Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [248]
CHRIS BERMAN:
SportsCentury wasn’t done in Bristol. Shapiro had a lot of autonomy for a very big project, which was, for the most part, very well done. But I didn’t see the rise coming. I was too busy working. All of a sudden, he’s broken about eight tackles and we didn’t realize it would result in a touchdown, a crippling touchdown.
LEE ANN DALY:
There should have been more of a real search for people to put around Mark before he got put into such a high-level position. Mark was the kind of person who just wanted to bark in everybody’s face, to make them go away so he could do what he wanted to do. He was very much like, “I know what’s best and everybody just needs to shut up and go away.” He wanted to tell everybody how it was going to be and that you just needed to accept it. That was, I think, very destructive. And it was not something that I wanted to be around.
CHRIS BERMAN:
Look, the good part about Mark was that he made decisions. There’s a lot to be said for that. And just because we’re a kinder, gentler people doesn’t mean every now and then you don’t need somebody to shake it up a little. That’s why Mark, in theory, was okay. The unfortunate part about Mark is that—he might tell you this himself—he should treat people a little better.
We would meet quite a bit. I was pretty secure in where I was and what I was doing. I had been there at that point for over twenty years, from the beginning, and I wasn’t about to leave because this guy was there. I have the public. I walk down the street and it’s like, “Thanks for twenty years!” Eventually, you could see that he was a power guy, and power guys and I don’t match up very well, whoever you are. Shapiro’s affection for me was not the same as Steve Bornstein’s or most everyone else’s there, let’s put it that way, because, remember, Mark was smarter than the rest of us. Remember that.
LEE ANN DALY:
I was at the ESPYs in Las Vegas and Mark came up to me and asked, “Where’s your press agent?” And I said, “I don’t have one,” and he said, “What the fuck are you talking about?” He couldn’t believe I didn’t have a press agent of my own.
MIKE SOLTYS:
On the very positive side of things, Mark really elevated the PR function and its importance in this company, and it’s lasted after he left. His understanding of how the media can be a tool to really help your company build was something that our department knew but the company didn’t embrace in the eighties the way it did with Mark leading the charge. So his enthusiasm for playing the PR game was wonderful, but he needed more of a filter on certain things.
MARK SHAPIRO:
Communication was so big for me. I think people really appreciated it, because I would get up and I’d say in brutal honesty, “Here’s where we’re going, here’s the vision.” You could disagree, but you knew where you stood as a worker and you knew where we were going as a company. I met one-on-one with all my direct reports; I called them biweekly meetings. So if you reported to me, we’d have a day where we would sit down for an hour and a half to two hours. Just the two of us. I have an agenda; you have an agenda.
I would also have a senior staff meeting every single week, eighteen or nineteen people, all the heads of the divisions. The meeting would generally go from eight in the morning until about one. There was no eating, and no individual bathroom breaks. My belief was if you go to the bathroom when I’m talking, you’ll miss something, and then somewhere we’ll get a break in the chain—something like, “We never talked about that,” then, “Yes, we did,” then, “Oh, it must have been when you went to the bathroom.” So when we break, we all break—period. “You don’t leave the room” was my rule. We would do bathroom breaks as a group. Even when George called, I wouldn’t go out and be interrupted. And no speakerphone. If you’re not there in person, you’re not there. I’m not doing that. With a speakerphone,