Here. And when he called me, i thought, yeah, why not . [laughter] this is not, you know, this is not my politics, but why not . Host is football the National Pastime . Guest absolutely. Ive decided that the book is wrongly titled. It ought to be national obsession. I think its, i think its reached that level in the last particularly the last decade. Host how . Guest its become a 365dayayear topic for massive numbers of americans. You listen to sports talk radio no matter what time of year, what time of day, what time of night, somebody will be talking about football, and particularly about nfl football. And the nfl has understood the ability t get into that mindset and to extend it in the sense that they have created sort of of pseudoevents to fill the off season. Theres no longer an off season in the nfl. Once the super bowl is over, then the combines begin, and then from the combines you go to the draft. The first predraft analysis, drafts, mock drafts, draft analysis, then you go to the camps and then from the camps, the early camps to the big training camps, season opens, you go through the season cycle, then you get to the playoffs, super bowl, and it starts over. So its a full year long. And, you know, the draft is one of the really interesting things. That started out, that started in 1935. It was considered an interesting event. Nobody ever thought too much about it. And at some point espn went to rosell and said wed like to televise the draft, and he said, why . He said, well, okay. And that started and then, of course, it grew, and fans started showing up dressed in team uniforms, they started screaming and yelling their approval or disapproval at a particular draft choice, and then it just boomed. And now, now its a twonight and i say night, prime Time Television event. Its amazing. And then hi other favorite my over favorite is the additioning to this nonsense. And that is they have a Television Special the day the next season schedule comes out, and they talk about it for an hour. [laughter] i mean, its unbelievable. Is that not obsession . [laughter] i think it is. Host in your book you write that nfl leadership mastered the world of television guest yes. Host dominated governments at federal, state and local levels and created a cartel behind a facade of devotion to the Free Enterprise. Guest yes. Yeah. Host lets start with television. Guest okay. Television is the key to its first real growth spurt. The nfl was growing some just prior to the war. It had come out of, it had come from the mid 30s to the late 30s beginning to grow and then, of course, the war postponed everything. They come out of the war, they are very optimistic about where theyre going in the late 40s and into the 50s so much so that there are other entrepreneurs who start a second league, the allamerica football conference, which then merges with the nfl. By 1960 theres yet another league, the afl, which will merge with the nfl and become the new nfl. All of this growth, all of this development is really absolutely parallel to the growth of television in america. If you took a chart and you charted out the number of Television Sets in america, the number of people who had access to television in america and you drew a line from 1947 to 1965 and then you took the nfl growth and development from 1947 to 1965, they would run absolutely parallel. And they both grew right together, and thats not an accident. Television and football were made for each other. The old canadian sociologist, philosopher, media expert Marshall Mccluhan talked about how baseball was a radio game, football was a television game. And it absolutely is. To the point now that if you watch a football game, wheres the best place to watch an nfl game . On your big screen tv in your house. Thats the best point, the best seat in the house is there. Second best seat in the house is at a sports bar doing the same thing. The third best seat, somewhere else. The fourth best seat, fifth best seat, maybe the stadium. Going to the stadium is such a disappointment now, because theres these long periods where nothing is going on because its commercial time, theres replay time, theres timeouts for this and that. And you think, you know, whats going on . I want, i want my replays. [laughter] i want my analysis, and im not getting it. Host dominated state and local governments. Guest if you look at, if you look at some of the Key Development points of the nfl, one was the coming of the blackout which the Justice Department, the Justice Department objected to and then backed off of. And the Sports Broadcasting act of 1961 went over that hurdle. Then you have the merger. And the merger, the merger was going to be stopped in the House Judiciary Committee by emanuel seller who felt that he had got run around before by the nfl in the blackout issue. And so they, they went into the congress, they talked, they talked to russell long, the senator from louisiana, the congressman from louisiana who were powerful figures and who they could, in fact, move a bill through both houses that would, in fact, legalize the merger. And they got it. And what did russell long and boggs get for that . Host saints. Guest the saints came marching in, of course. And theres some Great Stories around that. But thats another example of how the government was used. Local governments, state governments essentially on franchise location and teams, teams maybe moving, threatening to move unless they get a stadium, promising theyll move somewhere else in they get a stadium. These kinds of games which have gone on and, of course, which still go on. I mean, what would the nfl today do without los angeles . What if there was a team this l. A. . Nobody could threaten to go to l. A. [laughter] it would be terrible. Now you can, and its very, very effective. So you have that aspect of dealing with local governments, local government also offers subsidies. And then there was another, theres another little interesting aspect to this, and that is if rosell wanted something from the senate or the house, he would go to powerful senators and say, you know, we really need this or that. And we will, we will try to bring you an expansion franchise for your state, your district or whatever. And poor howard baker of tennessee, he got, he got flipped on this by rosell i dont know how many times and fell for the story. And finally a team finally came that was well after rosell and baker. But thats the kind of thing they did. They would promise expansion with no intentions of doing any expansion. But it was an interesting, an interesting game. So thats part of and then the tax breaks and, you know, that sort of thing. Host a facade of devotion to the Free Enterprise system. Guest most owners if you would talk to them, and rosell was also very good at this, always talked about the wonders of the American Economy and the football owners as great entrepreneurs and innovators and how it was really the great Free Enterprise system which allowed them to develop in the way they developed. But, in fact, what they had was the power of a cartel, the power of not a monopoly, but a cartel. They controlled markets, they controlled, they controlled product location, they controlled product exposure through television. This was a wonderful sort of an arrangement. And, of course, they wanted nobody to touch that. And so they described it all in terms of Free Enterprise. And it was. It was just genius. It was absolute genius. I mean, rosell was an amazing, amazing figure. Host who was he . Guest he was a guy who came out of southern california, well, i guess Northern California originally. And in public relations. He migrated down to l. A. , got into the, got into the administrative staff of the rams, worked his way up through that to general manager, and then after burt bell died of a heart attack in 1960, 59, 60, the owners were looking for a replacement, and they couldnt agree on anybody. And they went on for several months having meetings, discussions, phone calls, and they couldnt come up with somebody everybody could agree on. And finally two or three owners got together and said, look, theres this guy, theres this guy, rosell, who we all know, who we all like. He was, like, 35, 36 years old, who can do this job. And i think everybody can agree on we cant go on like this. In this kind of struggle. And so a small group of owners, i think mara was one of them, who else . Hallis and the ownership of pittsburgh, the rooneys. I think they were all involved in the succession. And they finally brought rosells name before the next league meeting, said this is the guy. And everybody looked around the room and said, yeah, hes the guy. And thats how he got the position. And then he went to work. First move let me just tell you about his first move. The League Offices were in philadelphia, thats where burt bell was. When rosell came in, he took the League Offices, he moved them to manhattan. Not just to manhattan, he placed them strategically halfway equidistant between the Television Network offices and madison avenue offices and then cultivated both ends of that street. In a very skillful way. Host is the nfl commissioner are the owners the board of directors in a sense and hes the ceo, he or she . Guest i think for a while rosell was power. When the league started to grow and they saw the kinds of things he was able to to achieve, his power kept growing and growing. And as with all people who are dependent on others to stay in office, at some point your power begins to recede a bit, you begin to irritate some people in the room. And over time his power begins to recede. And the key moment in rosells decline, if you want, was al davis and the Los Angeles County coliseum commissions victory on the movement of the Oakland Raiders to los angeles. That opened, that owned up the possibility that opened up the possibility that other teams could move, and they started moving pretty rapidly. And rosell, he fought that because he wanted control of where those, where those franchises were going to be. He wanted control of the owners. And that was the beginning of his decline. So i think since rosell the commissioner really serves pretty much at the will of the ownership. And the commissioners job, essentially, was try to keep the owners onboard and somehow keep the owners all moving in one direction. And thats a difficult job, because there are huge egos. And they all thought they could run the league and should be running the league. But no one, no one trusted another. So they needed a commissioner to sort of shepherd them. And tagliabue did a good job of that. Good dell has done goodell has survived all of the recent issues, the difficulty, because he did two things. He got a longterm labor settlement which then enabled him to the get a longterm Television Contract that brought in billions of dollars. Next year each team will begin the season with 216 million in the bank from television alone. Nothing else, just television. You want to run a business like that, you think you can make a profit on that . I think so. [laughter] al davis once said after one of the early big contract statements said, you know, any idiot could make money running a pro football team. And he was right. Many did. [laughter] remarkable. Host Richard Crepeau, we often hear that the nfl is a taxexempt organization. Guest thats not true. In fact, they well, they had, they had a nonprofit status, and they dropped that nonprofit status recently. And is thats where that non, that taxexempt sort of notion came from. And they sort of renounced that. But they had, they had, in fact, paid some taxes. But that wasnt doing them any particular good. And when it became a pr liability, they said, no, okay, we wont do that anymore. It made no difference whatsoever economically. It was just one of those interesting talking points if you wanted to hammer the nfl, go with that one. Host whats your day job . Guest whats my day job . My day job is a history professor at the university of Central Florida where ive been for 40xplus years. And i teach modern american history. I teach a two semester sequence course of the history of american sport, and i teach a course with another guy called the history and literature of baseball. And baseball is really my first love. This is my third love. Hockey is second. Thats my minnesota background. And then the nfl. Actually, the nba and then the nfl. Host howd you get involved in sports history . Guest just one of those a lot of interest. I grew up in a home where sports was really important. My father was, my father was involved in sport all of his life. As a kid, he played baseball. He was a pitcher. He could throw a knuckle ball. Then he played softball when he started working. And at some point this his career and probably even in his 50s, he changed jobs, and he became a salesman for the Wilson Company in the twin cities. And when the twins came, the twins became one of his accounts. And so i was shocked when i left college, left home and came back and decided i wanted to go to a sports event, and i had to buy a ticket. I couldnt believe i was buying a ticket to go to a sporting event, because he always had tickets. He had all these connections. I always had second row seats at the old metropolitan stadium for the twins games. It was so it was, it was home. He was an umpire of Little League, of legion ball, high school ball, he was a referee in basketball, catholic cyo leagues inin yap lis. Minneapolis. He and i, in fact, worked Little League for about three years together which was fun when i was an undergraduate. And we were, we were pretty damn good team, if i may say so. [laughter] host weve been talking with professor Richard Crepeau about his book, nfl football a history of americas new National Pastime. Theres the cover. Professor, thanks for being on booktv. Guest hey, my pleasure. [inaudible conversations] hello, everybody, welcome tonight. This is politics prose at busboys and poets. My name is davis, and im here hosting the event with Stephen Harding. His book, the last to die. Want to make a short note, shoutout tonight, we have cspan live here filming the event, so good to have them here. Also just to make you aware, we are politics prose sponsoring this event. We are in three new busboys locations. Were here at the tacoma location, were also at the brookland location and the 14th and v, so you can see us there as well. And one of the great benefits of being here, you can order food throughout the event and love to have you do that. And you can pressure the books after at the front of the store. As i mentioned, tonight we have Stephen Harding here. World war ii in japan has officially ended in cease fire, but there are still a few final moments of the americ