Rozelle served as the commissioner of the National Football League (NFL) for nearly thirty years, from January 1960 until his retirement in November 1989.

Pete Newell, head coach for the University of San Francisco Dons basketball team, came to Compton in 1948 for a recruiting visit.

Impressed by Rozelle, Newell helped arrange for him to get a full scholarship to work in a similar capacity at USF.

Leaving after three years, he held a series of public relations jobs in southern California, including marketing the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia for a Los Angeles-based company.

In spite of continued struggles on the field, including a league-worst 2–10 record in 1959, he turned them into a business success in just three years.

According to Howard Cosell in his 1985 book I Never Played the Game, the owners took 23 ballots before settling on Rozelle as NFL Commissioner at a January 26, 1960, meeting.

Another important contribution was Rozelle's success in negotiating large television contracts to broadcast every NFL game played each season.

[14][15] After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, Rozelle wrestled with the decision of whether to cancel that Sunday's games.

"[18] There were players and news outlets that disagreed with the decision, and Rozelle subsequently thought it might have been wiser to cancel those games.

Citing his "aptitude for conciliation" with the league's owners, his work in expanding the NFL, and his crackdown on player gambling, Sports Illustrated named Rozelle their "Sportsman of the Year" for 1963.

[20] By 1965, the rival American Football League obtained a new NBC-TV contract and had signed a new superstar in Joe Namath.

[22] Rozelle played an important role in making the Super Bowl the most watched sporting event in the United States.

[citation needed] In 1970, Rozelle proposed his week-night prime time television concept, Monday Night Football, to Roone Arledge, then the president of ABC Sports.

Exercised only four times, the rule was declared a violation of antitrust laws by Judge Earl R. Larson in Mackey v. National Football League on December 30, 1975.

The plaintiffs had successfully contended that the rule deterred teams from signing free agents out of fear of not knowing the compensation that would have to be surrendered.

[28][29] In the 1980s, Al Davis, owner of the Oakland Raiders franchise, sued the NFL in order to relocate the team to Los Angeles.

[37] A month after Rozelle's death in December 1996, the NFL honored his legacy with a decal on the back of the helmets of the teams competing in Super Bowl XXXI.

[42] On December 6, 1996, seven years after his retirement in 1989, Rozelle died of brain cancer at the age of 70 at Rancho Santa Fe, California,[43] and was interred at El Camino Memorial Park in San Diego.