛——它是一个很有价值的节目。在关于职业体育项目资金流动的冗长讨论中，企业结构几乎没有受到关注。