Gretz - Peterson - The Man and the Myths
 

http://www.bobgretz.com/chiefs-footb...the-myths.html

The Carl Peterson Era ended quietly last week with the flip of the calendar to 2009.

For the last 20 years, Peterson has been the biggest name on the Kansas City sports radar screen. He began as the new guy from the East Coast, brought in to lead the Chiefs out of the NFL cellar. He became a hero when he and Marty Schottenheimer turned around the floundering franchise. He eventually became a lightning rod for the media and fans as the Chiefs struggled to stay a contender.

Over two decades there were a lot of victories for the Chiefs, but Peterson would admit there were not enough. He was in the business of trying to win a championship and thus he leaves Arrowhead Stadium proud of a job well done, but ultimately disappointed in the fact the team never reached the ultimate goal.

As the major decision-maker for the franchise, Peterson made a lot of good ones. He also made bad ones. Responsibility for all of them landed on his plate. He always knew that and never ran from the fact.

As it is with anyone who has been in a visible position of power for 20 years there is fact and there is fiction surrounding Peterson and his time in charge of the Chiefs. There are those who will tell you he’s pompous, arrogant and fueled by an out of control ego. There are those that will tell you he’s one of the most caring and compassionate people they’ve ever met, who if he has a fault it’s his extreme loyalty. Imagine that: the worst trait of a man is that he’s loyal? We should all be so lucky as to have that fault.

Many of the myths that surround Peterson have been fueled by the Kansas City media, members of which admitted that they celebrated when his resignation was announced. They should be careful what they wish for because as Peterson rides off into the sunset, they have lost their No. 1 foil. That’s going to force them to work harder, something they hate to do.

They helped create and nurture these myths, with the truths buried under decades of misinformation and lies.

Here are the top five myths surrounding Peterson and his time with the Chiefs.

MYTH #1 – PETERSON’S EGO WAS SO BIG HE DEMANDED THAT HE HAVE ALL THE TITLES – PRESIDENT/GENERAL MANAGER/CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER – OR HE WOULDN’T TAKE THE JOB.

It’s true that Peterson wanted the titles. There was a reason, a very obvious reason and his name was Jack Steadman.

From the time that he helped engineer the firing of Hank Stram as head coach following the 1974 season, Steadman was the acknowledged leader of the organization. With Lamar Hunt living in Dallas and Stram out of the way, Steadman became the face of the franchise among the civic and business leaders of the city and among the rest of the NFL teams. First with the title of general manager and then president (1977), Steadman was the lightning rod of the 1970-80s. Coaches came and coaches were dispatched, but always there was Steadman.

When he fired GM Jim Schaaf during the 1988 season, Steadman announced he was going to step away from the football team. There were many in Kansas City and the league that did not believe that would happen. Steadman’s new title of Chairman of the Board still signaled that he was in control.

That’s why Peterson demanded the titles and the power when he was interviewing with Hunt near the end of 1988. He was counseled by many that his toughest job going into the franchise would be to wrestle full control away from a man who had been part of the operation since 1960 and also directed the Hunt family enterprises in Kansas City away from football.

Those warnings proved correct, as Steadman did not go quietly. There were turf battles over business operations, parking spots and a host of other things. With his titles and the power given him by Hunt, Peterson won those battles and Steadman was eventually dispatched to a downtown Kansas City office, away from the stadium, away from the team and away from having any control of the club.

Eventually, the city and the league learned and accepted that there very definitely was a new man in charge.

MYTH #2 – THE FIVE-YEAR PLAN.

After 20 years, this is the most repeated urban sports legend in Kansas City history. Supposedly, when he was hired Peterson said the team would win a championship in five years. It’s now accepted as fact, repeated by people who weren’t even in the city when Peterson was hired. It’s become the punch line for jokes and rants of all sorts of people.

Just one problem: Peterson never said he had a five-year plan. At his introductory press conference, he never said anything close to that. I was there. I have a tape. I’ve listened to the tape several times. I’ve played the tape backwards and at no time is there a mention of a five-year plan.

Research through the area newspaper reporting at the time also does not turn up a mention of a five-year plan. No one has ever produced tape of any kind mentioning a five-year plan.

It’s fiction that has become fact in the minds of many people, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that if you say something enough, people will believe it to be true.

MYTH #3 – PETERSON DEMANDED THAT HE MAKE EVERY DECISION IN THE FRANCHISE.

Probably tied to the titles and perception of power, there are those who believe that over 20 years, Peterson made every decision at Arrowhead. Understand this: Peterson took responsibility for every decision made by the franchise.

But that’s not how Peterson manages his people or his business. First of all, the biggest decisions over 20 years were done with discussion involving Lamar and Clark Hunt. Peterson always knew he had a boss. Many people mistakenly thought he considered himself the team owner, but that’s not how Peterson felt. The Hunts were part of every major decision. Sometimes, the Hunts made decisions that he did not agree with. But he implemented and supported them once they were made.

Peterson did not live or make decisions in a vacuum. When the Chiefs made decided to trade Jared Allen a year ago, rather than try to sign him, the decision was not made by one man. Not hardly. The decision on Allen involved everyone from Clark Hunt, to Herm Edwards, to Gunther Cunningham. In the end, it landed at the feet of Peterson and he’s never shirked that responsibility.

The Peterson management style has always been this: hire good people and allow them to do their job. That works when talented people are hired and Peterson’s track record in those areas was better than most. There are former Chiefs employees sprinkled through the NFL these days; most got their start with the Peterson-led Chiefs.

In the football operation, Peterson acquiesed to his head coach far more than he battled with him. He allowed his coach to appoint and keep his coaching staff; that was something he granted the coach. He could have kept that power, but having been a coach, Peterson knew how important it was to the team leader to have “his” men around him.

Peterson always worked under this philosophy: as general manager, his job was to give the head coach the tools necessary to win. If the coach thought something was necessary, 99 percent of the time he got it.

When a coach wanted a player, more often than not that player was signed or drafted. For anyone to think Peterson agreed with all those decisions is fantasy. Here’s just one example: after the 2001 season, Dick Vermeil’s defensive coordinator Greg Robinson made it known he didn’t want LB Donnie Edwards, who was going to be a free agent.

Had Peterson been the domineering ruler that he’s been painted, he would have done then what he wanted to do: sign Edwards and fire Robinson. Instead, Vermeil supported his coordinator, so Peterson supported his coach, even though he thought the decision was wrong. Edwards went on to five very productive seasons in San Diego and Robinson left two years later, the defense in a shambles.

The biggest part of being a leader is making decisions. Peterson made plenty of them over 20 years. Many were good decisions; some were bad. Although he took responsibility, he did not make all of them.

MYTH #4 – PETERSON DIDN’T CARE ABOUT WINNING. HE ONLY CARED ABOUT MAKING MONEY.

Peterson cared about winning and making money. That’s what comes with the multiple jobs that he held: football leader and business leader. If the Chiefs didn’t win, they would not make money. If they did not win and make money, he would not keep his jobs very long on either end.

The Chiefs had always made money, but when Peterson took over and turned around the team’s fortunes on the field - leading to more people in the stands - revenues and profits hit levels that had never before been seen by the franchise. Once a business sees those levels go up, it never wants to see them go down. They never did with the Chiefs, or at least they did not until the 2008 season.

Anybody who has ever seen Peterson in the moments after a tough loss would know how much winning means to him. He cared deeply about the outcome of games and seasons. Years ago, Marty Schottenheimer instituted what he called the “Midnight Rule.” It was simply this: enjoy or mourn the outcome of a game until midnight, and then move on. Peterson always violated that rule after a loss, sometimes carrying his unhappiness into Wednesday or Thursday.

First and foremost in Peterson’s soul, he’s a football coach. For a football coach, there’s nothing more important than winning and nothing more disappointing than losing.

MYTH #5 – PETERSON TRIED TO GET PEOPLE IN THE MEDIA WHO CRITICIZED HIM.

There’s no question that Peterson and the Kansas City media never developed much of a relationship. There are reasons for that.

The biggest came on December 23, 1990, when the Kansas City Star reported on page one of the Sunday newspaper that Peterson’s weekly radio show was held in a restaurant owned and operated by a man who admitted to betting on pro football games.

The basics of the story were true. The Carl Peterson Show was held that year at Costello’s Greenhouse Restaurant on Ward Parkway in south Kansas City and broadcast on KCFX-FM. The owner Vince Costello, a former NFL player and assistant coach, had been granted immunity in a Kansas City trial and he testified that he bet on NFL games.

The inference of the story was clear: Peterson was consorting with a known gambler and one that wagered on NFL games. There’s nothing in the world of sports that creates questions of credibility more than association with gambling.

Lost in the Star’s story was the fact that Peterson did not pick the restaurant to host the show. The radio station made that decision. Lost in the story was that Peterson’s relationship with Costello was a “Hi, how are you?” type deal; they were not friends or acquaintances in any way. If Peterson had known about Costello’s testimony, he would have moved the show immediately.

Peterson may have said those things, but the story appeared without any comment from him. The newspaper said he was unavailable. In fact, the night before the story appeared, the Star had three reporters staying in the same hotel as the Chiefs before a road game in San Diego. Peterson was available; the Star chose not to take the luster off its story. Saying Peterson was unavailable made the story seem more sinister than the reality of the facts he would have presented.

When the story appeared, Peterson was irate. He became livid when the Associated Press in Kansas City picked up the story and distributed it nationwide, again without comments from him. A Monday phone call from his mother in Long Beach about the story was the final straw.

It’s safe to say from that point on, Peterson did not trust the Kansas City Star in any fashion and that relationship was never repaired.

There’s something else that Peterson and his organization did that caused anger within the media: they called them on their mistakes and expressed their displeasure with the tone of stories. When misinformation appeared, they called the reporters and news operations. If they didn’t like a story, they made their displeasure known.

In the eyes of the media, this type of attitude was an attempt to censor, stifle and control. How dare they question our attitudes and comments? There were delusionary types who actually brought the First Amendment into the discussion.

In general the media has always had a problem - sports talk radio is the worst offender – in that they believe they are allowed to have an opinion about administrators, coaches and athletes, but those people are not allowed to have an opinion about the abilities, veracity and work ethic of those in the media.

Turns out that Peterson and the Chiefs were well ahead of the curve when it came to questioning the media. The public has followed and thus we have newspapers like the Kansas City Star bleeding money and slicing employees left and right. Thus, we have radio and televisions stations slashing payrolls and coverage. Thanks to the availability and diversity of the Internet, the public has learned their local outlets are frequently out of step, biased and mistake-prone. They’ve found other avenues of finding informed opinion, rather than columns and commentary based on personal agendas.

Had Peterson kissed more media behinds, would it have made a difference? Probably not, but then that would not have been Carl Peterson. From the day he took over until the day he left, there were certain things that did not change with him. Those foundations of the man were and remain unshaken.

Carl Peterson remained loyal to himself, and that’s no myth.

To semi-quote the bleacher bum from Major League:

WHO GIVES A SHIT, HE'S GONE.

And the Chiefs were paying this man...why?

It doesn't sound like Myth #1 is a myth at all. Sounds like a statement of fact.

Its hard to understand what Gretz is saying with Pertersons' nutsack in his mouth.

ROFL

my thoughts exactly

MYTH- Carl Peterson deserved to keep his job for the past decade

This.

(You're practically begging for it.)

Fixed it.

:deevee:grob:bang:

ROFL

Even if every single word of that article were true, Carl Peterson would still be an incompetent failure of a GM that should have been canned over a decade ago.

Rufus Dawes approves this message.

Because a story can not possibly be true or have merit unless it originates from the official web site or other select mouthpieces of the organization.

And now the media is cutting jobs because they dared question the great and all powerful Carl Peterson.

Yeah that passage was pretty snarky. If anything Whitlock and JoPo are as popular as ever.

I appreciate the WPI shoutout.

I still think Peterson made a "5 Year Plan" comment or something similiar.....


How did it get started then?

Where was Nick Athan in 1988?

Bob "Sausage Fingers" Gretz really has it in for the KC Star, doesn't he? A little bitter about getting shitcanned?

That "article" has so many internal contradictions I don't even know where to start....

Dear Lord Gretz he's gone. :shake:

wow...profound

kc media at its best

This entire article is just a message to the new GM that Gretz will hug his root too, just like Carl.

Evidently, Gretz knows he's done here, and wants to follow Carl to Miami.

what a disgusting piece of ass kissing

gretz is a hack of the highest order..not one mention of the last 15 years of failure?

you fat diseased pig

Carl does deserve credit for that. Seriously. Steadman makes Carl look like a football genius.

Whitlock was wrong - the tongue baths are ongoing. LMAO

bobgretz...its classless and deranged to publicly stick your tongue in the anus of a man whose just been fired.

Carl should be happy that he didn't find out about it on chiefsplanet.

so, Gretz will be moving on to Miami, then?

Gretz's fatass would die from the heat in Miami.

It's just hilarious the lengths someone will go to brown-nose. 15 years without a playoff win, and the way that fat ****er carries on, you'd think Carl won the SB 3 times over.

**** off and die Gretz.

Interestingly enough, back in the "Classless and deranged" greg-ribinson fiasco....I think one of my rants or emails to him Said that when his fat ass was playing shuffleboard in Miami...I'd still be a Chiefs fan, which gives me plenty of room for my opinion.

Gretz may want to talk to the folks at KCTV 5 about Peterson going after the media for stories he didn't like -- he basically banned them from the sidelines for a few years. He would also shift people around in the press box as a form of punishment, moving local guys who didn't write glowing coverage to the back so they could barely see anything.

And while I don't have a tape, I'm gonna have to do some digging on the 5-year plan issue -- I'm fairly sure it didn't orginate out of thin air. It may not have been at the introductory press conference (a nifty little "get out of dumbassery free" card by Gretz), but Peterson did say something to that effect during his first year.

Other than that, it'll be nice when Gretz begins servicing Peterson in a different city -- we're running out of Carmex around here ...

MM
~~:shake:

this stood out for me

He was in the business of trying to win a championship and thus he leaves Arrowhead Stadium proud of a job well done, but ultimately disappointed in the fact the team never reached the ultimate goal.

WIN A CHAMPIONSHIP = FAIL

fail, carl

carl, you've failed

carl, you are a failure

FAIL

I don't know why Gretz just doesn't propose to Carl and get it over for ****s sake.

Disgusting.

Yea, as i mentioned earlier, im almost positive he said something or something very similiar.

IIRC, the "5 year plan" statement was unveiled when Carl hired Marty to be the HC in early 1989. Carl was hired by Lamar after the 1988 season ended and when Marty was unexpectedly let go by the Browns after losing the Wild Card to the Oilers, Chiefs swooped in on Marty right away.

I'm positive at Marty's intro press conference was where you got the "5 year plan" remark... either by Carl or Marty or possibly both. I also remember another quote from the press conference being "The goal every year is to compete for the championship and win a Super Bowl".

Either way, Marty & Carl had 10 years to get it done and although they were close to fulfilling that goal, they didn't. In the 10 years without Marty, Carl didn't even come close.

Can't believe the rimjob Gretz is STILL giving Carl :mad:

Hope Clark cleanses the organization completely when all is said and done.

The sooner... the better

It started somewhere. I honestly can't believe it's completely fabricated. If you Google "five year plan" Carl Peterson, you get pages upon pages of articles. However, no mention of where it originated.

But, it had to of started somewhere because Peterson NEVER refuted it.

He ran the Hunt's other KC businesses like Worlds of Fun.

Somebody tell him to eat a bag of dicks. I'm sure he wouldn't have any trouble doing it.

are theh articles from Gretz from a blog?


If so, why in the sam hell would people visit it? Sooner or later when his blog count = 20 ( or something equally as pathetic) he'll move on to a job - hopefully in a different city.

Given the hilarity of this particular article, I can see why it's posted.

I could be wrong but I think Gretz's blog was a pre-emptive move to give him a reason to stay in KC if the Chiefs dump him from the website. I don't know why the Chiefs wouldn't give him a press credential.

I hated Carl the moment he drafted Todd Blackledge...the 5 year plan stuff is BS, but there's no putting that genie back in the bottle.

No Superbowl means the fans can make up whatever stuff they want about Peterson.

Gretz should know that.

The most pathetic part of this propaganda piece from Dictator Carl's personal enema is some of the feedback responses to the article:

January 5, 2009 - Noel says:
Thanks, Bob Gretz. Well done. It’s a lonely job at the top. One usually gets all the blame and none of the glory, not to mention attacks from the arrogant members of the media.

January 5, 2009 - Mark Broski says:
Bob,

Thanks for this fair assessment of Carl Peterson. Amid all the retrospectives on Carl, no one has mentioned that he is the one who ripped up the turf at Arrowhead and put in natural grass. Now that may not seem like a big deal to many people, but it was to me. For that, Carl, Thank You!

Carl has never had fair treatment from the KC media, and sort of like George Bush, he didn’t really care. But I think history, especially when the new Arrowhead appears, will show that there was much to appreciate in this man.

While I’m at it, thank you Bob for not stooping to Jason Whitlock’s level in your comments. We all know he has been very unfair to you and I believe you have handled his childish insults with a great deal of class.

January 5, 2009 - ILChiefsFan says:
Re Whitlock: he is a braying ass. He is the perfect embodiment of the narcissism, hubris, ignorance, and nastiness that characterize the modern sports media celebrity.

As Bob noted about the sports media in general, this is a guy who never has to answer for the things he gets wrong. If he did he’d be lucky to be writing obits for some rural county paper. All he has to do to keep his cushy job is stir the pot.

And it’s hilarious how Whitlock gets all pissy about Peterson not talking to the “legitimate” media, and in the very next sentence says it doesn’t matter what Peterson has to say. Those grapes tasting a little sour, Big Sexy?

January 5, 2009 - Matt Hoover says:
It’s nice to know that there are still some people in the media who will write honorably. Thanks for the article, Bob.

Dictator Carl didn't draft Blackledge... Steadman did.

ROFL

I for one, remember hearing it. Maybe it was a reporter commenting as to the subject and message of the speech, but I said to myself at the time, "holy shit, win a Super Bowl? How about just giving us a winning season!"

ROFL Good to see you around here Titus!

n00b!

Thank you. Im almost positive your right. Too bad nobody has video of it.

Either way, Gretz has an out, because he said it was never mentioned at Peterson "intoductory press conference" ROFL

What a complete D-bag Gretz is.

This actually is stated as fact on kcchiefs.com and the Star

<object height="344" width="425">Thanks Bob....




<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/qmAdKbNEzkw&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></object>