Less than two weeks after announcing his crowning achievement – a deal with the players union that will ensure labor peace in the National Football League into the next decade, Commissioner Paul Tagliabue announced his retirement yesterday. The 65-year-old Tagliabue, who will stay on the job until July, has presided over a tremendous expansion of the league’s popularity since taking the job in 1989.

Professional football was already America’s most popular sport when Tagliabue succeeded the legendary Pete Rozelle as commissioner, but it had endured player strikes in 1982 and 1987 that threatened to chip away at that popularity. Whereas Rozelle’s negotiations with the players union involved long and costly battles, Tagliabue’s lasting legacy will be his ability to broker compromises. In the 16 years since he took the helm, the NFL has been the only major North American sports league that never shut down operations because of labor strife.

But labor peace isn’t the only reason Tagliabue deserves to be remembered as one of the most effective sports commissioners the country has ever known. Tagliabue has exuded leadership in everything from making the game more exciting for fans to putting the league in its proper place after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Tagliabue recognized the magnitude of September 11 and shut the NFL down for a week after the attacks. Rozelle, who presided over the NFL from 1960-89, often said his greatest regret was his decision to carry on the league’s regularly scheduled games on November 24,1963, two days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Tagliabue learned from Rozelle’s mistake and was almost universally praised for his decision.

Commissioners serve at the pleasure of the team owners, but they also need to serve as advocates for the fans, and Tagliabue understood that. Most NFL owners are old-fashioned and resistant to change, but Tagliabue convinced them to make significant changes when the fans clamored for them. The popular rules that Tagliabue has championed include the two-point conversion and instant replay reviews after questionable calls.

While MLB commissioner Bud Selig endured harsh criticism for baseball’s festering drug problem, which went largely ignored for the better part of a decade, Tagliabue’s NFL has been held up as a model to be emulated because its commissioner understood the potential for steroids to damage the sport and worked with players to implement random testing with strict penalties for steroid use.

For his final accomplishment, the league’s new collective bargaining agreement, Tagliabue relied on what has been considered his greatest skill as commissioner: patching together a coalition of nine teams with differing viewpoints to reach a compromise considered satisfactory by all but two teams.

Tagliabue’s legacy isn’t without blemishes, though. He has tried and failed to get a team back into Los Angeles, the country’s second-largest television market, after both the Rams and the Raiders left in 1995. Although rumors abound about teams moving to Los Angeles, the league is no closer to having a team there than it was 10 years ago.

The NFL also hasn’t been able to match the global reach of the other major North American sports leagues during Tagliabue’s tenure. While Major League Baseball, the NBA, and the NHL have seen an infusion of talent and a growing fan base from around the world, the NFL has stayed almost exclusively an American sport. Tagliabue – who last year scheduled the NFL’s first regular season game outside the United States when the San Francisco 49ers and Arizona Cardinals played in Mexico City – has always wanted to see the NFL’s popularity expand around the world. But his pet project, NFL Europe, has failed to catch on. The minor league that plays spring games in places like Berlin and Amsterdam draws only a modicum of interest from the locals and loses money for the league.

Still, Tagliabue was often at his best when things didn’t go his way. In 1993, when a lawsuit by several NFL players forced free agency upon the league, Tagliabue reached a compromise with the union that allowed unfettered free agency for most players but still allowed teams to restrict the movement of their most important players. And when Cleveland fans lashed out at the NFL in 1995 after Browns owner Art Modell opted to move his team to Baltimore, Tagliabue engineered the decision to change the team’s name to the Ravens and promised Cleveland that if it built a new stadium, the Browns would return, which they did in 1999.

The league’s owners will now begin the process of selecting Tagliabue’s successor at their meetings next week in Orlando, Fla. The candidates named yesterday include NFL Chief Operating Officer Roger Goodell, Atlanta Falcons general manager Rich McKay, NFL Network president and CEO Steve Bornstein, and Baltimore Ravens president Dick Cass. Goodell seems to be the favorite because he worked closely with Tagliabue in negotiating the latest agreement with the union. But some owners will want to hire someone with more of a football background, which could favor McKay, who grew up around football while his father, John McKay, was head coach of USC and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

When Tagliabue was hired 16 years ago, he had to follow in the footsteps of Rozelle, a man the Sporting News later called the most powerful sports figure of the 20th century. The next commissioner will have equally big shoes to fill.