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Wednesday, September 6, 2006
Blank finds he can’t fix everything
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
All you need to know about Arthur Blank is that he types his e-mails in red. It’s true that red happens to be one of the Falcons’ colors. But I get the feeling even if their uniforms were mauve trimmed in powder blue, Blank wouldn’t be selecting from among pastel fonts.
Like most driven salesmen and self-made billionaires, Blank speaks in red and thinks in red. He commands in red and fully expects his employees to react as if their boxers are filled with coals that glow red. When there was a problem at Home Depot, he either eliminated it himself or he told somebody else to. Yesterday.
It follows that from this point forward, Blank is about to enter the most difficult part of his work year: the games. Because all he can do is watch. When he ran that little global empire, he could cut the price of hammers and move the duct-tape display on Tuesday and hope for a spike in sales on Wednesday. In the NFL, he can eat popcorn.
“It is frustrating,” Blank admitted. “In my days at Home Depot, if things didn’t go well at the store, I’d go in and fix it. You’d do whatever you had to do. You always had the opportunity to go in the next day to make it better. In football, I can still talk to the customer. But the reality is that once the roster is set, all I have to do is sit back and be a cheerleader. If we don’t play well, I can’t go in and fix it. Look at what happened last year. With the safeties we had, we were dead in the water after the first game. Well, maybe not dead, but you know what I mean. The reality is, once the season starts, there’s not much I can do.”
The significance of that is that the Falcons are three days from opening the season in Carolina, and they’re coming off a year far more tumultuous than anybody, certainly the owner, expected.
When a team goes from 6-2 to 2-6, red-typing owners make the most of their offseason. Publicly, Blank’s persona is, “No, you just sit right there, Bob. I’ll get the hot dogs.” Behind office doors, he has employees scrambling to justify their existence.
Understand that this is Blank’s fifth season and he hasn’t won a Super Bowl yet. That hardly qualifies as a professional sports drought, but in his world that’s relatively four years of failure. So he vents.
“Actually, I don’t do that too much,” he said.
Yeah, you do.
“No, really. I don’t. Not too often. But I can be intense.”
Intense?
“Yeah, intense.”
Would you work for you?
“Sure, I think I would. But I admit I’m not always a 10.”
Blank tried to make the most of the offseason, knowing he would be in handcuffs by September. He mandated improvement on defense, even distributing pictures of Ray Nitschke to his staff. He pressured coaches and personnel people. Players were acquired (John Abraham, Chris Crocker, Ashley Lelie, Wayne Gandy), signed (Lawyer Milloy, Grady Jackson), drafted (Jimmy Williams, Jerious Norwood) and kept (Matt Schaub).
Now the doors fly open and Blank is helpless. In the retail world, there was no real offseason, only some more important. So when would Blank reassess and change things?
“Daily,” he said, laughing. “That’s one of the things my wife will tell you — I can be a real pain in the [butt]. I’m never really happy. Never. I’m always thinking of ways we can get better. I’m kind of like a gerbil on a wheel. One day we’re going to win a Super Bowl, and I know I’ll be thinking, ‘What can we do better next season?’”
In the early days of Home Depot, Blank handed out $1 bills in the parking lot to entice people to browse around the store. But if the Falcons have problems this season, it won’t be because nobody’s in the store watching. Everybody will be watching. And if things don’t work out, it’ll be months before the owner can do much about it.
Permalink | Comments (18) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
Wise up: Selig’s brilliant
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Once again, despite more than a few folks trying to place a dunce cap over his head through the years, baseball honcho Bud Selig looks smarter than the rest of us.
Seriously.
Among other things, the commissioner was right about interleague play. Matchups like the Braves versus the Yankees or Red Sox continuously attract larger than normal crowds.
Selig also was right about switching from two to three divisions in each league and adding wild cards to the playoffs.
See the NL, which began Wednesday’s action with the Braves and six other teams sitting no more than five games from the wild card lead. The AL had three teams sitting no more than six games from the wild card lead.
In addition, the NL West remains close between the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants. And the Minnesota Twins and the Chicago White Sox stay within striking distance of AL-central leader Detroit.
That’s a lot of teams involved with a pennant race in early September. Just as Selig envisioned it.
I wonder if he has any lottery numbers.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
