Once Mara Changed His Mind, Way Was Paved for Tagliabue

CLEVELAND — For the last four months, Wellington Mara, president of the New York Giants, has led the fight to make Jim Finks the National Football League’s commissioner.

But at an early hour Thursday, when most of the other owners were asleep, Mara and his principal confederate in the Finks faction, Art Modell of the Cleveland Browns, gave up.

They decided to vote with the three others on the new, unique five-man committee that recommended Paul Tagliabue.

And when Mara yielded, so did most of his old-guard followers, putting Tagliabue in.

Why did the Giants’ 74-year-old owner change his mind?

Citing three reasons Thursday, Mara said:

--”We wanted both men to jointly take over--with Tagliabue as commissioner and Finks as president--but that proved impossible when Finks declined.

--”(The Finks people) were obviously fighting a losing battle, and it would have been detrimental to the league to go on fighting.

--”Above all, I didn’t want to go outside the league for a commissioner. If we hadn’t chosen one of these two, that would have happened. And I feel that taking a (commissioner) without an NFL background would have been much worse than this--the worst thing we could do.”