PHOTOS BY DA NIEL LIPPITT

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Novi build.
BernaA
Gliebermaithas
a game plan
the future of -----
professional
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ALAN ABRAMS

SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

ernard "Bernie" Glieberman doesn't think
he's any more of a sports fan than the aver-
age guy.
But the big difference between Bernie
Glieberman and the average sports couch potato is
that Mr. Glieberman has owned two professional
football teams and helped run an entire league. Now
he's on the verge of becoming a key entity in the sport
with an innovative breakthrough.
Strictly enforced regulations of the federal Secu-
rities and Exchange Commission (SEC) temporari-
ly prohibit Mr. Glieberman from publicly promoting
his new venture, the All-American Football League,
of which he is acting chairman. The league is ex-
pected to play in the spring of the year, starting in
the late 1990s.
He consented, however, to a remarkably candid
interview with The Jewish News about the business
of sports and single-entity leagues, which he thinks
will change the face and future of professional sports
as we now know it.
In his Novi headquarters of Crosswinds Commu-
nities, Inc., one of Michigan's largest residential build-
ing companies, Mr. Glieberman is surrounded by
museum-like, floor-to-ceiling glass display cases
reflecting his many interests.
A dazzling array of colorful model vehicles rep-
resents the 58-year-old Detroit-born builder's status
as one of the world's most significant collectors of
classic and antique Mercedes Benz automobiles.
And of course, there are footballs.

ernie Glieb
envisions a- w
era in pro spqrts.

"I'm certainly not
what I would call a
sports aficionado, where
I know all the stats and
all the facts," says Mr.
Glieberman. "My son
Lonie happens to be a
guy that can tell you
who played three years
ago in a championship
game, and he really does have a massive memory
and background of all those facts."
Indeed, Mr. Glieberman credits his son, a Michi-
gan State University graduate, with getting him in-
terested in sports as an investment "when we looked
at the Canadian Football League. It was an under-
dog league, and it certainly looked like it was an
opportunity in the sports business. And it was.
"Except that when the Canadian Football League
(CFL) came into the United States, and certainly my
son and I were among the big promoters of bringing
the CFL into the U.S., we realized that the expan-
sion program was really flawed.
"We tried to go into the cities where the NFL
wasn't, and we tried to go into the cities that were
a million and less [in population]. And I think, in ret-
rospect, that would have been fine if we were able to
get proper television coverage.
"Unfortunately, what happened with the CFL was
that we couldn't get the coverage, and the league nev-
er really put the emphasis on TV that they needed

to in the U.S., so that all of your away games are
broadcast back home," said Mr. Glieberman.
After he and his son bought the Ottawa Rough
Riders, the CFL team in Canada's capital, Bernie
Glieberman became a member of the league's
board of governors and executive committee: In
1989, he explored putting a CFL team in Detroit
at the behest of the mayor of Windsor, Ontario.
The mayor originally wanted a team in Wind-
sor, along with a new downtown stadium, recalls
Mr. Glieberman. When the mayor saw that nei-
ther was feasible, he suggested putting the fran-
chise across the Detroit River, with Windsor
playing the role of civic cheerleader. Obviously, it
never happened.
About three years ago, Mr. Glieberman was con-
tacted by Carleton Finkbeiner, the mayor of Tole-
do, Ohio. Mayor Finkbeiner wanted to move a CFL
team to Toledo, into a new downtown stadium.
But that stadium was never built, although the
idea may still be alive.

LEAGUE page 66

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