Arrowhead anxiety: Turnover off the field causes concern

[Dr. Gigglepants]

Secrecy, intimidation, fear and a watchful eye have become hallmarks of working for the Chiefs, say some current and former employees.

BY KENT BABB THE KANSAS CITY STAR

Todd Haley walked into the public relations office at Chiefs headquarters on a Thursday in early December. Four days before he was fired as the team’s coach, he wanted to talk about what life was like inside this organization. But he didn’t know who else might be listening.

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http://www.kansascity.com/2012/01/14...nover-off.html

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This article goes into a lot of detail on the changes that came into effect with the Pioli regime. Sounds like a shitty ass place to work now.

[Mr. Laz]

Originally Posted by O.city

I think he saw what this franchise was and what it had personel wise.

He knew Cassel could come in a be a good leader, outspoken, and consistent while the change was occuring.

However, I don't understand why you give him such a big contract.

bingo

maybe he thought it sucked so badly that it would take as long as the cassel contract to get better.

either way it was a bad decision ... i just hope he realizes and tries to change it.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by Laz

reading fail

although you are being pretty lame

OK, if it's reading fail, explain this statement further:

i know ... until the Chiefs win in the playoffs and gives them no choice or Cassel is gone it will be one lame ass reason after another.

I could care less whether or not you think I'm being lame. Pioli fired Haley so he's alright in your eyes. Completely myopic.

[The Bad Guy]

Originally Posted by DRU

He was talking about one extreme (the negative) and I was talking about the other (the positive). I think we all know we'll probably fall somewhere in the middle.

If you're so unhappy with this organization, why do you continue to support it? You may be talking shit on it, but you're still supporting it with your emotions and the fact that you buy and resell tix all the time, especially considering you usually lose money on them.

Maybe you've already said this in another thread, but are you officially giving up your tix?

Yes, I gave up my tickets. I told them as long as Matt Cassel was here, I had no reason to support the team with season tickets.

You act like it's so easy to just shut off your loyalties as a fan. It's not. I'm also not a programmed robot that's going to embrace everything the Chiefs do as gospel.

The team drives me crazy, I hate the GM, but this is the team I grew up watching and have supposed for 23 years. I'm not someone who just starts following another team. I'm loyal to a fault, but I'm not blinded by this bullshit.

Though, we won't land somewhere in the middle. We land near the negative side just about every year.

[The Bad Guy]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

No but he's also said he doesn't like to part with draft picks, yet he did so for Cassel. He said he wants to build slowly, through the draft, yet he traded for Cassel and gave him a handsome contract, even though Cassel was 27 years old and had never played a down for the Chiefs.

There's a lot of examples if you get down to it.

Yep. There are.

I don't care how open he's been, saying you're going to hire one type of coach because of familiarity is how this team got to be so shitty under Carl.

The same stuff is happening over, and over, and over again.

He's literally excluding countless choices because they didn't have some seven degrees of separation from Bill Parcells.

[O.city]

Bad Guy, have you heard anything about this column coming out from the inside. Or more what is the feeling of the inside about this?

[Mr. Laz]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

OK, if it's reading fail, explain this statement further:

I could care less whether or not you think I'm being lame. Pioli fired Haley so he's alright in your eyes. Completely myopic.

i said 'it will be one lame ass reason after another'

do you really need me to give you an grammar lesson about how 'lame ass' is an adjective describing the 'reasons'?

pretty sad since my grammar sucks

I also never said that everything Pioli does is 'alright'

a few posts ago i addressed his mistakes and how i hope it's not a 'flaw' in the way Pioli is going to do things. I also said i hope the Pioli doesn't have to fail here in KC before he learns to be flexible etc etc.

I'm just not ready to cry every day in every thread about the same thing over and over again. Go back and search your posts recently ... how many can basically be summed up with "cassel sucks, damnit pioli!"? What, like 80%? They aren't the constructive,discussion type posts either ... they are the whiny, passive-aggressive-WTF-is-the-point, type posts. You're better than this.

[The Bad Guy]

Originally Posted by O.city

Bad Guy, have you heard anything about this column coming out from the inside. Or more what is the feeling of the inside about this?

Nothing.

I've sent 2 emails to this guy and he hasn't replied, which is odd considering I normally get a response a few hours later.

[Dave Lane]

If 10% of this is true we are ****ed.

[O.city]

Originally Posted by The Bad Guy

Nothing.

I've sent 2 emails to this guy and he hasn't replied, which is odd considering I normally get a response a few hours later.

Maybe Piolis goons got to him with the phone and email tapping.

[Mr. Laz]

Originally Posted by Dave Lane

If 10% of this is true we are ****ed.

why?

[Titty Meat]

Originally Posted by The Bad Guy

Nothing.

I've sent 2 emails to this guy and he hasn't replied, which is odd considering I normally get a response a few hours later.

They got his shit tapped!

[Brock]

Originally Posted by oldman

Yes, the company does have the right to monitor emails sent from company terminals or using the company's internet connection. This is usually done with the excuse that you may receive a virus, etc. Yes, the company does have the right to monitor your internet usage. This is usually done under the "safe workplace" excuse.

It isn't "usually done" for any reason other than when you're on company property, using the company network, on company time, they can do whatever they want. It's a condition of your employment.

[DRU]

Originally Posted by The Bad Guy

Yes, I gave up my tickets. I told them as long as Matt Cassel was here, I had no reason to support the team with season tickets.

You act like it's so easy to just shut off your loyalties as a fan. It's not. I'm also not a programmed robot that's going to embrace everything the Chiefs do as gospel.

The team drives me crazy, I hate the GM, but this is the team I grew up watching and have supposed for 23 years. I'm not someone who just starts following another team. I'm loyal to a fault, but I'm not blinded by this bullshit.

Though, we won't land somewhere in the middle. We land near the negative side just about every year.

That's not how I act at all. I'm a born and raised fan of 25 years, so believe me, I know exactly how you feel.

I still enjoy Arrowhead stadium when it's rockin, though, and we're not far from it. I'm not going to give up my tix and complain about it all the time. It's not worth it to do that.

I enjoy conversations with other fans about this team, sharing opinions about what should happen, discussing the facts about what actually does happen, and seeing it how it all plays out on the field.

Pioli has not done that bad of a job if we really step back and look at things. He pulled the trigger on a QB when he first got here because yes, he does know the QB is important. Unfortunately, it didn't work out the way he planned. Because of that, though, he's all we've got right now.

They're making more changes to try and right some wrongs. I hope just as much as anybody that QB is a position they target heavily one way or another.

Again, though, this is where all the bitterness is. The QB situation. Not the business operations. We're just looking for reasons to bitch and moan, and Babb gave it to us.

[DRU]

Originally Posted by Laz

I'm just not ready to cry every day in every thread about the same thing over and over again. Go back and search your posts recently ... how many can basically be summed up with "cassel sucks, damnit pioli!"? What, like 80%? They aren't the constructive,discussion type posts either ... they are the whiny, passive-aggressive-WTF-is-the-point, type posts. You're better than this.

Exactly.

[chiefzilla1501]

Originally Posted by Brock

Yeah, either that or Haley is a slightly unbalanced person who thinks the world is out to get him.

In this season, the Chiefs, which have an incredibly tight-lipped organization, leaked out two bits of information about Haley being at a Lil Wayne concert. And secondly, "going out" the night before a game. The second incident, if you believe Danny Parkins, was strange in the way the source tried to pretend like he accidentally made a mistake in calling the wrong person. It seems very likely that the Chiefs' front office was purposely trying to sabotage Haley's reputation to set him up to be fired. So in that case, he was paranoid about the right stuff. And it also makes you question... how did the team know what he was doing outside of work?

And again, it's very possible he was paranoid because the Chiefs were in fact monitoring more than they should have. Not illegally, just unethically. What we know right now for sure is that Pioli, the guy being accused, has a very bad history of taping things he's not supposed to be even when he knows it's outside the rules (Spygate). We're hearing that Pioli was requesting month old e-mails and call logs to use as damning evidence against Denny Thum. And what we're hearing is a ton of smoke that employees, not just Haley, were all under constant paranoia that everything they did and said was being monitored.

Here's what I'm guessing happened. And again, this is only an educated guess. My guess is that Haley had, over 3 years, become very, very careful about what he talked about where. I bet that despite being careful, he still found that the team somehow knew what he was up to. And I imagine that became more concerning when that included his private life too. While I doubt his cell phone was tampered with, I wouldn't be surprised if his conversations on company grounds were all heavily monitoried and a lot moreso than anyone else on the team. There is plenty of fact and tons of smoke in this story that leads you to believe that some of that paranoia may have been justified and that he wasn't the only one.