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July 30th, 2006, 04:17 PM
NEW YORK - Roger Goodell, the NFL's chief operating officer and one of Paul Tagliabue's chief aides, was one of five finalists announced Sunday to succeed Tagliabue as commissioner.
The 47-year-old Goodell was the only one of the five who actually works in the NFL office although another, Gregg Levy, is the league's outside counsel. That is the same job Tagliabue held when he was elected commissioner in 1989.
The other three finalists are Frederick Nance, a Cleveland lawyer; Robert L. Reynolds, of Concord, Mass., the vice president and chief operating officer of Fidelity Investments; and Mayo A. Shattuck III of Baltimore, chairman of the board, president and CEO of Constellation Energy.
They were selected from a group of 11 semifinalists by a committee of eight owners headed by Pittsburgh's Dan Rooney and Carolina's Jerry Richardson.
The committee had been extremely guarded about the identity of candidates - only Goodell's name was well known when Tagliabue announced his retirement last March and the search committee was announced. The new commissioner is expected to be elected at meetings in Chicago from Aug. 7-9 with the eventual successor to Tagliabue needing votes from 22 of the 32 teams.
Goodell has been with the NFL for almost his entire career, starting as an intern in the league office in 1982 and joining the New York Jets as a public relations intern the following year. He was appointed chief operating officer in 2001.
He has long been considered Tagliabue's heir apparent and for the last decade he has been involved in most of the major moves by the league, including stadium construction, expansion and labor. Like Tagliabue, he is close to Gene Upshaw, the NFL's union head, and was closely involved in the delicate talks last March that led to an extension of the collective bargaining agreement.
The 53-year-old Levy is a partner at Covington & Burling in Washington, which is where Tagliabue worked when he was elected commissioner. He has been the lead counsel in several recent court cases, including the one involving Maurice Clarett, in which a decision to let the Ohio State running back enter the draft a year before league rules stipulated was overturned on appeal.
Nance is managing partner of the Cleveland office of Squire Sanders & Dempsey. The only black finalist, the 52-year-old Nance handled the negotiation for the city of Cleveland when the Browns returned to the NFL in 1999 and was the lawyer for the group that developed the construction of the new Browns stadium.
The 54-year-old Reynolds has been vice president of Fidelity's management trust company and held several executive jobs with the firm before that. He has been in his current job since 2000.
The 51-year-old Shattuck, who began his career as an investment banker, worked at Bankers Trust as vice chairman and was chairman of the board at Deutsche Bank in Baltimore before joining Constellation Energy, which ranks 125th on the Fortune 500 list and owns energy-related businesses that had $17.1 billion in revenues in 2006.
In addition to Rooney and Richardson, the other members of the selection committee are Woody Johnson of the New York Jets, Jerry Jones of Dallas, New England's Robert Kraft, Al Davis of Oakland, Kansas City's Lamar Hunt and Mike McCaskey of Chicago.
The ages of the candidates all reflect the desire of the committee to hire a new commissioner who could serve for a length of time similar to Tagliabue's.
www.charlotte.com
The 47-year-old Goodell was the only one of the five who actually works in the NFL office although another, Gregg Levy, is the league's outside counsel. That is the same job Tagliabue held when he was elected commissioner in 1989.
The other three finalists are Frederick Nance, a Cleveland lawyer; Robert L. Reynolds, of Concord, Mass., the vice president and chief operating officer of Fidelity Investments; and Mayo A. Shattuck III of Baltimore, chairman of the board, president and CEO of Constellation Energy.
They were selected from a group of 11 semifinalists by a committee of eight owners headed by Pittsburgh's Dan Rooney and Carolina's Jerry Richardson.
The committee had been extremely guarded about the identity of candidates - only Goodell's name was well known when Tagliabue announced his retirement last March and the search committee was announced. The new commissioner is expected to be elected at meetings in Chicago from Aug. 7-9 with the eventual successor to Tagliabue needing votes from 22 of the 32 teams.
Goodell has been with the NFL for almost his entire career, starting as an intern in the league office in 1982 and joining the New York Jets as a public relations intern the following year. He was appointed chief operating officer in 2001.
He has long been considered Tagliabue's heir apparent and for the last decade he has been involved in most of the major moves by the league, including stadium construction, expansion and labor. Like Tagliabue, he is close to Gene Upshaw, the NFL's union head, and was closely involved in the delicate talks last March that led to an extension of the collective bargaining agreement.
The 53-year-old Levy is a partner at Covington & Burling in Washington, which is where Tagliabue worked when he was elected commissioner. He has been the lead counsel in several recent court cases, including the one involving Maurice Clarett, in which a decision to let the Ohio State running back enter the draft a year before league rules stipulated was overturned on appeal.
Nance is managing partner of the Cleveland office of Squire Sanders & Dempsey. The only black finalist, the 52-year-old Nance handled the negotiation for the city of Cleveland when the Browns returned to the NFL in 1999 and was the lawyer for the group that developed the construction of the new Browns stadium.
The 54-year-old Reynolds has been vice president of Fidelity's management trust company and held several executive jobs with the firm before that. He has been in his current job since 2000.
The 51-year-old Shattuck, who began his career as an investment banker, worked at Bankers Trust as vice chairman and was chairman of the board at Deutsche Bank in Baltimore before joining Constellation Energy, which ranks 125th on the Fortune 500 list and owns energy-related businesses that had $17.1 billion in revenues in 2006.
In addition to Rooney and Richardson, the other members of the selection committee are Woody Johnson of the New York Jets, Jerry Jones of Dallas, New England's Robert Kraft, Al Davis of Oakland, Kansas City's Lamar Hunt and Mike McCaskey of Chicago.
The ages of the candidates all reflect the desire of the committee to hire a new commissioner who could serve for a length of time similar to Tagliabue's.
www.charlotte.com