Short answers, pulled from the story.
Paul Tagliabue was an American lawyer who served as commissioner of the National Football League from 1989 until the 1st of September, 2006. During his tenure the league expanded from 28 to 32 teams, responded to the September 11th attacks by canceling a full week of games, and kept the New Orleans Saints in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.
Tagliabue was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame on the 15th of January, 2020, as part of the Centennial Class of 2021. He was formally enshrined on the 7th of August, 2021, fourteen years after his retirement and after being rejected by sports writers and broadcasters on four previous occasions.
Tagliabue moved Super Bowl XXVII to Pasadena at the Rose Bowl after Arizona voters rejected the establishment of a state holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. Arizona would eventually host Super Bowl XXX in 1996 after recognizing the holiday.
Two days after the attacks, Tagliabue announced the cancellation of that weekend's NFL games, citing the magnitude of the events and security concerns. It was the first time the league had canceled an entire week of games since the 1987 strike, and the postponed games pushed the Super Bowl to February for the first time.
Tagliabue established the Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee under his watch and in 1994 described the concussion problem as "one of those pack journalism issues." He later apologized for those remarks in 2017, saying the language was not sensible. His handling of the issue led to four rejections for the Pro Football Hall of Fame before a special centennial committee voted him in.
Paul Tagliabue died on the 9th of November, 2025, at his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. The cause of death was heart failure and complications from Parkinson's disease.