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Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Mullin’s departure another symptom of ‘broken’ Spirit
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
If the Atlanta Spirit had written an owners playbook, I imagine it would have begun with an ill-conceived offense (nine receivers, two spokesmen), followed by several misdirection plays, a few banged noggins, maybe a pie fight, all with the intention of someday getting across midfield.
Four years later, I’m not sure what yard line they’re on. Let’s just say that if sports owners are like any other industry, with newbies trying to mimic success stories, they’re not quite being held up as the standard.
On Tuesday, Atlanta Spirit LLC dumped a CEO and a CFO.
I know. First reaction: Don’t care. They’ll eat it up at the Wall Street Journal, and maybe Staples. In terms of tangible product impact, this isn’t quite like the Hawks or Thrashers dumping a center, which is to assume either team has one of those, either.
The fact Bernie Mullin (the outgoing CEO, president and traffic cop for the nine-headed ownership group) and Bill Duffy (bean-counter) are out of work illustrates that this remains sports’ most dysfunctional executive unit.
The owners basically eliminated a layer between themselves and the teams. But Michael Gearon confirmed they also have created a new seven-person committee of relative department heads that reports to the nine-membership group, which runs the two teams, which have a combined zero playoff wins.
So, once again, the Atlanta Spirit math: Nine over seven divided by two equals zero.
I will say this: When the owners come together for a single purpose, they can accomplish things quickly. Mullin and Duffy were erased from the Hawks’ and Thrashers’ Web sites by lunch Tuesday.
Just to remind you: These were supposed to be the good times.
The Thrashers are hosting the NHL All-Star Game this weekend at Philips Arena. But one of the league’s centerpiece events is sitting on a wobbly table, and Atlanta’s hockey team is no more stable. The Thrashers made the playoffs last year. But when they left town for two games in New York starting Tuesday, they had a three-game losing streak, were out of the playoff picture and had only six more points than the worst team in the Eastern Conference despite playing the second-most games.
The Hawks have some nice pieces, but their lineup too often resembles mismatched china, and their record (17-20) illustrates that. They took a three-game losing streak and a 5-11 road record into a five-game trip through the Western Conference (the good conference).
Mullin might have decided to leave Tuesday on his own — this was announced as a mutual decision — but it’s really semantics. His contract was up this summer. It wasn’t going to be renewed. The good news: His headache is about to go away.
Some in the organizations viewed Mullin as an asset, others as a waste of space. Some liked him, some didn’t. Regardless, he was in a relatively impossible situation.
The owners aren’t even on the same side in court. How can they be on the same page? Conference calls must have been like listening to static with the sound cranked up.
The original concept that one man could run the point for owners and deal with the teams’ general managers wasn’t working out, in part because Don Waddell and Billy Knight — they’re the ones who still have jobs — were dealing directly with the owners (primarily Gearon and Bruce Levenson).
Gearon understands why there has been criticism. But he also believes things aren’t as bad as perceived, and they’re getting better.
“The Hawks are coming off the best December they’ve had in 14 years, and they’re competing for a playoff position,” he said. “The Thrashers are fighting for first place in their division. So to characterize things as messed up is an incorrect characterization.”
He then downplayed the exits in the executive offices, saying: “Those changes are related to the business, not the teams. This is seamless.”
Except as we are reminded every day, sports is business. A team’s success starts with a suit behind a desk and filters down to a pair of sneaks in the locker room. There is still too much negative filtering down. Until it ends, the teams will not be going up.
Permalink | Comments (57) | Categories: Hawks / NBA, Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
Here’s to the Flames who never left
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Billboards around town announced their impending arrival. “The Icemen Cometh,” they trumpeted. Hardly original, but a catchy means of advertising Atlanta’s introduction into the National Hockey League. The year was 1972. Nine men of prominence, and wealth, shepherded by Tom Cousins, had bought into it. The Atlanta Flames burst into life in the playpen Cousins had built for them, The Omni.
Opening night, something you could never have imagined this deep in the South, where the NHL had never ventured before, men speeding about at 30 MPH on thin blades of steel, brandishing a stick, burdened by about 10 pounds of protective gear. The Flames lost, of course, to Buffalo, 5-3, but within two years they were in the playoffs. By this time, Bernard (Boom Boom) Geoffrion had struck up a worshipful following, intrigued by his French-Canadian version of our language.
“Da Boom,” as he sometimes referred to himself. “Da Flame,” as he referred to his team. Cliff Fletcher was general manager, and he saw the franchise all the way to its new destination in Calgary. (But that’s another story.) The public relations director — ah, this will catch your eye — was Jim Huber. You know him now as TBS’s sort of version of, well, Walter Cronkite.
Almost as swiftly as they came, they went. In 1980 the franchise was sold and moved to Calgary. There were complications. A new rival league had driven up costs, but that was not the base cause, and we turn here to Dan Bouchard, the goaltender, one of several Flames who had to follow the team to Calgary, but never changed home addresses. And still hasn’t.
“Tom Cousins was an honorable owner,” Bouchard said. “The players had no pension plan, and he said there’s something wrong there. He brought up the need for a pension plan, the other owners turned on him, and it eventually cost him his franchise. That’s why he had to sell it.”
Bouchard has lived 29 years in the Marietta area. He has coached in Switzerland, run a hockey camp in Czechoslovakia, coached in Quebec, but always came back to Marietta. He coached the Life University team seven years, and is reviving that program now. He has a French restaurant in Vinings, his wife has a cleaning business, and while NHL players now have a pension plan, it is but a whisper of major-league baseball and football plans.
There is an all-star lineup of former Flames who, like Bouchard, came to play and never left, except on hockey business: Randy Manery, Eric Vail, Tom Lysiak, Greg Fox, Bobby Simpson, Willie Plett, Tim Ecclestone, and the same may be said of Boom Boom. He later went back to Montreal to coach the Canadiens, but home remained East Cobb, and so it was unto his death about two years ago. And so, too, did that distinctive French-Canadian accent stay with him to the end. It is ironic that he passed away on the day the Canadiens retired his jersey in The Forum. He never made the ceremony, but Marlene and the family represented him. To most of us who were here then, Boom Boom remains the face, rugged and humorous, and the voice of hockey here. He would be 76.
Well, this is another era, and another team and another arena in which the All-Star Game takes the ice this weekend. But our old Flames will be having their time. Thursday afternoon they gather in a Hall of Fame atmosphere, in Tim Ecclestone’s place on Holcomb Bridge Road, used to be Timothy John’s, now shortened to TJ’s Sports Bar, in company with Gordie Howe, and Bobby Hull, Bobby Clarke, Ted Lindsay, Tony Esposito, Dave Schultz, Frank Mahovlich, Johnny Bower, Clark Gillies, Kurt Walker and Pat Quinn, an original Flame who went home to Toronto.
“Our old Flames,” if we may readjust the lyrics of the song of yore. We just didn’t want the memory of them to be crunched in the All-Star pandemonium. Yep, they left under disturbing circumstances, but now you know that Tom Cousins was in pursuit of a just cause. And, that the Flames later won a Stanley Cup, it just wasn’t in Atlanta’s name.
Permalink | Comments (43) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Thrashers / NHL
The Tuesday Countdown - Long playoff drought
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
10: So after seeing the Hawks and Thrashers extend losing streaks and sink (again) in playoff races, it got me wondering: How long has it been since this town witnessed a post-season win?
9: That’s easy. Too long. The last win by one of Atlanta’s four major pro franchises came in game two of the National League divisional playoff series. The Braves defeated Houston, 7-1, on Oct. 6, 2005. They lost the next two games and were eliminated. That win: 838 days ago. If neither Philips Arena tenant make the playoffs this season, that number will bust 1,000 in early July. This has been your Atlanta Sports Century moment.
8: An ESPN talking-head Tuesday morning referred to the Falcons’ coaching search as “disastrous” and “a totally botched operation.” Maybe I missed something. What’s today’s date again?
7: Notwithstanding the bizarre twists in Arthur Blank’s two-headed search it’s not at all uncommon for teams to delay coaching searches so that they can interview an assistant from a Super Bowl team. The fact the Falcons are pushing things back two weeks to talk to New York Giants defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo does not make for a “disaster.” All it makes for is bored individuals in 24-hour news cycles to overstate the issues.
6: Can the Falcons look bad when all of this is over? Sure. They looked bad in dancing with Bill Parcells and Pete Carroll, and in being rejected by Jason Garrett. They can really look really bad if they offer the job to Spagnuolo in two weeks and he says no - or takes the Redskins job instead. But if Arthur Blank and Thomas Dimitroff end up getting the guy they want, it won’t matter what happened before that. And it will still be the first week of February.
5: And why do you need a coach when you don’t have any players to coach yet?
4: Kiefer Sutherland was released from jail Monday. Excuse me, but the guy spent 18 months being tortured in a Chinese prison and has cheated death for seven seasons - I think he can survive 48 hours in a drunk tank.
3: Just wondering: As bye week diversions go, what’s the difference between Tony Romo going to Mexico with his hottie girlfriend and Tom Brady going to New York with his hottie girlfriend? (That’s a shot at deranged Dallas Cowboys fans, not Brady.)
2: Brady was seen walking into Bundchen’s Greenwich Village apartment wearing a walking boot. But fear not. Bill Belichick will come clean in the injury report next week. Brady: questionable, shoulder.
1: Foot or no foot - Patriots in a walk.
Permalink | Comments (34) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
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