King Kaufman's Sports Daily
The NFL's next commissioner -- this column -- lays out his platform.
Read more: Sports, TV, Football, NFL, The Rolling Stones, King Kaufman, Sports Daily
July 25, 2006 | The Associated Press reports that the list of candidates to replace retiring NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue is down to a numerologically appropriate 11, though no one outside the selection committee knows who's on that squad of the possible.
Tagliabue deputy Roger Goodell is thought to be chief among the finalists, the AP reports, along with two other league executives you've never heard of, Jeff Pash and Eric Grubman. The NFL hopes to name Tagliabue's successor at meetings early next month in Chicago.
But the other eight candidates remain a mystery. Until now. I'm here to reveal to you the name of one of those who might be pegged to lead the NFL into a new era.
King Kaufman.
I was as surprised as you no doubt are to learn that my utterly reasonable ideas about the NFL have found traction among the sport's movers and shakers. If you're not a follower of my cult of reason, good sense and anti-placekicking fanaticism, allow me to introduce you to part of my program.
Punting and placekicking: Get rid of it all. Except kickoffs, which are OK.
My views on this matter are well documented and I won't expand on them here except to remind you that when you see a highly skilled, multimillionaire quarterback crawling backward on the field with the game on the line to set up a better position for his field-goal kicker, whose main task for the day so far has been trying to stay awake, something is very wrong with a great game.
Rules and officiating: We're going to fix these. The NFL's officiating problem is all anybody talked about during the last postseason, and when that happens, it's not just a problem, it's a Problem.
We're going to simplify the rules. No more of these five-minute officiating conferences on the field to parse and clarify the incredibly picayune statutes about what is or is not possession of the football. We're going to adopt what I'll call the Madden Standard, to wit: If it looks like a fumble, it's a doggone fumble. Or catch, or incompletion.
