Are you fed up with the feeling that your vote won’t account for any positive change? Are you over the stodgy NFL or sick of fantasy football after losing because of weather during 1 freak game or an injury that made all those hours for naught? Are you in need of an exciting last minute Christmas gift idea?
If you’re like me and you’ve answered YES to any of those questions than consider this a call to action.
Whether you’re in Utah or not, this is your chance to actually play a role in managing and running a pro sports team. From the city (SLC over OKC) to the team name (after 101st Airborne in a nailbiter over Teamy McTeamface), to the plays ran on the field chosen through a state-of-the-art app, you Joe Fan are in the driver’s seat. It’s Madden meets a Hollywood reality show meets the pigskin meets the future of tech. The voices of fans who have signed up to participate in an industry that is incredibly hard to break in and stay in are being heard loud and clear. In 21 countries and all 50 states, they’ve secured their dream spot as Assistant GM or Analytics Department or as an inaugural Season Ticketholder.
Now it’s your turn to answer the call. If you’re believer in freedom of choice, democracy, technology and football, we need you tuned and ready to make history.
February 16th, 2017. The Maverik Center.
ESPN, GQ, Esquire and other very notable national entities will be there. Can we count on you?
Success in revolutionizing the game requires churning up good companies to sponsor that believe that the fan comes first, groups and true fans and individuals who believe in the “democracy” mission depends on your participation. Unite with me, you believers who nowadays can’t agree on 1 Godforsaken thing. Like which beer the Mav should serve. Together in this and be there with me as it could ultimately in crazy fashion help me fulfill a lifelong dream of running a pro team of which with success, will extend to a a rebranded, democratized league level in due time (2018).
Your Super Bowl hangover will long be over as will the holidays. What next?
Why not join me in staking your claim to be a part of history, giving the power of making decisions in unbeknownst fashion to you. Yes, your voice has now been heard – you make the calls.
Transparency spooks and how it’s moving forward in football, business and life. Apocalypse now?
If you’ve missed me of late, I’ve been blogging about the latest sponsorship news and best practices. We also took a quick “secret shopper” trip to the thriving metropolises of Nephi/Ephraim/Nebo, Utah, stopping at one of the more said-to-be haunted destinations of the area in Leslie’s Family Tree where the Mormon pioneers of yesteryear clashed with the Native Americans. I’ve done the research and I’m a believer in transparency – which goes beyond unexplainable paranormal phenomenon, but is increasingly and readily applicable in the sports business and our collective impending future.
“The Game” & Beyond
I just got off the phone with a friend and client of mine in Glenn “Shemy” Schembechler, son of the legendary Michigan coach Bo. Bo learned everything he knew while coaching under Woody Hayes, who would later become his biggest rival. Both Michigan and that one state school in Ohio largely played the same way for many years. Everyone knew that both teams were most likely to run the ball on 1st and 2nd down and throwing if need be on 3rd down. No frills or surprises, they’re going to rely on brilliant strategy and execution to beat you with tough, talented athletes who believe in their schools’ and coaches’ native credos. Stop it if you can (sorry, the numbers say you likely won’t as both schools are at the top of the alltime recordbooks).
Shemy, who soaked in all that football leadership along the way and utilized it as an NFL scout, has launched GES Advisory Company, designed to utilize the aforementioned institutional knowledge to benefit aspiring high school football players. His goal is to give high school athletes the chance to play the sport they love in college (he can be reached at: gesadvisory@gmail.com). Compared to other recruiting services, he goes much deeper when it comes to taking athletic measurements, gauging mental “make-up” and academic interests, and finding a scholastic fit from the “Power 5” schools on down the collegiate chain. 100% success ratio. To maximize effect from both a hand-to-hand combat success coupled with today’s demands of information transparency, he’s partnered with Sport Testing, a Canadian company with hockey (including NHL) success stories to build on, patent-pending and coming to you soon. Sport Testing, “the leading provider of sport specific player testing and a developer of athletic assessment technologies,”has developed equipment shown to be the most accurate in gauging athletic performance. It also has created a database to share this data, serving both the athletes and properties.
Man, I wish it existed back when I was playing! I was always in-season playing a different ball sport and wasn’t taught the right track technique to run a good 40. My recruiting service was my grandfather with our team highlight VHS tape knocking on the doors of his alma mater to get me a meeting (not that I would’ve made a different school choice). 5 Star football players who get a verbal offer don’t realize that it has no legal binding, nor does that official offer they received. Now, the gap is being bridged.
The Interview
I just mustered the best 30 minute phone interview perhaps I’ve done to date with Project FANchise to be President of the Salt Lake Screaming Eagles football team by mapping out and checking off what I deemed were the success criteria necessary for the position of my dreams. With the CEO in call 1 before he had seen my resume. I didn’t do it to work with just another minor league team – this is the 1st ever fan run team. Everything has been voted on by the fans from the city (they’ll be playing at the Maverik Center, where I worked and of which I had the endorsement of the President I was under) to G.M., head coach, logo and even play calls.
This group (an entrepreneurial mix of tech entrepreneurs, digital, NFL and sport business vets) has crowdfunded opportunities for fans all over the world to get involved with the Screaming Eagles. Yes, the opposing team might know what’s coming, but can they stop it? The point is, it opens up the dream of getting involved in what you were/are most passionate about to the masses, where the barriers to entry are the most extreme of perhaps any industry. Typical sports jobs field hundreds if not thousands of resumes per open position. This doesn’t even touch on how hard it is to become a professional athlete nor begin to speak to the struggle to excel once you get in on the business side when you’re making peanuts while competing with the hopes of countless others to be G.M., etc. someday let alone keep your current job.
What Project FANchise is doing is to utilize digital transparency that social media has provided us all to develop a competitive advantage – it’s giving live “recruiting tape” to not only to the players, coaches and G.M.’s looking to make a pro impact and move up the ranks, but also to Joe Schmo the fan as well (who can be G.M. for a day for $500). As the Bo’s of the world have stated, “those who stay will be champions.” Brilliant execution can open up big doors of opportunity.
All over the place, transparency has become apparent and the effects are rampant. It’s what went into the food we eat and the companies making it. It’s social media. It’s the manual processes in life that are being replaced by automatic processes that can share valuable data seamlessly. We’re starting to realize that sitting in traffic for an hour to commute to shuffle papers and sit in abusively boring meetings all day isn’t always the most productive or efficient way of doing business.
According to the Martin School at Oxford, 47% of today’s jobs in the U.S. will be replaced by artificial intelligence and robots within the next twenty years. Like the farmers of yesteryear, collaboration will likely create new opportunities.
Or, maybe Terminator was correct and machines are coming to bring about the apocalypse.
Maybe I wasn’t named the 1st President of the Salt Lake Screaming Eagles (someone else got the gig who had been a Minor League Baseball CEO). I know where I align when it comes to complaining vs. solving come the next apocalypse. How about you?
Maybe you’ll become the next lost soul tragically left behind to walk between worlds.
The Terminator fighting the apocalypse with automatic weapons
Anyone that came across Joe Theisman, either as a fan, personally or working in the ‘biz would agree. He was a first-class piece of work (to put it nicely). Everything about him reeked of arrogance – his personality, his comments, his attitude, even his steakhouse. He won one Super Bowl in a town without too many, and it’s safe to say that all the notoriety over the years made his head swell.
Sadly, this is not a phenomenon unique to Joe, who believably has made a remarkable turnaround in self-realization. Modern society puts our modern day gladiators of sports or earnings on a pedestal and it has a societal effect.
I, Charles Reynolds, had even caught the bug and this is my story.
I graduated from Michigan feeling near the top of the food chain as a part of Michigan football, put up and on the field for ESPN/ABC Sports and a member of swag-centric Beta Theta Pi. My competitive spirit was at a high, that is, until it became time to get a job. I didn’t have those players I was close with signed, so I had to find another way in.
On the field, pregame at the Big House as a Manager.
I landed in a New Orleans rebuilding from the wrath of Katrina two years after the fact making a hot $17,500 as the newest Inside Sales member for the New Orleans Hornets, who had just quietly arrived back from a positive hiatus in Oklahoma City. I had the sales pedigree and heralded Game Face Academy training, but that didn’t change that all the phone pounding equating to hearing:
He/she has relocated/died because of the storm/we’re rebuilding/who are the Hornets?
To couple that up, the group was out at our favorite bar Lucy’s after the 2nd game of the season. Spirits are high, until someone said something to the VP of Ticketing’s wife, a punch was thrown and we were out a VP and Director the next day leaving a skeleton staff. We were last in the NBA in attendance and notably, Mark Cuban called out our efforts (of which I called him out on, getting him to successfully acknowledge after an MIT Sloan Sport Analytics panel in 2012). We kept at it, took what we could get, and got some nice publicity by hosting All Star Weekend (which allowed my to sit courtside as a seat filler for Magic Johnson). The team was playing outer-worldly and Chris Paul was becoming the star he is now in leading the group.
The buzz over the Bees had caught on leading into playoffs and everybody wanted in. I was told my promotion was coming for some time and it finally did (less than 1/2 of Inside Sales reps get hired full-time traditionally). Our numbers and demands were huge as we took on the NBA’s most-gracious benefit (“Lagniappe” – Cajun speak for extra value) program, we had a great president in Hugh Weber who instilled a community culture in the mix and everything started clicking. We targeted Mark Cuban on our weekly sales contests as the face on the dartboard and the team finished 2nd in the Western Conference. We got the chance to “stop the flop” in the 1st round against Cuban’s Mavericks and our fans made sure he heard about it in his seats near the bench as we won the first playoff series since the team’s move to the city in 2001-2002. We had the vaunted Spurs on the ropes and a season ticket holder had my plane ticket booked for some love on Western Conference Finals tickets against the Lakers. Despite the series slipping away, the Hive rocked like it never had before with decibels maxing out like at the crazy Superdome across the street.
Despite the turnaround, the team had a legislative agreement to break its lease if fewer than 14,735 fans per game came out to support the team. Would we be back in OKC, where the place sold-out within days? San Diego? The new Sprint Center in Kansas City? Pressures were sky-high to hit that while finding a way to generate 10k new season ticket holders in a market with the constraints of a poor market largely ignored by our country’s decision-makers during a time of unmatched need.
Well, the grind paid off. Not only did we hit our marks, but we pushed and broke the NBA record for new full season tickets sold (a mark held previously by the Baron Davis led Golden State Warriors) – a monstrous jump from under 2,000 full season equivalents to 12,000 from year-to-year.
Celebrating an NBA record campaign with Chris Paul (CP3)
Despite the least amount of tenure and local connections (I knew 1 person in New Orleans before moving there) – I outsold the lot. $2 million produced, including potentially having to see, know and service over 700 people in the house at any game. Like those other top producers that got promoted to manager, I thought I was ready for that. I bought my dream car in cash – a black IS 350 Lexus. I flew my brother down for the cruise we won for hitting the record. I was living too fast and too hard, getting in anywhere in town, living wildly in a city with a constant party environment. My head had swelled, it had caught up to me before I knew it and I found myself back to square one, without a job.
I had opportunities to sell for the top potential major league organizations but instead regrouped, dropped off the map to put work into my GMATs and opted for grad school. Law school and the JD/MBA’s of the world were appealing, but it was late in application season. Dr. Bill Sutton, who helped start the NBA’s lauded Team Business Marketing & Operations (TMBO) department under Commissioner Stern suggested building on successes for any host of potential teams over going back to grad school, but I was determined that a grad degree was what I needed to get ahead. I then accepted a Graduate Assistant position to mentor an outsourced sales staff for the Memphis Grizzlies while pursuing an M.S./M.B.A. at the University of Memphis, where I thoroughly enjoyed teaching the ins-and-outs of helping students learn the ropes of what an official relationship with a major league team equated to, while leading a national Case Cup championship extracurricularly with “Operation BobSTATS.” In the process, we produced a 15x revenue multiple while helping place aspiring sports business pros nationwide from the program and Sport Sales Combine. Memphis wasn’t all glitz and glamour as I lived in a roach-infested place and market in need of a lot of uplift. Again, another major communication snag was realized when I demanded just average treatment while getting my car serviced – but at the wrong place (a key sponsor of the team).
With my University of Memphis Case Cup Champion Team and “Coach” Dick Irwin
Another move was in order and I found myself passing up a great opportunity to sell for the World Series Champion San Francisco Giants (who’s VP in Russ Stanley is the most legendary in the ‘biz, 2 more “even year” rings to come) to move up the importance ladder (or so I thought) in sponsorship, the nation’s capitol and a top 50 global M.B.A. program in G.W. Reality set in hard with 18 credit hours of night classes, 3 hours of D.C. traffic a day and a demanding unpaid internship of which I was putting 6 days a week into. Everybody and their sister with an Ivy League degree wanted into sports in D.C. and rights holders capitalized on this potential for cheap labor for the sake of “experience.” Warning bells should’ve been ringing when I heard “internship” and not “job” during recruitment. I graduated super-fast-tracked with two grad degrees in just over two years thanks to a back-breaking schedule allowing my a few hours of sleep at night after school and internship requirements were over.
With family after M.B.A. graduation in D.C. – including my grandfather and motivation for this platform.
I was left out to dry, though: square 1 when it came to jobs and had to move home to minimize the student loan burn I had taken on and was making no traction despite the pedigree. Months later, I set up an NYC stay with a school friend and meetings at the NFL League Office on draft day 2012 among others, which spurned other interest. I picked up IMG College’s Ticket Solutions founder at the airport and sat down to discuss becoming Pitt’s Ticketing GM, drove back to Michigan and flew to Utah the next morning for a few hours. I couldn’t wait for the property to get signed and found myself again a transplant to a strange place, taking a pay cut from my pre-grad school days in the process.
My grit was put to the ultimate test day-in and day-out. The results were there on a large-scale as I got to shape a minor league game-day experience to the tune of production unmatched going years back while influencing the next generation, bumped my partnership average to nearly $100k and 3 years per deal at a top league property despite smallest market, but never received the all-important recognition or validation (which costs nothing). More valuable lessons in leadership learned.
Luckily, I settled down with a girl for the first time who spent her life helping people. Things had been re-framed for me and I realized how important it was to not only acquire work experience and monetary or physical resources, but more so positive life experiences, especially those that could be passed on for the benefit of others and myself in turn.
Like Joe eventually found out, life is not about stuff, publicity or fame. Be real, remember where you were, who you are and what got you there, live to maximize your experiences in the world, share your “box” and you’ll leave a lot more fulfilled.
TRUE NORTH TEAM CONSULTING 