Paul Tagliabue has a way of looking at a big picture and neatly editing it down to its most essential parts. It’s a character attribute his many admirers are quick to mention, and it’s a trait that exhibits itself quickly in a conversation with the former commissioner of the National Football League.

For example, ask him to assess the health of the NFL when he left the job to Roger Goodell in 2006, and he presents a sensible, unassailable verdict: “If you look at the business structure, it has three core components to judge: the game on the field, the game’s presentation at the stadiums, and the game’s presentation on television. If you look at that tripod from when I took over in the late ’80s and how it is 16 years later, we were extremely innovative.”

Case closed, and with a neat summation. Tagliabue, who turned 72 in November, is now senior member of the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Covington and Burling LLP, where he worked from 1969 to ’89 as counselor and litigator for, among other sports enterprises, the NFL itself. From 1989 to 2006, he ran the league, in charge of what really is the national pastime, especially on television.

Tagliabue’s predecessor as NFL commissioner, Pete Rozelle, was most responsible for taking the NFL into the modern television era, and it was during Rozelle’s years that the football league made its first big steps on network television. Tagliabue built on Rozelle’s success and made the giant leap forward: he helped make the NFL a television necessity.

“You never want to be the guy who follows the guy,” says Ed Goren, former vice chairman of Fox Media Group, referring to Rozelle’s exalted status in the league and acknowledging that even talented executives often look very ordinary replacing a legend. “You want to be the guy who follows the guy who followed ‘the guy.’ ”

Tagliabue seems to have passed on that happy situation to Goodell because he has left a mark just as enviable as Rozelle’s. In Tagliabue’s time at the NFL, the league grew from 28 to 32 teams and supported (to the tune of $150 million) the construction of more than 20 new stadiums. He negotiated TV contracts that made already rich NFL owners even richer and, in 2003, put the NFL in the cable business, with its own NFL Network.

ESPN reported that the NFL’s gross revenues in Tagliabue’s first year as commissioner were $1.1 billion. By 2006, they were $5.8 billion.

After two work stoppages under Rozelle, in 1982 and 1987, Tagliabue used his negotiating skills to make peace with the NFL Players Association; there were no work stoppages on his watch. He made labor peace in part by persuading the NFLPA to agree to a free-agency salary cap and getting team owners to agree to revenue sharing, a formula giving the NFL a mechanism that allows small-market teams an equal chance to compete with teams from larger ones.

“We’ve got the best labor deal in sports. We’ve got the best league. He’s been our leader. The whole way he’s done this has been wonderful,” the Pittsburgh Steelers’ owner, the late Dan Rooney, enthusiastically told the Associated Press after the 2006 pact was finalized.

From a television standpoint, Tagliabue understood, perhaps better than anyone, what pro football meant to broadcast networks.

“Oh, god, yes, he knew,” says an admiring Dick Ebersol, former chairman, NBC Sports Group. With Tagliabue at the helm, the NFL for the first time “asked each of the broadcast networks to spend more than they knew the NFL could make back on a [profit-and-loss] basis,” Ebersol recalls. “Where he was coming from was, he was telling the networks, ‘Look, you deficit-finance all of those sitcoms and dramas, and none of them offer such consistent ratings strength as the NFL.’ That is something that, intellectually, he and his team came up with, and I had to be on the other side of that. They definitely saw [the NFL] as the last bit of broadcasting-network beachfront property.”

Tagliabue got what he wanted. When he came in, he negotiated a relatively modest $3.6 billion four-year contract with networks. But, by 2006, the Tagliabue-led NFL had negotiated eight-year contracts for nearly $24 billion, placed a primetime Sunday-night game on NBC, and still had a Monday-night game on ESPN—and some new Thursday games on its own NFL Network.

“I like to say, and they like to hear, that the NFL has established that its product is the number-one entertainment concept in all of show business, more than any movie, more than a TV show,” Ebersol says. The Monday-night game on ESPN is always cable’s best-watched program; Tagliabue also helped refine the fine points that made NBC’s Sunday-night game the best-watched program on television. That helped the otherwise-limping NBC claim a rare broadcast-sweeps victory just last month.

One of Tagliabue’s boldest strokes was simply accepting that Fox Broadcasting was a real player when it bid on the NFL package in 1993. “I don’t think CBS or NBC fully appreciated how well Fox was positioned,” he says. From the outside, it was a scary proposition for the NFL to say goodbye CBS, which had been a partner for decades.

He pulled it off, says Goren, the former Fox sports executive. “He grew the league. That Fox deal changed the landscape of sports rights in this country.”

For Tagliabue, the risk was thought out.

“I guess I view what you do as a commissioner in two steps: anticipate the future and innovate for the future,” he explains. “If you can anticipate the future, you don’t have to be reactive. That’s not the position you want to be in.”

His anticipation paid off. By 1994, Fox attracted several stations that dropped their CBS affiliation, so, in many markets, the NFL launched on one of the top stations in town, not the hard-to-find UHF channel that originally carried Fox shows. The NFL made Fox successful, and Fox’s younger style reinvigorated the league.

Tagliabue says the trick to making contracts or settling disputes is to identify what both sides see as their core interests, identify the ones that are “parallel and aligned,” and then work from there.

He says, for example, that a simple unifying quality between players and owners is that both of them want to compete, so that every player and every team can plausibly dream the Super Bowl dream. “When you first say it that way, they don’t even know what you’re saying,” Tagliabue says. “But it’s far and away what the players and the owners want.”

Tagliabue, so say some of the people who know him, is always the smartest guy in the room. But the Jersey City, NJ, native keeps a deft human touch. After Ebersol was injured and his 14-year-old son, Teddy, was killed in a plane crash in 1994 —the lowest time in Ebersol’s life—Tagliabue learned that the network executive planned to build a dormitory in his son’s name at Teddy’s private school.

The commissioner quietly got the NFL owners to donate to build a wing and, more amazing to Ebersol, got the owners together with the players association to essentially double the gift. It was a seven-figure donation, from two groups that rarely cooperate on that level. They did it at Tagliabue’s urging.

“He’s just a class act,” says Goren, “I still have a lovely note he sent me when I came aboard at Fox. A classy gentleman. Always has been.”

Tagliabue might be uncomfortable about the kind words from those around him, but he does feel obliged to correct one story. Yes, both he and Patrick Ewing went to Georgetown University (where Tagliabue is a trustee), both played basketball for the Hoyas, and both wore jersey number 33. But the school retired the jersey to honor Ewing’s skills, not Tagliabue’s. Tagliabue thinks, though, that he might have been a better foul shooter. “That would be a close call,” he says, with a laugh.

In 1972, Bill France Jr. was handed the reins to the family business after decades of learning how to drive it. Known as Bill Jr. even after his father passed away in 1992, he took the business Bill Sr. had created and elevated it to unprecedented heights no one, except perhaps Bill Jr., could have foreseen. In any industry, he would be considered an overwhelming success; in this industry, his accomplishments are phenomenal.

The “family business,” after all, is NASCAR.

In his 2010 biography of Bill France Jr., H.A. Branham sums up the effect that Bill Sr. and Bill Jr. had on the sport: “Bill Sr. created NASCAR. Bill Jr. made NASCAR.”

Eighteen months after Bill Jr. was born in Washington, DC, Bill Sr. moved his small family to Daytona Beach, FL, in autumn 1934 and quickly became involved in the area’s burgeoning auto-racing scene. Over the next 13 years, Bill Sr. evolved from driver to race promoter and organizer to, ultimately, creator of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing.

Bill Jr. turned 15 during NASCAR’s inaugural season and, in the years that followed, helped his father build the sport in the most literal sense of the word. No job was too small for Bill Jr.

“I did just about every job there was to do,” he recalled in a 2003 Los Angeles Times article. “I even raced a few times but not enough to get serious. I’ve been a corner worker, a flagman, even chief steward. I think, to run a sanctioning body like NASCAR, it’s important to have that background.”

From promoting and scoring events to working concessions and taking tickets, France tried his hand at every aspect of the business, often adding an inventive touch to the job.

When the concession stands ran out of flavored syrup, for example, he persuaded patrons to purchase plain snow cones. To discourage spectators attempting to watch the races without buying a ticket, he posted signs warning “Beware of Rattlesnakes” near popular viewing areas and in some cases, simply pulled people from the fences.

Branham, a managing director of communications for NASCAR, remembers France’s describing his role as unofficial NASCAR bouncer: “[Bill Jr. would] say, ‘And sometimes, I had to haul ass because the guy I pulled off the fence was a hell of a lot bigger than me.’”

France’s contributions to NASCAR extended to the actual construction of Daytona International Speedway.

“[Bill Jr.] and his dad were, in effect, part of the crew, literally building Daytona International Speedway not just with their minds but with their hands,” says Branham. “A guy who, when he died, was rich many times over actually built the Speedway that helped build his fortune.”

In 1972, France was named president of the sport his father had created less than 25 years earlier. In the next 25 years, he would transform NASCAR from a regional pastime into what NBC’s Tom Brokaw has called “the greatest American sport.”

Twenty years after its inaugural run, the Daytona 500 was televised live flag to flag on CBS Sports in 1979. During France’s tenure, NASCAR evolved from a Southeast-centric sport to a national phenomenon, with races spanning the country from California to Boston and drivers hailing from Indiana to Washington.

He also spearheaded the broadcast deal that, 20 years after the 1979 Daytona 500, consolidated NASCAR into a single television product worth a record-setting $2.4 billion.

“We got a lot done together, even though we may have differed on how to get things done,” says Brian France, who replaced his father as NASCAR’s Chairman and CEO in 2003. “Probably every major decision I had to make, I would check in with him in some way, not necessarily for his complete approval but at least for his point of view, even if I knew he was going to have different point of view than I did. Certainly if I was ever in trouble with something or had a big problem, he would be the first call I’d make.”

From a sport that, for years, appeared on television only as part of ABC’s Wide World of Sports, France grew NASCAR into a multimillion-dollar business drawing national television audiences second only to the NFL’s.

“He was a great man, and not a day goes by that I don’t miss him,” says David Hill, chairman and chief executive officer of Fox Sports Media Group.

From 1972 to 2000, France ran NASCAR with dedication, unparalleled work ethic, and, above all, a love of the sport his father had created.

“Bill loved NASCAR,” said NASCAR Director of Event Logistics Gary Smith in the biography. “It was not just the family business but a way of life to Bill. It seemed that you couldn’t separate Bill from NASCAR. When that man got up in the morning, he was NASCAR, and, when he went to bed at night, he was NASCAR, and, most of the time in between, he was NASCAR. He absolutely loved what he did for a living, like no one else I have ever met.”

Often the first to arrive and the last to leave the office, France remained devoted to moving the sport forward until his death in 2007.

“Here’s the deal with the way my father was: You knew he loved everybody but he was still John Wayne, by God, all the way until the end of his life,” says Brian France. “I think he looked at death like he looked at life, very pragmatically. It was like, everybody had a time limit and you needed to do your life’s work and what matters with your family and one day. One day, if you’re lucky, the end of it comes late in life. If not, that’s way it goes.”

A multimillion-dollar business exponentially larger than when Bill Jr. took control, NASCAR remains a family affair: son Brian France is chairman and CEO; daughter Lesa France Kennedy is CEO of International Speedway Corp.; brother Jim France is vice chairman and executive VP of NASCAR; and Betty Jane France, Bill Jr.’s wife of 50 years, remains dedicated to the sport through humanitarian causes.

“Bill France Jr. was an extraordinary man, an outstanding leader, but, most important, a wonderful father,” says Kennedy. “He was tough but fair. Every day around him was a learning experience both in terms of business and life. I loved him dearly and miss him every day.”

For nearly 40 years, George M. Steinbrenner, late owner of the New York Yankees, was the very definition of the passionate owner who would do whatever it took to field a winning team. He also was one of the first owners to grasp that TV-related revenues could be important to a bottom line and could be used to fuel championship-caliber ballclubs.

“He came to understand quickly that, beyond revenues, which were significant, TV was valuable,” says Joe Cohen, who founded MSG Network and played a key role in bringing the New York Yankees to MSG Network for 13 years beginning in 1989. “First, he used the dollars to improve the ballclub, but second was the exposure beyond just the game. On broadcast TV, there was just pre- and post-game coverage, but, on MSG, there was ancillary programming and robust coverage around the game. It was 12 months a year of promotion.”

MSG paid an average of $55 million a year for those rights, and the deal is widely credited as having started a national trend toward greater team coverage on regional sports networks, with more games broadcast than over-the-air stations’ regular programming schedules could usually permit.

“Along with giving 12 months of marquee programming for MSG, it allowed the network to expand its regional coverage to upstate New York and allowed us to sell annual sponsorship packages,” says Cohen. “George really understood that the ultimate power in the industry are the fans who vote with their dollars.”

In 1999, the Yankees laid the groundwork for a different approach, a network almost completely dedicated to the New York Yankees, with a merger of the business operations of the Yankees and New Jersey Nets into a holding company called YankeeNets.

One of the reasons the teams merged was to give them better leverage over their own broadcast rights: each party believed that it would get a better deal individually if the rights were negotiated collectively. Ultimately, however, the decision was made to launch the YES Network, a move that ended a five-year monopoly held by Cablevision on local rights to New York sports coverage.

Harvey Schiller, co-founder of the YES Network, worked closely with Steinbrenner during that time. “The thought of a dedicated Yankees network was planted in the early ’90s,” Schiller says. “He watched what Ted Turner did with the Braves and wanted his fans to watch games wherever they were.”

And watching they are. The YES Network finished the 2009 broadcast year as the most-watched regional sports network in the country in total day (Monday-Sunday, 6 a.m.-2 a.m.) for the seventh consecutive year, experiencing a 10.3% growth over 2008. It was also the most-watched in primetime (Monday-Sunday, 7 p.m.-11 p.m.), experiencing 13.9% year-over-year growth.

Cohen says the sheer size and power of the YES Network have gotten everyone’s attention.

“The whole industry, from other networks to team owners, have embraced the concept of team-owned regional networks as an option if not a fact. And giving every franchise a tangible alternative [to broadcast-rights deals] has had a dramatic impact.”

— Joe Cohen

Steinbrenner was able to grow the Yankees from a $10 million franchise in 1973 to a $1.2 billion heavyweight. In 2005, the Yankees became the first U.S. professional sports franchise to be conservatively estimated at more than $1 billion. If one adds up the revenue of the $1.2 billion valuation of the 36%-Yankees-owned YES Network to the team revenue (the other 64% is owned by Goldman Sachs and the former New Jersey Nets owner, which is also a minority owner of the ballclub), they far surpass any other sports franchise in terms of estimated value.

No entity has had more of an impact on American sports broadcasting than the National Football League, and no single figure was more important to that league than Pete Rozelle. Commissioner of the NFL from 1960 to “89, Rozelle presided over the changes that made the NFL the nation’s premier professional sports organization and gave it the power it currently wields in the broadcast world.

From the day he took over as commissioner at age 33, Alvin Ray Rozelle began crafting what would become the business model for all of professional sports, led by the revolutionary belief that professional sports belonged in the same light as big business.

In 1960, the league’s 12 franchises were run as standalone businesses. Rozelle understood that a league-first, teamsecond concept would be far more prosperous, so he lobbied Congress to grant an exemption to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act that would enable the NFL and competing American Football League to become a single business. The exemption granted, Rozelle initiated the merger and expansion that increased the organization from 12 to 28 teams, creating the modern NFL. Far more important to the future of sports broadcasting was the second exemption Rozelle received, legalizing singlenetwork television contracts for professional sports leagues. Instead of competing with one another to sell broadcast rights, the NFL teams, newly imbued with an understanding of their growing worth as a collective, put one shared broadcast package up for sale. The NFL suddenly had a level of bargaining power never before enjoyed by a professional sports organization.

“Congress sanctioning the single-network deal is the most significant thing Pete ever did.”

— Art Modell, former owner of the Cleveland Browns, 1996

The new commissioner did not stop there. Realizing that the New York Giants’ earning 10 times what the Green Bay Packers received in television revenue enabled the Giants to spend more money on players, Rozelle made another drastic change. With a steadfast belief that on-field competition was the lifeblood of the league and that comparable team revenues would encourage on-field competition, Rozelle instituted a revenue-sharing scheme. The plan gave each team roughly the same amount of money to spend on players, thereby encouraging the evenly talented rosters he believed were necessary for fan growth.

“He said that, for the strength of the league, they had to share the money equally or the league would go to hell,” says Jim Kensil, a former Associated Press sportswriter.

In 1961, Rozelle negotiated a two-year, $9.3 million deal with CBS, the first of its kind, and split its revenue evenly among the franchises.

In addition to his contributions to the business side of broadcasting, Rozelle also had a profound impact on its content. Encouraging television to grow alongside professional football, he created Sunday doubleheaders, expanded playoffs, put every game on television, and along with ABC Sports President Roone Arledge, invented the wildly successful Monday Night Football broadcasts.

Of all the changes he championed, however, Rozelle was most proud of the title game he created, the Super Bowl.

“The most fun thing was watching the development of the Super Bowl because the game is what it’s all about,” Rozelle said on retiring in 1989. “I really felt a high at every Super Bowl, with all the glitz and the spectacular halftime shows.” At the time of his retirement, nine of the 10 television programs with the largest audiences in history were Super Bowls. Rozelle’s NFL high had officially become a national epidemic, serving as a testament to his innovations across three decades at the helm of the nation’s most important professional sports league.

Val Pinchbeck was as instrumental in the growth of the National Football League as any commissioner. As the NFL’s vice president of broadcasting, Pinchbeck spent four decades smoothing relationships between the increasingly powerful NFL and its growing number of broadcast partners, while quietly solving the league’s scheduling puzzle with expertise unmatched by man or machine.

“Part of the secret to the success of the National Football League has been its partnership with its broadcasters,” explains Dennis Lewin, Pinchbeck’s successor. “At the end of the day, the man who was responsible for that relationship with those broadcasters for the longest period of time, and especially in its growth years, was Val Pinchbeck.”

Pinchbeck began his football-centric career as sports information director at Syracuse University before joining the AFL in 1966. After the AFL-NFL merger, he worked his way up to director of broadcasting before Commissioner Paul Tagliabue elevated him to vice president of broadcasting and production in 1990.

Pinchbeck’s main role was to serve as liaison between the broadcasters and the league, but, more than that, he managed their relationship. “Val would always deal with the partners in such a way that everybody understood Val was working for the good of the whole,” says Lewin.

With an easy-going persona and a reasonable approach, Pinchbeck believed in dialogue, working to achieve consensus among broadcasters.

“Val had the perfect personality for that part of the job. He was able to stick-handle his way through the vipers that all wanted the same thing.”

— Don Ohlmeyer, former producer for ABC and NBC Sports

Pinchbeck attended as many NFL games as he could, staying close enough to the fan to keep abreast of what they thought of his precious product.

“He really felt that it was a huge failure if he and his people were not out there every weekend watching what’s going on in the stadiums and with the networks,” Tagliabue says.

“He pretty much lived for his job,” says son Val Pinchbeck III. “His work was one of his biggest passions.”

Pinchbeck is best known for his prowess at manually crafting the NFL playing schedule. Working on a pegboard with the weeks of the season down the left side and the teams across the top ¾ numbers that both changed during his tenure ¾ Pinchbeck spent months solving each season’s 256-game jigsaw puzzle. No schedule was complete until Pinchbeck had ensured that each matchup was good in his mind, good for the teams, and good for television.

“To do the schedule, Val would literally work seven days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day, from mid February until the middle of May,” Lewin says. “And he was a genius at it.”

Instinctively taking into consideration such factors as shared stadium usage, the possibility of an NFL city’s baseball team playing in the World Series, and the need to avoid home games in heavily Jewish areas on Yom Kippur, Pinchbeck’s thought process was not an easy one to automate.

“When we went to NASA to describe the computer we wanted to build, we said we wanted to build it like Val’s brain,” Lewin says. “In computer language, they call them algorithms, so we told them we wanted to create a Valgorithm.”

Just as a computer has yet to fully duplicate Pinchbeck’s scheduling sorcery, since his death in 2004, no one has replaced his dedication, passion, and commitment to the National Football League.

— Carolyn Braff

The only modern-era professional player to become commissioner of his own sport, Deane Beman brought a unique perspective to the office that forever changed the PGA Tour. Named the Tour’s second commissioner in 1974 — at age 35 — Beman maintained the sport’s traditions while infusing it with a financial savvy that made the PGA Tour a television event. He also designed the first stadium course and made golf friendly to both broadcast networks and fans, helping the sport’s popularity to skyrocket in the process.

“The players in the professional golf tour should kneel down every day, face wherever Deane is reposed, and thank the lord for the spadework he did in making the Tour what it is today,” says legendary ABC/NBC producer/director Don Ohlmeyer. “Deane really took golf in America to another level.”

Prior to becoming commissioner, Beman left his insurance-broker practice to pursue a career as a golfer. Among other honors, he won two U.S. Amateur titles, The Amateur Championship, and four PGA Tour titles. His experience on the course instilled in him a love of tradition and respect for the game that shaped his two decades in the commissioner’s office.

“There’s a lot of golf tradition in Deane,” says Peter Lund, former president of CBS Sports. “All good golfers want to birdie every hole, but Deane is thrilled if you birdie every hole also. It is the same in business: he wanted to get every last dime that was due him from you as a network, but once he got that, he wanted you to do as well as he did. In some sports, me crushing you is standard, but not in golf and not with Deane.”

Beman created the Tournament Players’ Championship and the Senior (now Champions) and Ben Hogan (now Nationwide) Tours. But his most business-savvy accomplishment was finding a way to finance the growth of televised golf at a time when a hard line was drawn between advertising and television.

“There was a wall,” Beman says. “The networks had policies against the mentioning of commercial entities during the telecast. Only during the commercial breaks was that allowed.”

With Beman at the helm, however, that began to change. The commissioner developed relationships with corporate entities, convincing them of the merits of attaching their name to a sponsored golf tournament. By providing guarantees to TV networks for both rights fees and production costs, those sponsors began to support the production of golf on television.

“Now there’s no line at all,” Beman says, “and corporately sponsored events are everywhere.”

— Deane Beman

Corporate sponsorship was a prerequisite for televising golf tournaments, as the cost of putting golf on TV was about $250,000 — 10 times the price tag for a game played indoors, in a confined space. Ratings were not factored into the financial transactions Beman facilitated, but the networks were involved, alongside sponsors and local charities. His genius was in finding ways for all three parties to work with the Tour, and earn a profit in the process.

“Deane is responsible for the Tour being where it is today in terms of national popularity and as a television product,” Lund says. “The fact that televised golf is such a mainstay is because of what Deane did for the Tour.”

Beman did just as much for fans who attended the Tour. Unlike most sports, where fans enter a stadium and sit down, in order to really see a tournament, golf fans walked up to 5 miles around the course and stood in rows behind one another. The top-selling item on many courses was a periscope, to see over the heads of other spectators.

“Many golf courses were not built with spectators in mind,” Beman says. “The first row of people got to see, the second row saw a little less, and the third row got worse. Developing a golf course with enough room to accommodate both spectators and the corporate sponsors was very important.”

In 1979, The Players’ Championship needed a permanent home, and Beman wanted to build it as a new type of course, a spectator-friendly site that would accommodate the growing popularity of professional golf. He found 4,000 acres of swampland in Ponte Vedra, FL, and persuaded its developer to sell 415 acres to the Tour for $1 — and the promise that the course would increase the value of the surrounding land.

The newly minted TPC Sawgrass, the first-ever stadium golf course, incorporated mounds, high banks, and earthen amphitheaters, designed so that fans could see without someone standing directly in front of them. The course was so successful that it has since become a prototype for dozens of viewer-friendly golf courses worldwide and gave Beman a new moniker: The Father of Stadium Golf.

Among his wife, Judy, five children, and 10 grandchildren, Beman now has quite a few golfers in his clan. The Commissioner retired in 1994 and continues to play — though, in his words, “just once a day.” His favorite place to tee up? Any of a half dozen stadium courses across the country, none of which would have been built without the determination, vision, and unique perspective that Deane Beman brought to the office of PGA Tour Commissioner.

— Carolyn Braff