A look at seminal broadcasting moves that define the NFL

Pete Rozelle would not be surprised to see television’s impact on the NFL as the league celebrates its 100th season this year.

It was Rozelle, the commissioner from 1960 to 1989, who was able to convince owners that it was in their best interest to sign a league-wide rights deal instead of teams negotiating on their own. The NFL’s two-year deal with CBS signed in 1962 went for $4.65 million per season. Every contract has grown since then to where the current deals with CBS, NBC, Fox and ESPN is worth $5.66 billion annually through 2022.

Rozelle was a visionary but no one knows if he could have seen the league turn into a financial juggernaut that has its own network and countless hours of programming per week dedicated to what is happening on and off the field.

“Television has been the best marketing tool that we’ve had,” said Joe Browne, who was a league executive for 50 years before retiring in 2016.

NBC “Sunday Night Football” announcer Al Michaels said a huge reason for the league’s popularity on television is because it is the best-suited sport for it.

“You have this burst of action and then there is inaction that can be covered by analyzing the play and covering it on replay,” he said.

College football and baseball had been the top two sports throughout the 1950s, but the tide started to turn after the 1958 NFL championship game between the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants. The first overtime title game in league history was called “The Greatest Game Ever Played” and vaulted the sport into popularity.

Seven years later, the Harris Poll had professional football as the nation’s favorite sport for the first time.

Here is a look at some of the defining events that have shaped the NFL and television: up for negotiation, all three broadcast networks put in bids. CBS would retain the package for $28.2 million over two years.

Browne said trying to get owners to pull together resources for television would have been harder to do later. At the time, ticket sales were still the higher revenue source.

“They (Mara, Reeves, Halas) made decisions that perhaps were not good for their individual teams in the short term, but in the long run paid off for the entire league,” he said.

NBC lost out on the NFL but would agree to a fiveyear deal with the AFL beginning in 1965. Not only did that provide the upstart with more cash, but it would help set in motion the merger between the two leagues. was important to give creative types a benefit of a doubt. It gave a new look at the games much to the enjoyment of fans,” he said.

The success of NFL Films spawned a multimedia league conglomerate that includes NFL Network, which went on the air in 2003.