Afterword
“When placed in command—take charge.”
—NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF
Professional football is indeed a brutal sport, but lest we forget, it is a business. Business in our free enterprise system can also be brutal, with companies fighting fiercely for market share. They do it with a vengeance to drive the competition out of business. NFL teams also go all out to dominate the competition, but never with the intent of putting anyone out of business. NFL franchises need competition to stay in business!
To assure the well-being of its 32 franchises, the NFL places limitations on the total sum of money each team can pay its players. In addition to these salary caps, the draft system favors teams with the poorest records, giving them preference in selecting players. In the selection process, the worst team goes first, then the next-to-worst goes second, and so on until the Super Bowl winner picks the 32nd player in the first round of the draft; the next seven rounds follow the same procedure. The League wants parity so the fans don’t lose interest. Perennially losing franchises have low attendance; lopsided games result in viewers switching channels in the last quarter. In a business where revenues are based on ticket sales and advertising dollars, equally matched teams that play games decided in the final seconds create the most excitement and generate the highest profits.
When Thomas A. Murphy was CEO and chairman of the board of General Motors in the 1970s and early 1980s, the company’s domestic market share was 47 percent. When asked about this, Murphy said, “You can be sure we’ll be competing for every car sold in this country to be a General Motors product.” When he made this statement, Murphy was well aware that antitrust laws prohibited companies from dominating the marketplace, and at the time, GM was the largest company in the world. Referring to these laws, he said, “Many companies in many industries are big, but none were born big. Their size is the consequence of their success. And even if there are only a few large corporations in an industry, that doesn’t lessen the competition. You wouldn’t say that the finals of an Olympic race are less competitive than the Boston Marathon, even though the Boston Marathon has many more contestants.
“Of course I want to win every car sale,” Murphy continued. “It’s like a football team coming off a terrible season that would be satisfied at the start of the season to win half its games. Still the head coach is going to go out and try to win every time because games are played one at a time. It’s the same way we sell a product. You’re not going to get every single customer, but you have to aspire to. You have to go out there with a positive approach, and convince everyone in the organization that, by gosh, the goal is to sell them all.”
Our free enterprise system has antimonopoly laws that place restrictions on companies that dominate a particular industry. The concern being that the elimination of competition is not good for the consumer. Similarly, the NFL is set up to prevent franchises with the deepest pockets from dominating the League. The parity works well. Rarely does a Super Bowl winner receive back-to-back Vince Lombardi Trophies. Salary caps and the draft system work well in preventing Super Bowl repeats. Add the turnover of players due to injury, retirement and trades, and the odds increase even more, demonstrating the difficulty of winning two consecutive Super Bowls. With parities in place, the leadership role of the head coach becomes an increasingly significant factor in determining repeat winning seasons and the long-term success of an NFL franchise. In corporate America too, the success of a company rests on strong leadership. An astute investor invests in people, not products, concepts, or bricks and mortar.
In the competitive National Football League, this year’s Super Bowl winner is not a redundant slam-dunk to be a repeat performer the following year. In fact, only seven of the 37 winners have won back-to-back Super Bowls. No team has ever won three times in a row. In the past five years, three Super Bowl winners failed to qualify for the playoffs. The Denver Broncos, the last team with repeated Super Bowl wins (1997 and ’98), finished last in the ’99 season in the AFC West with a 6-10 record. And after destroying the Oakland Raiders 48-21 on January 26, 2003, the world champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers ended the 2003 season with a 7-9 record. Oakland fared even worse, going 4-12 in 2003.
As a consequence, Oakland’s head coach, Bill Callahan, lost his job following the 2003 season, a position he’s held for only two years. Six other head coaches were also fired, including Dick Jauron of the Chicago Bears. Two years earlier, Jauron with a 13-3 record, had been named NFL Coach of the Year. No matter, he still got the hatchet. Another casualty was Dan Reeves, who was let go by the Atlanta Falcons. Reeves had been named NFL Coach of the Year five previous times (1984, 1989, 1991, 1993, and 1997). Our client, Jim Mora, replaced Reeves in Atlanta. Mora is the son of Jim Mora, a former New Orleans and Indianapolis head coach. At age 42, Mora is one of the youngest NFL head coaches; however, he has been coaching nearly half his life, most recently as the ’49ers’ defensive coordinator. With a healthy Michael Vick at quarterback, one of the most exciting players in professional football, the Falcons promise to be a strong contender in 2004.
When Bob Shook and I started writing this book just prior to the start of the 2003 season, there was talk that after a convincing Super Bowl victory, the Jon Gruden era with the Buccaneers could be the beginning of an NFL dynasty! If not another championship season, the Buccaneers were certainly destined to be around for the postseason games. Unquestionably, Tampa Bay was the favorite among the five NFL teams whose head coaches I represented. Our other preseason contenders were the Philadelphia Eagles, Seattle Seahawks, and Green Bay Packers. And although the Carolina Panthers had had an impressive 7-9 season in 2002, nobody picked them to make the playoffs, let alone play in the Super Bowl.
As proof of how unpredictable professional football is, four of our coaches’ teams made the playoffs, the only exception being the Buccaneers. The Panthers, the long shot of the group, surprised everyone by going to the Super Bowl. In one of the all-time most exciting championship games, the Panthers lost to New England 32-29, when the Patriots’ kicker Adam Vinatieri made a 41-yard field goal with four seconds remaining on the clock.
While all of the five head coaches featured in this book are back for the 2004 season, it’s not so unusual for last year’s winning head coach to find his head on the chopping block one year later. Fickle fans and owners of struggling franchises have little patience with losing head coaches. Likewise in corporate America, shareholders dissatisfied with company leadership are apt to demand a change in management—witness how disgruntled the Walt Disney Company’s shareholders recently tried to oust longtime CEO-chairman Michael Eisner as the entertainment company’s top dog. While Eisner managed to stay on as CEO, he was forced to relinquish his chairmanship.
In conclusion, leadership qualities like vision, trust, and passion are essential in the business arena as well as on the football field. So must a leader possess superior communication skills, both as an orator and a listener. Remember too, teamwork isn’t limited to team sports; it’s equally applicable in the business world. Only via teamwork is it possible for everyone to perform together as a unit at peak performance. This is what successful head coaches do. This is what successful leaders do in every field.
A common denominator of strong leaders is their ability to meet adversity head-on and not be defeated by setbacks. As they say in boxing parlance, a true champion is the fighter who gets back up after being down for the eight-count and wins the fight. Strong leaders also embrace change. They understand that change is constant. So rather than resisting change, they welcome it, realizing that change presents opportunity.
And finally, real leaders do not allow success to go to their head. As Somerset Maugham wisely wrote:
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistical and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary, it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind. Failure makes people bitter and cruel.