On January 26, 1960: In a shocking switch that ends seven days of bitter fighting among the 12 NFL owners, Los Angeles Rams general manager Pete Rozelle is a compromise choice and elected the league’s new commissioner on the 23rd ballot. Until the announcement, the 33-year-old Rozelle’s name had not even been mentioned among the candidates. Through most of the voting, the leaders had been Marshall Leahy, a San Francisco lawyer, and Austin Gunsel, a former FBI agent who had been acting commissioner since the death of Bert Bell 3 1/2 months ago. When it appears there is no hope of breaking the stalemate between Leahy and Gunsel, Baltimore Colts owner Carroll Rosenbloom proposes Rozelle. The Californian receives eight votes, Leahy gets one and three teams abstain. “I would be silly to consider myself anything but a compromise commissioner,” says Rozelle, who receives a three-year contract at an annual salary of $50,000. Rozelle insists his chief claim to fame is that he “played basketball with Duke Snider” in high school in California.
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