NFL Commissioner should elected by Aug. 9

Paul Tagliabue plans to retire on Aug. 18.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Five weeks before Paul Tagliabue's retirement date, there remain more than a dozen candidates for his job.
But the real favorites remain Roger Goodell, the league's chief operating officer; Jeff Pash, its in-house counsel; and Rich McKay, the Atlanta Falcons' general manager. One or two others, perhaps from outside the league, remain in the mix.
Things will become clearer in 10 days and a new commissioner should be elected by Aug. 9, allowing Tagliabue to retire on Aug. 18, his target date. The owners meet July 24 in Detroit to try to get down to a final four. Then they gather in Chicago two weeks later for a three-day selection meeting.
"I'm very optimistic we'll come out of there with a commissioner," said Pittsburgh's Dan Rooney, the co-chairman of the eight-member selection committee.
Need 22 votes
Still, nothing is guaranteed: 22 of the 32 teams must agree on the choice, and history says that won't be easy. A continuing division over revenue sharing coupled with resentment over the new labor agreement approved in March at the last possible moment could make it difficult to find a consensus.
Historically, favorites don't get elected, although it's a small sample -- the NFL has had just three commissioners in the past 60 years.
Pete Rozelle, a complete outsider, was elected on the 33rd ballot in 1960 to succeed Bert Bell. And in 1989, it took nearly four months after what was supposed to be the final selection meeting to elect Tagliabue over Jim Finks, then the New Orleans general manager.
Tagliabue has tried to avoid the problem that occurred during his election, when the selection committee was stacked with Rozelle insiders and outsiders rebelled at their recommendation of Finks. This time, the committee includes a smorgasbord of high-revenue and low-revenue owners and includes such mavericks as Oakland's Al Davis and Dallas' Jerry Jones.
And the committee has gone out of its way to be quiet -- one normally talkative committee member said he didn't want to discuss the process because he didn't want to indicate that he knew "too much or too little."
The general consensus among those familiar with the search is that the new commissioner almost certainly will be an insider.