When NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue announced his retirement last week after 16 fruitful years on the job, he no doubt ruined what was to be a relaxing weekend of sunshine and golf for NFL owners attending the annual spring meetings today, tomorrow, and Wednesday in Orlando, Fla.

Tagliabue’s announcement probably didn’t catch any of the 32 owners by surprise – there were persistent whispers in recent months that he wanted to hammer out the NFL’s new collective bargaining agreement and ride off into the sunset – but it did lend the off-season meetings a significance they were conspicuously lacking just two weeks ago. The first step toward finding a new commissioner will be to assemble a search committee this week. The makeup of the committee should be the most interesting detail to come out of the meetings, particularly after the in-fighting that took place before owners settled on Tagliabue in 1989.

After 37 years of NFL service, first as a league attorney and Washington, D.C., lobbyist and then as commissioner, Tagliabue’s legacy is as secure as most of the 32 NFL franchises he leaves behind. In the last year, he and his staff – which includes Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Roger Goodell, a leading candidate to replace his boss – completed a new terrestrial, cable, and satellite television deal along with the labor deal. The NFL and its players have never been happier.

Tagliabue made his owners a lot of money, which ultimately is how a commissioner of any league is judged. But he also got a lot of help from municipalities who seized upon changes in the 1986 Tax Act and courted teams with vigor. Using the new law, which changed how stadiums and arenas could be municipally funded, city after city began building or renovating existing facilities, complete with luxury boxes, club seating, and other corporated-oriented amenities that enriched owners.

Tagliabue also got lucky when Ruppert Murdoch threw billions of dollars the league’s way in 1992 in an effort to prop up his fledgling and faltering FOX network. Murdoch’s gamble paid off; FOX became a viable network by carrying NFL games and, along the way, stole major market TV affiliates from CBS, whose bosses wouldn’t match Murdoch’s bid. Murdoch upped the ante in the rights fee game and forced NBC and ABC to pay more money than the networks wanted for football. In these days of eroding television viewership, the NFL still delivers the 18-49 male demographic to advertisers, which makes the league a valuable commodity.

Under Tagliabue’s watch, the league and players have had labor peace since 1993, when a U.S. District Court judge ordered the sides come up with an agreement or he would impose one.

Tagliabue’s role in all this was to maintain the “Leaguethink” philosophy pioneered by predecessor Pete Rozelle in regard to revenue sharing, and he played it well. Of course, much of that had to do with increasing TV revenues, increasing stadium revenues, and increasing franchise values.

The next NFL commissioner will inherit a relatively calm situation. Other than beginning the search for a new commissioner, the owners are expected to discuss issues like increasing the number of playoff teams from 12 to 14 and installing headset-to-helmet setups for defensive players, much like the ones in place for quarterbacks.

But there are some problems. Whoever gets the job will have to figure out what to do with the New Orleans Saints and how to get a franchise into the revenue void that is Los Angeles – problems that, on the surface, would seem to be related. Tagliabue was unimpressed with the Saints’ stop-gap home in San Antonio and pressured team owner Tom Benson to play his home games in the Louisiana Superdome next season.

Benson was already squabbling with city and state officials before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Pre-hurricane, he was getting a $186.5 million bailout from the state of Louisiana after he claimed financial hardship in 2001. The Saints franchise receives state money every July through 2010, and for the past two years, Louisiana has had to scrape together the funds to keep Benson in town.

There is no word yet on whether that agreement is still valid, although Louisiana officials claim they will only give Benson 2/9 of the more than $16 million due in July because the Saints played just two pre-season games in New Orleans in 2005. As part of the 2001 deal, Benson was supposed to receive upgrades or a new facility starting in 2006 or 2007. All of that, of course, is in limbo.

Meanwhile, the NFL is the only major sports league without a team in Los Angeles, the country’s second largest market. When Tagliabue stepped down, he said this was his biggest regret. In February 1996, Seattle Seahawks owner Ken Behring announced that his team was moving to Anaheim and would break its lease with King County officials and the Kingdome. Tagliabue opposed the move because the NFL wanted a presence in the Pacific Northwest and because the Seahawks’ lease had another nine years left on it.

The Seahawks were eventually sold to billionaire Paul Allen. And though the NFL all but wired the “expansion race” between Los Angeles and Houston in 1999, Houston had a financing plan in place to build a football stadium and Los Angeles lost out again.

The next commissioner will have to deal with the Los Angeles stadium problem as well as similar problems in San Diego and Minnesota. Vikings owner Zygmunt Wilf has a plan to build a stadium-business industrial area in Blaine, Minnesota but he needs state money and the Minnesota legislature has been reluctant to spend the cash. Wilf seems to be third in line for money behind the Twins and the University of Minnesota football team.

The new commissioner figures to be spending a lot of time at the Minnesota governor’s mansion and statehouse in an attempt to get Wilf’s dream stadium built. In San Diego, the Chargers’ stadium situation continues to play out. At the NFL spring meeting in 2000, Chargers owner Alex Spanos told me he was unhappy with his stadium situation, and nothing has changed since then. Spanos’s stadium is older, but he seems to have nowhere to go.

Kansas City may become another headache if Jackson County, Missouri voters reject raising local sales taxes to renovate the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium along with the Royals’ Kauffman Stadium. Down the road, Buffalo may also become a problem if and when the Bills’ ownership decides that a soon-to-be 40-year-old stadium must be replaced.

More than two-thirds of the NFL’s 32 teams are either playing in or building stadiums that didn’t exist when Tabliabue took over in 1989. His successor will have to take up that mantle whether he wants to or not, because 21st century stadiums, complete with merchandising villages and corporate tie-ins, are the way of the future in the NFL. If the future leads to Los Angeles, he’ll be off to a good start.