ChiefsPlanet - Chiefs NY Times Article on Clark Hunt, Mentions SOC

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/01/sp...hasty-one.html

Chiefs Owner’s Plan Yields Quick Fix (but Not a Hasty One)
By KEN BELSON
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Clark Hunt is used to hearing from fans of the Kansas City Chiefs. After all, he grew up around the team, which his father, Lamar, founded as the Dallas Texans more than half a century ago, and he has been its chairman and chief executive since Lamar died in 2006.

Lamar Hunt loved talking to fans and even took their phone calls at home, to the chagrin of his wife. These days, Clark Hunt spends more time responding to letters and emails offering advice about the team’s roster or the service at Arrowhead Stadium.

Last season, as the team stumbled to a 2-14 finish, the negative mail spiked. A fan group, Save Our Chiefs, urged ticket holders to wear black and flew banners over the stadium calling for the general manager to be fired.

While Hunt is the face of a very public institution, he is reserved and unassuming. Still, rather than duck for cover, Hunt, unbeknown to some of his top advisers, invited several of the most disgruntled season-ticket holders to lunch to hear them out.

“I wanted them to understand that I cared and it was hard for me, too,” he said before the Chiefs defeated the Cleveland Browns on Sunday.

Last year’s bleak season turned downright ghastly on Dec. 1, when linebacker Jovan Belcher shot his girlfriend and then drove to the Chiefs’ training complex and shot himself in front of the team’s coach and general manager.

The murder-suicide rocked Hunt, who in his father’s tradition has tried to cultivate a family feel for the organization.

Taking Action, Fast

With that legacy frayed, Hunt acted quickly. Days after the Chiefs’ season ended, he fired Coach Romeo Crennel and hired Andy Reid, who had been dismissed by the Philadelphia Eagles after a successful run. Hunt then courted John Dorsey, who had worked with Reid in Green Bay, to replace General Manager Scott Pioli, whose tenure was rocky.

Hunt vowed to take a more active role in running the team. He rewrote the organizational chart so Reid would report directly to him, not through the general manager, as had been the custom for decades. He also publicly apologized.

“I am embarrassed by the poor product we gave our fans this season, and I believe we have no choice but to move the franchise in a different direction,” Hunt said in a statement after Crennel’s firing.

The moves quickly paid dividends and have helped Hunt win over skeptics who had accused him of being disengaged. This season, the Chiefs are the last unbeaten team in the N.F.L. at 8-0, their best start in a decade. From 1970 to 2011, teams with a 2-14 record or worse had managed no better than a 5-3 start the next season.

These Chiefs have been driven largely by their defense, which has held teams to 17 points or fewer in every game this season. The offense has relied on running back Jamaal Charles and quarterback Alex Smith, who has reignited his career after losing the starting job with San Francisco last season.

“For the most part, most people seem to be back in love with Clark Hunt,” said Eric Granell, a founder of Save Our Chiefs who recently renamed the group the Chiefs Kingdom. “It might be the best case of selective amnesia imaginable. But now the organization seems to be on solid footing.”

The euphoria is spreading. After fans at the Seattle Seahawks’ CenturyLink Field broke the Chiefs’ record for noisiest stadium, Kansas City fans rallied to take back the title, hitting 137.5 decibels during a game against the Oakland Raiders. To celebrate a recent victory, linebacker Tamba Hali left almost $1,300 as a tip at a steakhouse.

Out of a Shadow

While Chiefs fans are counting their blessings, questions remain for the team, which plays at Buffalo on Sunday. Like their big rivals, the Denver Broncos, the Chiefs have had an easy schedule. And without a flashy offense like Denver’s, they could fade against tougher opponents in the second half.

Still, the revival has been a milestone of sorts for Hunt, 48, the youngest owner in the league. For decades, he lived in the shadow of his pioneering father, who helped found the American Football League, the N.B.A.’s Chicago Bulls, World Championship Tennis and Major League Soccer, at one point owning three M.L.S. clubs.

Groomed to succeed his father, Clark Hunt has grown into his role as steward of the family’s sports empire. Hunt, the grandson of H. L. Hunt, an oil tycoon, was raised in Dallas. He could have coasted through college at Southern Methodist, his father’s alma mater, but instead finished at the top of his class and was a two-time academic all-American in soccer.

With a degree in finance, he worked as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs before returning to Dallas to join the Hunt Sports Group. His wife, Tavia, is a former Miss Kansas USA, and they have three children.

After Lamar Hunt died, N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell tried to integrate Clark Hunt into the league’s management. Like John Mara, who succeeded his father, Wellington, with the Giants, Hunt is part of a generation of owners who grew up around the N.F.L. But for a son taking over for his founder-father, the transition can be tricky.

“Right after my father passed away, it was intimidating because I had been around a lot of meetings but the spotlight was on him,” said Hunt, who prefers to be known as a chairman, not an owner, he said, because he feels the fans own the team.

Goodell played to Hunt’s strengths, appointing him to the international, digital media and commissioner’s executive committees, as well as the powerful finance committee. In 2011, he played a key role in labor talks, briefing owners on the negotiations. When the talks stalled, a group of five owners, including Mara and Hunt, met with five players without their lawyers.

It was there that Hunt tried to get the players to see how they could benefit from reaching a deal.

“Whenever we got to a sticking point, especially from a financial point, he got us to look at it from a different perspective,” said Tony Richardson, a former Chiefs fullback who was at the meetings. “He’s such a mild-mannered guy, when he said something, wow, you’d pay attention. Clark was a steady force, so you put your guns down and relaxed a bit.”

Hunt showed the same analytical ability when he sold the Columbus Crew of M.L.S. for $68 million. His family still owns F.C. Dallas, which Hunt’s younger brother, Dan, runs. Clark Hunt is a fixture in M.L.S., where he sits on four committees.

“He’s not a splashy guy and not an ‘aw, shucks’ guy either, but he knows how to negotiate a business deal,” said Rob Tilliss, who runs Inner Circle Sports, the sports advisory firm that worked on the sale of the Crew.

A Happy Home Again

Finances also played a role in the renovation of Arrowhead Stadium, finished in 2010 for $375 million, one-third of which came from the Hunt family. With roughly 2.3 million people in the greater Kansas City area, the Chiefs play in one of the smaller N.F.L. markets and have some of the cheapest tickets. Building a new stadium would have probably required price increases and perhaps selling personal seat licenses, and it also would have meant abandoning an icon of 1970s architecture, with the stadium’s swooping upper deck and round scoreboards.

“Dad was always conscious of pricing and sports,” Dan Hunt said of his father. “You can’t have tickets, food and parking be too expensive. Dad was a frugal guy, and he saw the benefit of that.”

So the Hunts largely left the bowl alone, instead gutting the club level and concourses and adding a Hall of Honor that includes a tribute to the A.F.L., a Sports Lab to teach children about health and fitness, and an installation featuring the work of local artists. Founder’s Plaza outside includes a statue of Lamar Hunt and plaques detailing his achievements, including his coining the phrase “Super Bowl” and naming the game’s trophy after Vince Lombardi.

The Chiefs are in discussions with potential naming rights partners for the stadium, although Mark Donovan, the team’s president, said the Arrowhead name would remain because it was so identifiable.

“We know we’re on a lot of fans’ bucket lists,” he said.

Although proud of the stadium, Clark Hunt was drained last season, and he hit the reset button as soon as the season ended, Donovan said. Hunt insisted that he be the first person to call Reid to ask him to coach the Chiefs — he reached Reid at his going-away party — and he took part in Reid’s nine-hour interview at an airport in Philadelphia.

“He was the first one at the plate, so that made the decision very easy,” Reid said. “You hear nothing but good things through the coaching fraternity about Kansas City and the organization and the city.”

Given all that transpired last year, Hunt is soaking up the rejuvenated vibes at Arrowhead Stadium. In a gray pinstriped suit, a pale blue shirt and a red tie, he was on the field before kickoff against the Browns, watching the Chiefs players come out of the tunnel. After the victory, he stood by the locker room door to shake their hands.

It was a cloudless and crisp fall day, and before the game, Hunt rode in a golf cart through the parking lot, high-fiving fans and posing for pictures with swarms of revelers.

“Thank you for everything you’ve done,” Hunt told a group of tailgaters in front of a red school bus owned by Warren Rose, a longtime season-ticket holder.

Hunt shed some of his reserve, which for him meant politely declining offers of food and beer. “The credit really goes to Andy and John,” he said of Reid and Dorsey, the G.M. “Hopefully, we’ll keep it rolling.”

As the crowd grew and security edged him toward his golf cart, Hunt gave a pair of field passes for the game to Rose.

“I’ve got your daddy’s initials on my bus,” Rose, 62, told Hunt giddily. “The tailgating is the same, but it’s night and day inside the stadium.”