Yet it is also fair enough to consider the revisionist premise that Rozelle was really just a positive version of the Peter Principle. The Peter Principle, by this argument, was that he was simply a very lucky young man thrust into a position where time and circumstance almost required that he must succeed, mightily.
Certainly, when Rozelle, at the age of 33, had the commissionership thrust upon him as a desperate compromise on the 23d ballot, the NFL was a happy firecracker just waiting to explode upon Americana. It was already apparent that football was the sport most congenial to television; cities were standing in line, like so many Oliver Twists, begging to be allowed at the NFL table; basketball and hockey were still small potatoes, and baseball, under its inevitable woeful leadership, was just starting to give away its birthright popularity.
Perhaps even more conducive to the success that lay ahead was the internal NFL biosphere. The league young Rozelle took over was very much a homogeneous small-town family. Often what passed for acrimony at league meetings was arguments over what flavor of ice cream to order in. The dispute over the commissioner had deadlocked on the benign issue of whether the league office should move to San Francisco or remain East, in a remote suburb on the Philadelphia Main Line. There the entire NFL staff consisted of four full-time employees and a Kelly Girl.
As soon as Rozelle took over, he moved the NFL to Park Avenue and never looked away. Quickly thereafter, he persuaded the league’s wealthiest franchises to forgo perpetual rich contracts so that the poorer teams and, by extension, the whole league might prosper together. Obviously, it was a very different sports world then and a very different spirit of camaraderie.
The point, though, is not just that the canvas Rozelle came upon was beautiful. Rather, it was that he knew how to take that landscape and improve it so extensively that, really, he painted the future of all sport. Would the NFL have succeeded anyway? Of course; its time had come. But succeeded as magnificently as it did? As swiftly? As dramatically? Surely not.
Over time Rozelle grew most famous for the Super Bowl, but, ironically, the merger with the newfangled American Football League was forced on him by the cagey AFC commissioner, Al Davis, the one man who would become Rozelle’s sustaining bEte noire. Davis was a guerrilla warrior, but Rozelle was not good at combat. He was a diplomat, wise in the strategies of people, not of battle. However, once the merger was agreed on and Rozelle was back in command of the situation, he won a peace for the NFL the likes of which had not been seen since Versailles. Then he promptly set about with the Super Bowl, which he developed into our newest American secular holiday.
That, however, was the high-water mark of Rozelle’s reign. Thereafter, he was beset by agents and lawyers and other buttonhole salesmen. By the ’80s, the perpetual Rozellean suntan had been replaced by a sallow aspect, and for the first time he began to look like an Alvin–which was his christened name–rather than a Pete, which he had been nicknamed early on. In private moments he began to say that it was time for him to leave so that he would not die in office, the way his predecessor, Bert Bell, had. But like so many other guilelessly successful men, he stayed on too long at the table. In fact, though it has been seven years since he retired, the office died in Rozelle long before he left.
He was always, though, the most engaging of men. He would not wear anything monogrammed for fear that it would too obviously remind critics of the public-relations man he had originally been and encourage the old charges that he was too facile, too slick by half. In fact, he was simply a natural at putting people at ease, always of good humor. How well I remember one time when he even laughed at what he called his worst mistake–playing the schedule two days after President Kennedy was assassinated.
This was years later, one particular evening when the commissioner and I were together in Philadelphia. Standing at the hotel elevator after a whole day long and a nightcap, Pete laughed about an Italian who had played for the Eagles screaming in the locker room that Rozelle had twice dishonored him–first as an Italian, then as a Catholic.
“What’s so funny about that?” I asked.
“Well, nothing,” he said, “except I’m not Italian and I’m not Catholic. Everybody thinks I am, but we were Huguenots.”
“You don’t meet many Huguenots these days. The most famous one I knew before now is Frank Perdue.”
The elevator came, and we stepped on. “The chicken man. Now how would you know a thing like that?”
“Well, Pete, I hate to tell you this, but I’m a Huguenot, too.”
“No,” he said, “here we are two Huguenots and didn’t even know it. This calls for another nightcap.”
And so we two Huguenot guys went back to the bar and toasted our poor French ancestors late into the evening.
Pete Rozelle was a Huguenot I could be proud of. He was a terrific commissioner of football and a wonderful man of life.
title: “In A League Of His Own” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-06” author: “John Gorman”
Chavez had better enjoy it while he can. His landslide election to the presidency last December was a stunning comeback for the cashiered lieutenant colonel, who spent two years in prison after leading a bloody but abortive military coup in 1992. His victory at the polls provoked worries in Washington and elsewhere that Venezuela might be sliding toward authoritarian rule, its faith in democracy destroyed by four decades of unbridled corruption. In August the fears took on a new sense of urgency when the president’s supporters and foes brawled outside Venezuela’s halls of Congress, and Caracas police barred opposition legislators from their own offices. As soon as the unrest had cooled down, Chavez flew to New York and Washington for last week’s high-profile meetings with Bill Clinton, international bankers, U.S. lawmakers and foreign investors. The ex-soldier was eager to reassure any skeptics among them that he is not a closet dictator. “We say to those concerned people that a broadly and profoundly democratic process is taking place in Venezuela,” Chavez recently told NEWSWEEK (box). “Venezuela is starting to get itself out of a jam and it is doing so in peace and democracy.”
At home his posture is not so defensive. Venezuela’s voters keep proving their unwavering trust in his leadership. In July they elected a special assembly to draft a new national constitution: more than 90 percent of the seats went to pro-Chavez candidates, all but shutting out the country’s political old guard and effectively giving the president a blank check to reinvent the law of the land. Even the deepening economic crisis has not hurt Chavez in the opinion polls. Gross domestic product is expected to fall as much as 9 percent this year. Unemployment has reached 20 percent and continues to climb. Yet after seven months as president, Chavez is posting approval ratings above 70 percent. “He is one of us, and he is trying to help the people,” says Gladys Chacon, 52, a lottery-ticket vendor. “We have a lot of faith in him.” Some foreign critics would call it fanaticism.
His popularity has only been strengthened by the blatant misrule of past presidents. With the largest proven oil reserves outside the Middle East, Venezuela reveled in Latin America’s highest standard of living after the price of crude began to rise in the 1970s. But prosperity turned the place into a kleptocracy–and eventually plunged 80 percent of all Venezuelans below the poverty line. Presidents grew increasingly brazen. Jaime Lusinchi (1984-1989) offended his Spanish hosts by openly bringing his mistress to Madrid for a state visit. His successor, Carlos Andres Perez, was thrown in jail on corruption charges before he could complete his second term in office. “Venezuela was long overdue for a serious housecleaning,” says Eric Ekvall, a former Lusinchi aide. “Chavez is a breath of fresh air because he is absolutely and completely his own man.”
In many ways the president resembles the rabble-rousing demagogues who dominated the region in the 1950s and ’60s. “He has a discourse and a style that reminds you of the old populist figures,” says Michael Shifter, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue think tank. “There is a yearning for something different and a fascination with Chavez [because] he embodies that.” The president’s military background–and his young, blond wife–invite comparisons to Argentina’s Juan Peron. Foreign critics like Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian writer, disparage the flamboyant Chavez as a “laughable personage” whose election only proves the depth of Venezuela’s desperation. But millions of ordinary Venezuelans regard their president, the swarthy son of two rural schoolteachers, as a homegrown liberator, a spiritual heir to the Caracas-born hero Simon Bolivar.
Chavez certainly is larger than life. He will never be mistaken for one of those pallid, Ivy League-educated technocrats who were hailed a decade ago as the new faces of Latin leadership. His photo ops and outrageous stunts have forced the U.S. media to notice Venezuela after years of studious neglect. Chavez was not too shy to show off his curveball against the mighty Sammy Sosa at a baseball clinic in Caracas last February. But he has also tested his knuckleball on the U.S. State Department. He included Saddam Hussein and Muammar Kaddafi on the list of invitees for an OPEC summit next year in Caracas. He makes no secret of his friendship with Fidel Castro, who welcomed him to Havana soon after Chavez was released from jail in 1994. He has even exchanged letters with Ilich Ramirez Sanchez–a.k.a. the Jackal, the notorious Venezuelan-born terrorist now in a French prison serving a life sentence for murder.
What does the president stand for? Despite his close personal ties to Castro, U.S. diplomats say they are sure Chavez is no Marxist and are giving him the benefit of the doubt. Calling himself a staunch foe of “savage neoliberalism” (whatever that term might encompass), he bristles if anyone tries to categorize him as a left-leaning populist. Stung by charges of creeping authoritarianism, Chavez has refrained to date from outlawing any political parties or closing down newspapers. But some of his more militant supporters in the recently elected Constitutional Assembly tried to suspend the opposition-controlled Congress at one point and took over its powers to investigate and fire judges. “It’s too early to judge Chavez,” says Jose Miguel Vivanco of the Washington-based Human Rights Watch organization. “The alarm bells are ringing, and we’ll keep watching him closely. But there is no clear-cut case of human-rights abuses you can point to.”
Just wait, Chavez’s critics warn. The forthcoming Constitution is expected to produce a fresh round of congressional elections later this fall. Barring a sudden nose dive in his popularity, that means the president is likely to have a rubber-stamp legislature in the coming year. “All he wants is power,” argues Robert Bottome, editor of the weekly newsletter VenEconomy. “But is it power for its own sake, or is his heart really into making the country work again? The jury is still out.” Already some Venezuelans are talking of extending the president’s current term by a year and possibly amending the election laws to let him serve two consecutive terms.
Meanwhile Chavez keeps campaigning as if he hadn’t already won. Every Sunday morning he does a live two-hour radio call-in show, answering listeners’ questions and responding to their complaints. He has even deployed the military in a move that seems tailor-made to strengthen his grip on power. He calls his controversial program the Bolivar 2000 Plan, a $950 million civic-works scheme using the armed forces to deliver basic social services and rebuild the country’s decaying infrastructure. Nearly 100,000 soldiers are currently engaged in a wide array of normally civilian activities ranging from the vaccination of children and the repair of damaged bridges and roads to sponsorship of so-called people’s markets, where indigent Venezuelans can buy necessities at bargain prices.
Some Venezuelans say such projects are a ploy to militarize Venezuela by stealth. Others are happy to risk it. The working-class Caracas district of Urbanizacion Colon will soon have a new neighborhood elementary school. Construction began in 1987, but the project got bogged down in a morass of red tape and lawsuits. Work had stopped entirely for five years before Chavez unveiled Bolivar 2000. When the builders at last went back to work in June, the Army dispatched 15 soldiers to join the crew to the building site. Opening ceremonies are now only a few days away. “The people here are very satisfied with the president and the soldiers,” says Maria Teresa de Blanco, a retired secretary. “What this country needs is more discipline. I’m not afraid of a military regime.”
With no significant political opposition to speak of, Chavez is still facing big challenges. He needs to lift Venezuela’s economy out of its deepest recession in recent memory. And he has the equally tough job of bringing the people’s sky-high expectations a little closer to solid earth. The rising global oil market has helped at least modestly to ease the recession, although foreign investors are still holding back, put off not only by their doubts about Chavez himself but by his motley economic-policy team. One minister is a former leftist guerrilla; two others are university professors with no previous experience in government service. Meanwhile the entire country needs to get a grip on itself. In one recent national-opinion survey, 82 percent of the respondents ranked Venezuela as the richest country in the world. A similar number said the government has a duty to redistribute the national wealth–not a comforting thought for prospective bankrollers from abroad.
The real test may come if the president loses popularity. Can he resist the temptation to call out the troops? Active-duty generals hold important senior positions in his government, and Chavez says he wants to give voting rights to Venezuela’s men and women in uniform. His recent austerity moves have included no real cuts in the military budget. “A true soldier never ceases to be a soldier,” he told a roomful of fellow Latin American officers at the Inter-American Defense College last week. “No matter what clothes you put on or what you wind up doing with yourself, the heart that beats beneath your chest remains that of a soldier.” The country’s future may depend on whether Chavez rules with his heart or his head.
