NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue emerged from Wednesday night’s meeting of NFL owners looking exhausted. He had just finished two weeks of nearly nonstop negotiations between the owners and the players’ union that resulted in a new agreement ensuring labor peace in the NFL for the next six years. He had also secured his legacy as the most effective league commissioner during the three decades of free agency in American professional sports.

Tagliabue, who turned 65 in November, is expected to retire within the next few years, and this deal assures that his tenure will end without any work stoppages. During Tagliabue’s time as commissioner, the NBA has had a lockout-shortened season that precipitated a decline in the league’s popularity, Major League Baseball has canceled a World Series and part of another campaign, and the NHL has canceled an entire season.

When Tagliabue took over the NFL in 1989, professional football appeared to be heading down a similar path. Acrimonious strikes in 1982 and 1987 had resulted in canceled games, replacement players, and lawsuits. But Tagliabue has eschewed the adversarial role played by his predecessor, Pete Rozelle, treating the NFL Players Association’s executive director, Gene Upshaw, as a colleague rather than a rival. Tagliabue’s good working relationship with Upshaw was apparent during these negotiations, which often seemed tense but never descended into the bitterness that characterizes labor talks in other sports.

Tagliabue had a difficult time negotiating the deal for several reasons. Most obviously, he had to broker an agreement that would suit the players. But he also had to ensure that both low revenue teams like the Arizona Cardinals and Minnesota Vikings and high revenue teams like the Washington Redskins and New England Patriots could find common ground. Tagliabue convinced the owners to compromise on a deal whereby the 15 franchises with the highest revenues will contribute about $900 million over six years to a pool that the other 17 franchises will share.

The Giants and Jets, despite playing in the country’s largest market, are actually among those bottom 17 teams. That’s because they share a relatively old stadium at the Meadowlands that hasn’t sold its naming rights to a corporate sponsor and doesn’t produce much money from luxury suites. If they get new stadiums, the Giants and Jets will move into the high-revenue group, and that fact put both teams in a position where they could help negotiate the compromise.

The players will receive 59.5% of all NFL revenues, meaning each team’s salary cap will be $102 million this year and $109 million in 2007. That represents a significant increase from last year’s limit of $85.5 million and is great news for free agents like San Diego Chargers quarterback Drew Brees and Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Antwaan Randle El. Collectively, players will make about $225 million more this year than they would have if the league had operated under the previous collective-bargaining agreement.

The only two teams to vote against the deal were the Cincinnati Bengals and Buffalo Bills. Both are low-revenue clubs, but each is at least partly to blame for that: Instead of finding a corporate sponsor, Bills owner Ralph Wilson named his team’s stadium after himself, and Bengals owner Mike Brown named his team’s stadium after his father, Paul Brown, who founded the franchise. Owners like the Redskins’ Daniel Snyder, who signed a multimillion-dollar corporate sponsorship deal to name his team’s stadium FedEx Field, don’t like the idea of subsidizing owners like Brown and Wilson, who made the choice not to capitalize on a potential source of revenue. The new deal allows high-revenue teams to keep a portion of their naming-rights money while putting the rest in a pool that low revenue teams will share.

The “no” votes from Wilson and Brown showed that Tagliabue couldn’t please everyone, but he came close – even Oakland’s Al Davis, who was a constant thorn in Rozelle’s side, offered his support. Fans, who simply wanted to avoid the kinds of work stoppages that happened under Rozelle’s watch, are relieved.

Rozelle has a bust in the Pro Football Hall of Fame because of the way he used television to turn professional football into America’s most popular sport. After this week’s developments, Tagliabue should join Rozelle in Canton.

Mr. Smith is a writer for the statistical Web site FootballOutsiders.com.