RIP Paul Tagliabue

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

Yup. No flights for nearly two weeks. Games weren't canceled. Just pushed back to the end of the year. No week off between conference title games and Super Bowl.

And now planes are grounded because of the guy who couldn't get into the big boys club by way of the USFL. Sigh. It all ties together in this stupid, stupid country.

 

[outofplace]

Tags is generally considered to be a good commissioner by most, yeah? Oversaw tremendous growth as the NFL became the juggernaut of the American sports landscape.

He definitely started with a great foundation from Rozelle.

Most of the head injury downplay/coverup has been under Goodell, I think. But wonder how much they knew under Tagliabue.

In hindsight, he claimed that the data wasn't clear at the time, but Tagliabue did apologize for comments he made in 1994 regarding brain injuries in the NFL. CTE had not even been discovered until very late in Tagliabue's tenure. The first clues were found during the autopsy of Mike Webster, who died in 2002. Tagliabue's tenure ended in 2006.