David Rosenthal

We're going to move league headquarters to New York, to Manhattan, first to Rockefeller Center, and then to Park Avenue, where the league is to this day.

We need to be right there next to the television industry, next to the media industry, and just as important, next to the advertising industry.

Yes.

These are relationships we got to cultivate with Madison Avenue.

After he moves the headquarters to New York, Rozelle contracts the Elias Sports Bureau, which did professional statistics for Major League Baseball.

The NFL up to this point didn't have professional statistics arms that would distribute game stats and box scores out to all the newspapers across the country.

Speaking of writing about the NFL and publishing, the other thing that Roselle knows is, especially with a game like the NFL, which is a weekly drama, it's not just about like baseball with getting the daily box scores in the newspaper.

You also got to create human stories and arcs and mythology around the game.

And so he intentionally cultivates a tight relationship with Time Inc.

and specifically Sports Illustrated.

Over the course of the 60s, Sports Illustrated really becomes the major advocate for the new modern game of the NFL.

So much so that in 1963, just three short years later, Sports Illustrated names Pete Rozelle its Sportsman of the Year, the first ever non-athlete that it had ever named Sportsman of the Year.

Think about that, the commissioner of the league being named Sportsman of the Year.

That is just a huge mindset shift.

famously he did this starting back when he was with the rams even when he was a pr intern there he would just write the stories for the reporters which one ensured that they would actually get in the papers but two he could control and craft the narrative man you can totally still see this to this day

in the NFL this ethos.

It was so important and strategically advantaged for them.

The NFL keeps such a tight grip on the narrative.

And all this starts with Rozelle.

One other thing that he does immediately after taking over and moving headquarters to New York that would end up paying huge, huge, huge dividends is he also starts cultivating political relationships and influence.