Tagliabue calls on Hill to bring some sizzle to Lombardi gala

They have remained close friends since Tagliabue stepped down as NFL commissioner in 2006. When Tagliabue wanted to breathe new life into a benefit dinner that had become staid, his first thought was to call Hill, one of sports media’s great showmen when he ran Fox Sports from its 1993 launch to 2012, after Hill took a broader programming role at News Corp. He left 21st Century Fox last year to set up his own production company.

Tagliabue chairs the cancer center’s board. A Georgetown graduate, he fretted that the fundraiser had lost its relevance, especially to younger people who know Lombardi only as the name that’s on the Super Bowl trophy.

Tagliabue immediately thought of Hill as the person who could bring some sizzle to the gala. After all, Hill produced the Academy

Former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue brought aboard TV exec David Hill for the fundraiser for Georgetown’s cancer center. Photo by: GETTY IMAGES (2)

“I called up David and said, ‘We’ve got this fundraiser. At this point no one even knows why the cancer center is named Vince Lombardi,’” Tagliabue said. “At the event, [we want to do this in a way that] the crowd is going to know what it was about Vince Lombardi that made him special — why he is the symbol of the Lombardi trophy and the Lombardi Cancer Center.”

For Hill, it was an easy decision. He said yes as soon as his friend asked. Hill’s daughter attended Georgetown, so he knew the campus well. And he agreed with Tagliabue’s view that Vince Lombardi’s legacy needed to be built back up.

“When you look at Vince Lombardi and his dedication to excellence, he was a remarkable human being and a remarkable coach,” Hill said. “That’s going to be the feature of the night.”

Hill plans to bring some Hollywood touches to the Potomac for the 30th anniversary edition of the event. Soon after accepting, he called another sports business colleague — Tony Ponturo, a former marketing executive with Anheuser-Busch who financed a play about the legendary coach that ran on Broadway in 2010-11. Hill asked Ponturo to see whether Dan Lauria, the actor who played Lombardi in the play, would reprise the role for the gala. Lauria, now acting in the Fox show “Pitch,” agreed.

“It’s to put everyone in the mindset that to win, you have to be dedicated,” Hill said. “Winning in this case is raising as much money as we possibly can. We’re trying to get everyone in the mood to start writing large checks.”

The Washington, D.C., cancer center was named for the Green Bay Packers coach because that’s where he was treated before he died in 1970. Lombardi coached the Redskins for one season, in 1969, the franchise’s first winning season in 14 years, but was hospitalized in the summer of 1970.

“The league and Edward Bennett Williams [who used to own a stake in the team] created the cancer center in his memory,” Tagliabue said. “It’s coming up to 50 years for the Lombardi Cancer Center.”

Also at the event, ESPN reporter Chris Mortensen will receive the NFL Players Association Georgetown Lombardi Award.

This is not the first time Hill has been involved with a cancer charity. Soon after Tim Nesvig, the son of Fox’s longtime ad sales executive Jon Nesvig, died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2003, Hill became closely involved with a fundraiser to support the cancer research center City of Hope. He saw firsthand how important these benefit galas are to cancer research.

“There was this unbelievable emotional moment about three years ago. Dr. Stephen Forman got up at one of our events and said, ‘If Tim Nesvig walked into our center today, he would walk out again in six weeks,’” Hill said. “When you realize that what these guys are doing — they’re detectives, and they are playing hunches. It’s like the more scientists and more researchers you have and the more experiments you do, the more you are likely to come up with a cure.”

John Ourand can be reached at jourand@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Ourand_SBJ.