Sunday, January 25, 2009
Sports, In this Issue..., Q&A
King Arthur
Atlanta’s favorite billionaire discusses the Falcons, the future and Michael Vick
BY KEVIN FOREST MOREAU
Following a dismal 2007 (4-12) season in which their star player was jailed on dogfighting charges and their rookie head coach bolted with three games left to play, the Atlanta Falcons’ remarkable rebound is already the stuff of, if not legend, then certainly an inspirational movie. With a new general manager (Thomas Dimitroff), a new head coach (Associated Press Coach of the Year Mike Smith) and a new quarterback (Offensive Rookie of the Year Matt Ryan), the team surged to an improbable 11-5 record and a playoff berth. Even getting knocked out in the first playoff round by the Super Bowl-bound Arizona Cardinals hasn’t dimmed most fans’ enthusiasm for the newly energized club.
That pride, though, is tempered with a cautious eye on the future, a perspective shared by the team’s owner. More than anyone, Arthur Blank knows that the Falcons, as a team and an organization, have much more to accomplish, both on the field (shoring up the defense, improving on last year’s record) and off: Blank continues to push for a new football stadium, the better to lure future Super Bowls to Atlanta (although that didn’t stop him from pouring some $30 million into renovations to the Georgia Dome—a building he doesn’t own).
The Sunday Paper sat down with Blank at his plush Blank Family Offices in Buckhead recently for a wide-ranging discussion of the Falcons’ comeback year, their plans for the future and Blank’s status in the community.
Q First of all, congratulations on an exciting year. Walk us through the season a little bit. At what point did you realize this team was going to defy expectations?
You know, I was very optimistic coming out of free agency and the draft that we had done a really good job, but of course, you don’t really know until you get the players out on the field. You know, even during the springtime, running around with pads, and without pads, it’s really hard to tell. But once we went through all the spring practices with the draft picks, the quarterback, the tackle, the linebacker and obviously Michael Turner, and got into training camp and through training camp, I started to see a chemistry come together with the team. The coaches with themselves, the coaches with the players; the relationships were building. I thought we would be a better team than a lot of people had anticipated for us. How that would play out in number of victories, I obviously didn’t know, and I don’t think anybody expected 11 victories. Anybody who tells you they did—I was with one of our board members Andy Young at the MLK Celebration, you know, we do that little thing where they all vote? Andy said he put down 11 victories on his thing. I said, “You know, Andy, I don’t think you did. I’m not gonna challenge a minister, but I need to go back and look at that.” [Laughs.] In any event, I think we’re really thrilled to see what we came out with. I told people in the fall, I think this team’s gonna play with energy, it’s gonna play with enthusiasm, our confidence in our young players, the quality of the coaching staff I think is outstanding, and not just the head coach but the coordinators, the position coaches, a lot of NFL experience, 188 years, five of these guys played positions before in the NFL, so there was a very experienced staff and they knew what to do. And I think our players were so hungry for a change in the culture and a change from what happened last year that given the approach that Smitty [Head Coach Mike Smith] had taken with them in terms of communication, being intense yet being open and having really good communication with them, and you know they just really felt that was something they felt really good about. So the jolt of all that, I went into the season feeling, you know … pretty good. Not knowing 11, and not anticipating 11 victories, that’s for sure.
How much did media predictions—like Sports Illustrated saying you’d win one game—affect you?
It just got me more pissed off. It gets me angry. You know, I mean, those are things that—I don’t get angry at the person, but I’m a very competitive person. So I don’t like to lose at anything. Certainly not when we’re playing football games, and as much is at stake, and our coaches and players feel that way as well. You know, I think our team, although we didn’t talk about it, the players didn’t talk about it, the coaches didn’t talk about it, I didn’t talk about it with them, Thomas Dimitroff our GM—we didn’t talk about it as a group, but I think everybody read everything, everybody knew what was being written, and everybody was pretty angry about it, and felt, well, we’re gonna show them. Well, what would that mean? Instead of two victories, it might mean five or six, maybe seven, or eight and eight.
Looking back on how far you did come this year, given that you had a new team, pretty much a new organization, and given that it would be improbable for that group to go all the way to the Super Bowl in the first year, are you disappointed?
I’m not disappointed. The only thing I’m disappointed in, Kevin—I think we had a great season. We didn’t play well against the Cardinals. And I think that was disappointing. If we had put our best foot forward and played really well, and lost the game, I’d feel better about it than I do. And I think our coach feels that way and I think our general manager feels that way. There were a lot of reasons, and a lot of which, you’ve gotta give the Cardinals credit for, and you’ve gotta give their fans credit for creating a very difficult environment to play well in. So kudos to them for all of those reasons. We just didn’t play as well as we had been playing on that day.
But you’ve gotta look at it in terms of the overall season. We took a tremendous step forward, and we obviously feel good about our future. And really, what you hope for—I was talking to a general manager today with another team this morning about something else, I said really what you have to aspire to in the NFL because the league works real hard at creating an opportunity for parity, an opportunity to be competitive, for a team to go from last to first through free agency, the draft and the way the draft works, the best team they get to pick last, and the worst team picks first. So the system is set up to allow you to kind of change things fairly rapidly. The teams I admire most are teams like New England, didn’t make the playoffs but [had] 11 victories this year without having Tom Brady and having a backup quarterback having a wonderful year, and teams like the Eagles that continue to be a very competitive team, and teams like the Steelers that are in the playoffs, that continue to be generally every year to be a very competitive team. And that’s really what the aspiration is, to have a team that’s important in the National Football League every year. Doesn’t mean you’re gonna win your championship, it doesn’t necessarily mean the Super Bowl, but it does mean you’re gonna get into the playoffs, hopefully, more often than not. And if you get in the playoffs, more often than not, you know, it’s a single-game elimination, and any team can get to the Super Bowl. You see it—home-field advantage used to mean a lot, the last two years, it has not meant a whole lot. That’ll probably change again, because home-field advantage over time will mean a lot. But it goes to show you that a variety of things can take place.
Do you feel, though, given everything that had happened, that where you got in the playoffs was as much as you could have realistically hoped for?
No. I think we could have—we definitely aspired to go further and I think we’re disappointed we didn’t go further. That doesn’t mean we were counting on winning the Super Bowl. You might look at an organization like the Colts and say, "Well, they didn’t get in the playoffs." Rather, they got bounced out, I should say, in the first weekend—and they had won nine games in a row, a 12-4 record, Peyton Manning MVP of the League, so they probably would feel more disappointment than we would feel. Having said that, we felt that we could go to Arizona and compete and come out with a win, and obviously we didn’t do that. And didn’t play our best. So there’s a certain disappointment in that.
What do you see as the most vital moves that your GM and the organization have to make in the draft and in the offseason?
Well, I think the first move has nothing to do with free agency or the draft. It has to do with keeping our coaching staff intact, and it looks like through the coaching carousel that’s taking place right now that we will be able to keep our coaches intact. That’s terribly important, because one of the things that teams who win do in the NFL is that they keep their organizations intact, usually for long periods of time. For instance New England this year is going to be challenged, because they’ve now lost their general manager, they’ve lost their offensive coordinator—the biggest changes they’ve had since 2004 on the football side. So it’s going to be difficult for them to recover from that. They will, because they’ve got a good organization, but it won’t be easy. So I think that is one major step for us. And then obviously, Thomas doing this a second year and having his own personnel department now, structuring it the way he wants to work, because he came into a situation last year and he kept a lot of people, sorted out some this year, put in his own system this year, etc., so he feels better I think about their ability to working during free agency and work during the draft.
So you know I think the focus will be in free agency. I don’t think we’re looking for a Michael Turner kind of player in free agency, but we’ll be active in free agency as appropriate. And we’ll certainly be looking at the right players during the draft. I would say without spilling any beans that probably there’ll be much more orientation this year on the defensive side of the ball in free agency and draft than there was last year. I think that would be obvious to most students of the game, certainly most students of our roster.
Let me switch gears for a second and talk about Arena Football taking the year off.
I think it’s a disappointing yet hopeful decision. The Arena League, from a structural standpoint, in terms of the basic club model and the league model, really wasn’t working for all but a couple of the teams left in the league. Really, I would say for basically all of the teams in the league. So that model really had to be fixed. Now, you know, it’s hard to fix the tires on a car that’s going 20 miles an hour. So you need to stop the car at some point and say, "Listen, fix the tires, let’s get a new set of tires on this thing, we can go forward from here."
My own disappointment is that we’re not playing this year. We had the second-best record in the AFL since I acquired the team through four seasons, second only to the team in Dallas. We’ve been to the playoffs every year, competed for the Arena Bowl one year, and we have a wonderful, great coach, great coaching staff and great players. So I’m disappointed we couldn’t continue that. On the other hand, long-term, for the health of the league, we had to have a different structure than we currently have. So I think it was important to get that fixed. The League is working as hard as they can day and night now with the players association for the AFL, working out a model that makes sense there, a single-ending league model that makes sense where the teams are collectively doing a variety of what I call back-office things that they can do together more efficiently than separately. So I think what will come out of it will be an organization that will be a lot healthier.
Obviously the Force, as you mentioned, is a good product.
The product’s a great product. It always amazes me why people who came [to a game] once wouldn’t come back immediately, because I think the value is always there in terms of the price of the ticket, it’s about as much as going to a movie today. And if you throw in candy and popcorn and drinks, you’re probably over the price. It’s very exciting, it’s high-scoring, most of the games are decided in the last minute or two. It’s up and back, up and back, it’s like football on steroids, and for young folks particularly, who really enjoy that kind of fast action, playing PlayStation or Xbox or whatever, it’s great. And these are young men that compete very aggressively and they’re great athletes.
But in terms of the restructuring this year, you’re pretty confident that the product will come out better on the other end?
Well, I think the product on the field is probably not gonna change much; I mean, every year they went through certain changes in terms of the rules of the game. They really were not, quote, “the problem.” But I think the model, the financial model, the economic model, how the league was structured, the relationship with the players and all that, needs to change. And I think that will change coming out of this year.
A lot of Atlanta sports fans look to you as a model of what they want in a franchise ownership situation in terms of this city: Don’t sell to a faceless corporation, don’t sell to a committee. Have one guy who makes the decisions. It’s his money on the line. The buck stops here. Do you agree with that ownership philosophy?
I do, and I think Kevin, it doesn’t have to be me particularly, but I like that model. Because I think people know my phone number, they know where I live, they can reach me, you can come here and talk to me. I don’t look over my shoulder and say, “Well, I gotta talk to four other people and I’ll get back to you regarding a decision, or I have to check with my shareholders, I’ve gotta look at my earnings projections for next quarter.” An owner doesn’t have to do that. When it’s an individual or a family, or somebody that is the principal owner and has that responsibility, it’s one of the beauties when you go into the NFL meetings, the owner’s meetings, there’s 32 men and women in the room who have the authority to vote and make a decision on the spot. That’s very encouraging, as opposed to a lot of organizations where they’re thinking about, even though they may have the authority, well, I’ve gotta think about this agenda and that agenda, etc. They can pretty much speak for themselves in terms of what is right for their family and their financial interests, as well as obviously what’s right for the brand and the league they represent. So I just think that model makes the most sense. It’s not being critical of what they allow in baseball or I’m not even sure what the rules are in basketball…
The situation with the Atlanta Spirit would seem to indicate that ownership by committee is allowed.
It’s very difficult. Even in the NFL when you have that, and a lot of owners in the NFL represent a number of people, they may be a principal owner with a minimum of 30 percent [ownership]—the other owners, they don’t vote, there’s one person—say it’s Kevin. Kevin, you come to the meetings, you have full authority to vote, you don’t have to check with anybody, all limited partners sign waivers on that, they can’t come back and say "Kevin, you didn’t do the right thing. How come you didn't do this or didn't do that?" They can’t do any of that. All of that makes the business of running the league I think more effective, and more efficient as well.
Another thing about individual owners is that they’re able to be much more out there as a public face as well. Other owners, like Ted Turner when he owned the Braves, or Jerry Jones in Dallas, also by virtue of that role, whether they seek it or not, tend to take on a role in the community.
I think that role is real. You know Pat Bowlen, the owner of the Denver Broncos? Denver this year went through a coaching change, they let Mike Shanahan go, who was a fine coach and had been head coach there for I think 14 years and coaching for 21 years. And at Pat’s press conference, it was a very emotional press conference, he was crying, the coach was crying, it was a difficult situation. At the end of the day, Pat said, you know what, I have responsibility to make the decision. I have to represent myself and our family and what I think is the right thing to do and it’s very painful but I own the team, and I have to make this decision. I do think for our stakeholders, our fans in this case, it’s very important for them to know because you might have a coach come and go, you might have a player come and go. You want to know that the owner is going to be held accountable for what’s happening in that franchise, what’s happening on that team. Not that he’s picking the players or anything of that nature, but he’s picking the people that are making those decisions and he can be held accountable for that. I think that’s very important.
What do you see as your role in this community? And as a sideline to that, have you ever considered going into politics?
No [laughs]. I have tremendous respect for what politicians do, I certainly support a number of them and appreciate their roles and have relationships with folks on both sides of the aisle. But you have to have the right kind of personality for it. I don’t think it’s what I’m cut out to be. That’s not meant as a criticism, it’s just that there are things that I can do well, and they probably fall more in the arena of what I’m doing than being a politician.
As an NFL team owner, as a philanthropist, do you see yourself as a leader of the Atlanta community?
Well, I think, you know, hopefully my actions have earned me the position of being a community leader, because of my experience through Home Depot, community involvement through our foundation, what we’ve done with our football team—hopefully people will view me that way, not because I’ve been anointed or anything, but because I’ve earned it. But I come to work every day, Kevin, with the attitude that I have to get better, and that our organizations have to get better, and we have to do more. We have to figure out ways through our football team to be more connected to the community, have a better game-day experience for our fans, have a more competitive team on the field.
The foundation—how does it become more engaged with issues that Atlanta or the region or other areas of the country we’re involved with are facing? What impact is the economy having on populations that we care about, that we’re serving? How do we have to reprioritize certain investments we’re making in terms of philanthropy as a result of that? So I focus on all those things every single day.
Speaking of team ownership, you recently tried to bring a Major League Soccer franchise to Atlanta in time for 2011. What happened? Was it a matter of not being able to get a group of partners together in this economy?
That wasn’t the reason. When you do a deal with MLS, it’s a very complex deal. And the general thinking in Major League Soccer today is that you need a soccer-specific stadium in order to be successful and offer the product in the right kind of environment for fans that are coming and supporting it, in addition to providing a financial model that makes sense for all parties concerned. Traditionally, those have been a public/private kind of partnership. In today’s economy, in this world we’re living in right now in 2009, maybe even 2010, that possibility is not real, and it’s kind of inappropriate to be thinking about those things right now, in my view. So I just think it’s a matter of timing in terms of when we’ll be able to bring that franchise to Atlanta. It had nothing to do with other people being willing to invest, it had to do really with the timing in the marketplace.
You’ve expressed interest in the past in at least considering buying the Braves. You’ve also got the Blank Family Foundation. Is there ever a worry about your reach exceeding your grasp, about becoming overextended?
There’s always that possibility. We haven’t reached that point yet, but we did a little bit of math when we were thinking about the Braves before. There are 161 baseball games, 16 football games, 16 arena football games, there’s four preseason NFL games, so you’re up to like 190, almost 200 dates. So when I sat down with my family [to discuss the Braves], I said, you know, if we do this Braves thing, theoretically I’d be committed to 200 sporting events a year, which is not good for family life. I’ve got a wife at home, three young children, three adult children, two grandchildren, and so all of that would be an issue. It wouldn’t mean I’d have to attend everything. But the impact on my family would certainly be a real consideration.
Balancing work and family is very important to you.
Particularly when you’re 66. The attitude we’ve had with the Braves is that we looked at it, it went to Liberty Media, they had obviously a tax advantage transaction that meant they were not dealing with the same dollar bills that any other competitive offer was bringing to the table. And if and when it comes back on the table we’ll look at it again. I don’t know where we will be, I don’t know what the pricing will be, don’t know anything else at this point.
A lot of people just have an image of the stereotypical cigar-chomping owner, a CEO who’s just in it for the money.
We don’t function that way. It’s one of the major reasons I go down to the field usually with seven to eight minutes to go in the game, something like that, because I definitely want our players, coaches, etc., to know their owner is there with them. I’m not mingling with them during the game, but I want to be on the field and [have them] feeling like OK, your owner, chairman, CEO is here with you. We’re coming down to the last half of this quarter and we’re doing battle and that’s when many games are decided, and I’m down here with you. I’m not up there in the owner’s box smoking a big cigar or drinking five martinis or anything of that nature.
And my family is very passionate about the game. Particularly my wife is, my older children all are, my younger children all are actually, even the little ones, they look forward to coming to the Dome and seeing all the excitement and particularly my little boy is getting to be somewhat knowledgeable about what’s going on and my little daughter is as well. It’s definitely a way of life, it’s definitely a family involvement. And that means all the emotions that go with that. The wins affect me and the family, the losses affect me and the family.
As bad as 2007 was, would you go through it all again, knowing there was a playoff team, a great new young quarterback, a new coach, a new GM waiting on the other side? Was it worth it, to get to where the team is now?
The answer would be yes. The answer also would be that, having gone through what we went through, I would try to learn from those experiences, and say, “Is there anything we could have done differently?” And where you could have done something differently, to have avoided that, obviously you don’t want to go through that again if you can avoid it. So I would try to avoid it at all costs, but certainly looking back in retrospect, we have a great head coach, we have a great general manager, we have some great young talented players and some great vets, in terms of providing not only playing capability but leadership, transitioning us to the next level. So I’m excited about where we are, as a team and an organization.
How has the economy affected the day-to-day operations of the Falcons—in terms of ticket prices, hiring decisions, free agency—or the Blank Family Foundation?
Our fans, sponsors and other business partners are not immune to the recession, so we have to take the position that our 2009 revenues will be under pressure. Therefore, in both of our offices we’ve done what every other business in the country is doing, which is reviewing budgets to look for ways to become more cost-efficient and weather the 2009 storm.
Regarding our fans, when we set ticket prices for the 2009 season late in December, we made sure we were offering a broad range of options for the largest number of fans. We have season tickets starting as low as $250, which is flat with the 2008 season. In addition, the pricing on more than two-thirds of our seats up for renewal remained flat or decreased from 2008 levels. We also offered a six-month payment plan, versus a lump-sum payment, which we hope will make it easier for more of our fans to buy tickets.
Michael Vick is due to be released later this year, and while he’s likely to remain suspended from the NFL through 2009, a number of teams have already expressed interest in signing him. What are your thoughts and feelings on the likelihood of Vick playing in the NFL again someday?
We’ve made it clear that the Falcons have moved on, but I do hope that Michael has an opportunity to play in the NFL again after he’s paid his debt to society.