University of San Francisco Athletics

Alvin Ray Peter Rozelle was born on March 1, 1926, in Southgate, CA, and grew up during the Depression. He graduated from Compton High School in 1944, lettering in tennis and basketball. He was drafted in 1944 into the United States Navy, and served in the Pacific for 18 months on an oil tanker. After the war in 1946, he attended Compton Community College, and worked as a Student News Director, and part-time for the Rams as a Public Relations Assistant. He transferred from Compton Jr. College to USF after being recruited by Pete Newell, who had arranged a scholarship for him.

In 1948, at age 22, he worked as a student publicist for the Dons Athletic Department. Rozelle was in charge of two Cinderella teams: the 1949 NIT Champions and the 1951 “undefeated, untied and uninvited” football team. He was successful in generating national publicity for the school and All-American status for Don Lofgran, Rene Herrerias and Ollie Matson. The former task seemed to many insurmountable given the Big Eastern College bias among sports writers. After graduation in 1950, he was hired by the school as a full-time Athletic News Director. Supported by incredible athletic talent at USF, Rozelle attracted sellout crowds to the athletic events. His success was founded in his passion for the school and the athletes, his superb and prolific writing, and his undaunted efforts to obtain media coverage.

After USF discontinued the football program in 1952, Rozelle moved back to Southern California where he was Public Relations Director for the Rams. After three years, he held a series of Public Relations jobs in Southern California, including marketing the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia for a Los Angeles-based company. He returned as a General Manager to work for the Rams, and turned them from a struggling 2-10 team in 1959 into a successful business in three years.

In 1960, after Bert Bell’s death, he was a surprise choice for Commissioner of the National Football League, and according to Howard Cosell, it took 23 ballots to settle on him. When he took over, there were twelve teams and only a few had television contracts. The AFL was serious competition to the NFL, and games were poorly attended. Realizing that professional sports were going to be big business, Rozelle traveled to Washington, D.C. and asked Congress to exempt the NFL from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, so that they could combine into one, single business. He updated the NFL business model, and helped establish revenue-sharing which guaranteed the success of the smaller market teams. Once the teams had bargaining power over the networks, he negotiated large television contracts by playing one network against the other. The extra revenue was used to promote the games. In 1962, he was re-elected and served 30 years in all.

Once there was a united NFL, Rozelle instituted the Super Bowl, to replace the individual league title games played on one team’s home field. Rozelle did not approve of the name Super Bowl, which was chosen by Lamar Hunt, the owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, after his son showed him the newly invented bouncy Super Ball. With the help of the media, the name stuck.

As Commissioner of the NFL for nearly 30 years, Rozelle presided over a period of incredible growth and turbulence in the sport. He saw the NFL grow from 12 to 28 teams, the creation of Monday Night Football, and the merger with the AFL. His accomplishments include the creation of the Super Bowl, development of historic television contracts, and the resolution of numerous player contract disputes and legislative issues. He retired in 1989. Sports Illustrated named him the Sportsman of the Year in 1963. In 1990, Rozelle received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement, and he was honored with the Lombardi Award of Excellence from the Vince Lombardi Cancer Foundation. 

He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985, and into the USF Hall of Fame in 1974. USF has two athletic scholarships in his name.