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Former NFL commissioner Tagliabue will speak

Paul Tagliabue, former longtime commissioner of the National Football League, will lecture at 1:30 p.m. Feb. 16, at Rackham Auditorium.

His talk, “Persuasion: Lessons Learned in the NFL,” is free and open to all.
During Tagliabue’s tenure as commissioner from 1989-2006, the NFL grew from 28 to 32 teams; operated under successive long-term labor agreements with the NFL Players Association; supported the construction of more than 20 new stadiums; established operations in overseas markets; created a league-wide Internet network and the subscriber-based NFL TV Network; and secured the largest television contracts in entertainment history. These included contracts through the 2011 NFL season worth $25 billion.

Tagliabue is active in work to support higher education, as he chairs the board of the Graduate Institute of International Relations and Commerce at the State University of New York in New York City. He also serves on the board of Georgetown University
Born in New Jersey in 1940, Tagliabue graduated in 1962 from Georgetown University and received his law degree in 1965 from New York University School of Law.

Before becoming commissioner, Tagliabue represented the NFL as an attorney at Covington & Burling, of Washington, D.C. Earlier, he served in the office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense as a policy analyst. He is now a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The talk is sponsored by the Yaffe Center for Persuasive Communication at the Ross School of Business, and the Michigan Center for Sport Management.