Paul J. Tagliabue, who died on Sunday, is remembered for his 17-year term as the commissioner of the National Football League, a tenure that saw unprecedented growth in the league’s audience and revenues. He was also known for his lifelong support of Jesuit and Catholic education and, in recent years, his efforts to support the L.G.B.T.Q. community in the Catholic Church.
Among the many tributes to Mr. Tagliabue after his death was the following statement from Robert M. Groves, the interim president of Georgetown University, from which Mr. Tagliabue graduated in 1962 and which he served for many years as chair of its board of directors: “Paul Tagliabue was a consummate Hoya and carried our Catholic and Jesuit values everywhere he went, from right here at Georgetown to the NFL. Georgetown is a better place because of the service and leadership Paul provided for many years.”
Paul Tagliabue was born in 1940 in Jersey City, N.J., and attended St. Michael’s High School in Union City. He was recruited by both the University of Notre Dame and the University of North Carolina for basketball, and received a scholarship at Georgetown University, where he was captain of the 1961-62 team and class president. A 6-foot-5 forward, Mr. Tagliabue graduated as the school’s second-leading rebounder of all time. (To put that in context, if you’re not a basketball fan: His nine-rebounds-per-game average is just short of Patrick Ewing’s and exceeds those of later Georgetown stars Alonzo Mourning and Dikembe Mutombo.)
Mr. Tagliabue credited Joseph T. Durkin, a Jesuit priest, history professor and prolific author who taught at Georgetown from 1944 to 1972, for encouraging him to achieve academically as well as athletically. In a 2006 interview with Sports Illustrated, he also noted that his parents emphasized education. “My father used to say, ‘Don’t be a donkey. Use your head, not your back,’” he remembered.
In a commencement speech to Georgetown students that same year, he said: “By my junior year, my love for basketball was losing out to my love for the library. I was more interested in debating communism and democracy with the political science faculty than in shooting baskets.” Mr. Tagliabue was also a Rhodes scholar finalist in his senior year, and he would later remark that he had to miss one of Georgetown’s most memorable games that year, against Manhattan College in Madison Square Garden, to attend a Rhodes scholar competition.
He next attended New York University School of Law (his roommate was future U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander), graduating with honors in 1965. He served for a year as a clerk to a federal judge and for three years as a special assistant on nuclear weapons planning issues at the Department of Defense before joining the Washington, D.C., law firm Covington & Burling in 1969. Mr. Tagliabue eventually became outside legal counsel for the National Football League during his 20-year tenure at the firm.
When N.F.L. Commissioner Pete Rozelle retired in 1989, he recommended Mr. Tagliabue as his successor. Mr. Tagliabue would spend 17 years at the league’s helm, leading it through an era of unprecedented financial growth. He also spearheaded initiatives redressing the lack of minority representation in the league’s coaching ranks and established efforts to provide pensions and health benefits for retired players. And he steered the league through controversies around concussions, steroid use, player compensation and fair play.
After his retirement in 2006, Mr. Tagliabue returned to Covington & Burling, where he was senior counsel until last year. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2021.
Mr. Tagliabue is survived by his wife Chandler, his son Drew and his daughter Emily. His brother John Tagliabue, a graduate of St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, N.J., and a longtime correspondent for The New York Times in Paris and Warsaw, was a friend of Drew Christiansen, S.J., the editor in chief of America from 2005 to 2012. In 2011, Father Christiansen, who died in 2022, wrote of their friendship and correspondence over the years, including an episode in 1989 when John Tagliabue was shot by a sniper in Romania during the chaos of communism’s collapse in Eastern Europe.
Paul Tagliabue was a member of Georgetown University’s board of directors from 2006 to 2018 and served as its chair from 2009 to 2015. He also taught a course on legal issues in professional sports as an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law Center for three years. He and his wife Chandler were also prominent donors to Georgetown, providing financial gifts for need-based scholarships, the campus L.G.B.T.Q. Resource Center and the establishment of the Paul J. and Chandler M. Tagliabue Distinguished Professorship in Interfaith Studies and Dialogue. In 2001, the university honored him with its President’s Medal in recognition of his professional achievements and generosity.
In recent years, Mr. Tagliabue had become a significant supporter of Outreach, a resource and advocacy center for L.G.B.T.Q. Catholics sponsored by America Media. “I was honored to know Paul, first through our connection through Georgetown University, where he was a former chair of the board and I am a current member,” said James Martin, S.J., editor at large at America and founder of Outreach.
“Later, I was delighted to find out what a big supporter of L.G.B.T.Q. people he was, along with his wife, Chan. Over the years, he was a generous supporter of Outreach and attended our conferences, even at his advanced age. I found him obviously smart, quick-witted and very compassionate. His support meant a great deal to me, to Outreach and of course to countless L.G.B.T.Q. people.”
Paul Tagliabue died at his home in Chevy Chase, Md., of heart failure and complications from Parkinson’s disease. He was 84 years old.