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| Tuesday, May 22 Updated: May 23, 12:09 PM ET Realignment ended up being fairly easy for NFL By John Clayton ESPN.com |
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ROSEMONT, Ill. – For once, NFL owners respected their elders. Consequently, realigning eight divisions for 32 teams turned into an easy one-hour affair Tuesday afternoon. Dan Rooney, owner of the Steelers, and Wellington Mara, owner of the Giants, spoke about the 1970 realignment. The NFL sensed it had enough votes to pass their favored realignment plan. Rooney and Mara sealed the deal.
"Dan harkened back to 1970 and Wellington Mara said, `No matter how significant a change you are making in terms of division realignment, you can make it work, the NFL can make it work,' " commissioner Paul Tagliabue said. "The Steelers had been in the NFL. They move to the AFC without many of their key rivalries. They ended up winning four Super Bowls in a short period of time." Mara spoke about how the Giants felt. They lost a lot when their best rivals – the Steelers and Browns – moved out of their conference. Not only did the Giants survive, but they thrived with the rivalries against the Cowboys, Eagles and Redskins. To make the transition easier, the Giants scheduled the Steelers and Browns every summer for their preseason games. Two key compromises pushed realignment to a quick vote.
"The truth is we all had agendas," Jaguars owner Wayne Weaver said. "Bud Adams of the Titans felt he did not want to be in a divisio with Houston because he moved his team out of Houston. We wanted Baltimore in our division. But at some point, you have to look at what's good for the league." The Seahawks put up a modest fight not to be moved from the AFC to the NFC, but having a chance to play the Raiders, Broncos, Chargers or Chiefs in the preseason for five years will make the transition easier. "The league will help to schedule two games," Seahawks president Bob Whitsitt said. "That help to accomplish what the Seahawks wanted and what the league wanted. It was a win-win situation." Cowboys owner Jerry Jones made the Cardinals' move from the NFC East to the NFC West easier by offering to play 10 consecutive years of preseason games in Arizona starting in 2002. "I wrote letters to Cowboys fans who live in Phoenix to vote for the new stadium in Phoenix," Jones said. "I want to play in that new stadium. It was more than just a good gesture. It was the right thing to do." Cardinals owner Bill Bidwell couldn't have been happier. "We've been very competitive with teams in the East for over 52 years, but we are in the West, so this was going to happen," Bidwell said. "But we're the Cowboys' rivals, too. They got a lot of fans in our city."
Under the new scheduling formula that goes into effect next year, AFC teams can expect to play every AFC team every three seasons and every NFC team every four years. "You know change is hard, and the truth is that normally we look at the worst side of it," Weaver said. "We did a good job today. This was a win-win for the league." The big winner was Baltimore because it didn't have to move to the AFC South. The Jaguars and Titans were pushing the idea that the Ravens were a Southern team. The Ravens like being in the AFC Central and wanted to carry their rivalries with the Steelers, Bengals and Browns into the new AFC North. "Nobody else wanted to move the last time, so I did it for the league," Ravens owner Art Modell, who moved the Cleveland Browns from the NFL to the AFC. "I didn't want to make that move this time. The vote was unanimous. It was a no-brainer." The original plan at this owners meeting was to use Tuesday as a discussion day and schedule Wednesday for a vote. A seven-member realignment committee met early Tuesday morning and felt good about moving ahead for a vote. They thought the compromises on the preseason scheduling and revamped scheduling of divisions in the regular season would bring this to a conclusion. It did. "This really shows a harmonious time in the NFL right now," Jones said. John Clayton is the senior NFL writer for ESPN.com. |
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