Legacy
Tagliabue was praised for these politically related actions taken as NFL commissioner:
He took a stand against the state of Arizona for refusing to establish a state holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr., as other states had done. In 1993, Super Bowl XXVII was to be held for the first time in Arizona, but after an election, Arizona rejected establishment of a Martin Luther King state holiday. Subsequently, Tagliabue moved the Super Bowl to Pasadena at the Rose Bowl; Arizona would finally host Super Bowl XXX in 1996.
He forcefully and successfully promoted the return of the Saints to New Orleans after the disruption of their 2005 season in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Tagliabue is credited with having convinced Saints owner Tom Benson to abandon any effort to move the team to San Antonio and with having made the Saints' return to Louisiana a league priority.
However, Tagliabue was criticized for his role in fighting brain injury claims, preventing players from getting necessary treatment and their survivors from getting proper compensation. As a result, Tagliabue was rejected on four occasions by sports writers and broadcasters for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Fourteen years after his retirement, a special committee voted him in as part of an NFL centennial class. Tim Dahlberg of the Associated Press wrote at the time:
"The NFL of the 1990s was a different animal than it is today, which explains at least somewhat the creation under Paul Tagliabue's watch of something laughably called the Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee. What is harder to explain is why Tagliabue put a rheumatologist with no expertise in head injuries in charge of the panel. Or why, in 1994, the then-NFL commissioner claimed the number of concussions in the NFL was relatively small and that the problem of head injuries was 'one of those pack journalism issues'. Tagliabue was on the wrong side of what would become the biggest issue facing the league. He remained there most of his tenure as the NFL fought — at times bitterly — the idea that football was causing former players to suffer, and some to die." In 2017, Tagliabue apologized: "I do regret those remarks. Looking back, it was not sensible language to use to express my thoughts at the time."
