New List of Candidates Set for NFL Owners; Finks No. 1

In a conference call Monday, the National Football League’s 28 owners will get the names of the candidates proposed for commissioner by the new search committee.

The politicking will begin then, as various factions try to put together the 19 votes necessary to elect Pete Rozelle’s successor during the week of Oct. 9 at a hotel near the Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport.

Starting Oct. 10, the search committee, headed by Wellington Mara of New York and Lamar Hunt of Kansas City, plans to bring in all candidates for interviews.

Among the favorites are front-running Jim Finks, 62, general manager of the New Orleans Saints; Willie Davis, 54, a former star in the league and now a Los Angeles businessman, and Pat Barrett, 57, a Syracuse (N.Y.) businessman.

Davis, a Hall of Fame player with the Green Bay Packers in the 1960s, runs a network of radio stations. He holds a master’s degree in business from the University of Chicago.

Barrett, a former chairman of Avis rental cars who owns an investment firm, doubles as chairman of the New York state Republican Party.

“We’d rather not have a politician, but his credentials at Avis and in other fields are impressive,” an owner said.

Barrett sold Avis to his employees in September 1987.

Most sources believe that Finks will hold most of the 16 votes he got in June. One source, however, said that the most impressive candidate, by far, was Robert Mulcahy, who runs the Meadowlands complex in New York.

Others said the leading compromise candidate is NFL lawyer Paul Tagliabue.

In June at Chicago, Finks missed election by three votes when a group of 11 club owners, most of them new, abstained. They contended that the search committee, as then organized, had failed to bring in a slate of candidates as promised.

“They tried to railroad Finks,” one owner said this week.

That particular objection has apparently been overcome by the new committee, which has pledged to give the voters five or six candidates to consider next month.

“I’m satisfied now that the (new) committee carried out its mandate,” one of the dissident owners said. “They’ve done what we asked them to do.”