The matchmaker in the biggest sports story of the week — Steve Spurrier
taking the coaching job for the Washington Redskins — was none other than
Pepper Rodgers.
The Redskins and owner Daniel Snyder signed Spurrier to a five-year
contract for $25 million after firing Coach Marty Schottenheimer Monday.
Spurrier was introduced at a live press conference on ESPN Tuesday
evening.
“Dan has told everybody I had a lot to do with it,” Rodgers
said Monday. “I’m sure I did, plus a lot of money.”
Rodgers talks frequently to Spurrier and said he “gave him a comfort
level” with Snyder. Rodgers and Spurrier go back almost 40 years, when
Rodgers was an assistant coach at Florida and Spurrier was quarterback.
Spurrier later was an assistant at Georgia Tech when Rodgers was head
coach.
“I paid Steve $30,000 to work for me,” Rodgers said. “He’s
come a long way.”
Rodgers left Memphis two years ago to work for FedEx CEO Fred Smith in
the corporate sky box at FedEx Field in Washington, D.C. He became close
friends with Snyder and now works for him, with the title of head of football
operations. Unofficially, he is Snyder’s sidekick and walking Rolodex, thanks
to his half century in football, including the years he and Smith spent trying
to bring the NFL to Memphis.
Snyer’s courtship of Spurrier began a year ago. “We tried to hire
him when we hired Marty,” Rodgers said. “I thought he was going to
come here then, but he thought he could win the national championship and his
family wasn’t ready to move away from Florida.”
Rodgers and Snyder talked to Spurrier after he announced his resignation
from Florida following the Orange Bowl. Rodgers won’t say where they met but
says it wasn’t Gainesville, as the national media have reported. He was also
at Snyder’s house Sunday afternoon and evening when the decision was made to
fire Schottenheimer.
Schottenheimer got $7.5 million in severance on his four-year
contract.
“Don’t feel sorry for Marty,” said Rodgers, who was fired three
times as a college coach. “When I got fired I sure didn’t get $7.5
million.”
Shocker! Politics involved in arena bond financing deal.
Divvying up the city and county’s bond business is normally about as
boring as an auditor’s fine print. A few public officials get wined and dined,
the same old financial firms get the business, some salesmen make a nice
commission, and another road or power plant or municipal sewer gets built.
But when a bond guy with 23 years’ experience in Memphis says the bond
financing of the biggest public project in city and county history is also
“the most political deal I have ever seen,” that’s news.
That’s what Rob Baird, head of public finance at Morgan Keegan, told the
Sports Authority last week when it chose New York-based Goldman Sachs, which
closed its small Memphis office last October, as headliner on the $250 million
arena deal. Morgan Keegan got second billing. In financing etiquette, this is
like putting one of your blue-chip corporate citizens in the upper deck at The
Pyramid instead of courtside.
The issue isn’t money. The underwriters will split about $2 million.
“It’s prestige,” agreed Baird and the city and county’s financial
consultant, Marlin Mosby.
Mosby said a national firm like Goldman Sachs had more clout, more
experience in supposedly exotic financial instruments, and would get a lower
interest rate by half a percentage point, which he said is worth $2.5 million
in interest savings over 30 years. Baird insists Morgan Keegan has plenty of
expertise and could get just as good a rate. Over 30 years, $2.5 million in
interest works out to a whopping $83,333 a year or about what hot dog vendors
will probably be making at the new arena in 2035.
Qualifications aside, politics is about people and relationships. On that
score, Morgan Keegan is not everyone’s darling.
A few years ago, Morgan Keegan and Mayor Willie Herenton floated an ill-
fated proposal to sell MLGW. About the same time, Rodney Herenton, son of the
mayor, went to work for Morgan Keegan.
The MLGW idea bombed but left some politicians feeling that Morgan Keegan
was greedy and out of touch. With a majority-black population, diversity is a
lot bigger issue to local officials than whether a silk-stocking brokerage
firm gets its feelings hurt. Coincidentally or not, Rodney Herenton and Mark
Yates left Morgan Keegan last year, where they were among a handful of black
professionals, for rival First Tennessee. Neither the Herentons nor Yates have
ever publicly indicated any dissatisfaction with Morgan Keegan, but minority
participation is clearly the name of the game in all aspects of the new arena.
Minority firms got 46 percent of the bond business. The selection of law
firms, architects, PR firms, and general contractors has been similarly
balanced.
The former head of the Sports Authority, Reggie Barnes of Morgan Keegan,
resigned to avoid any conflict of interest. Barnes hosted an NBA-related
meeting at all-white Memphis Country Club last year which ticked off Shelby
County Commissioner Walter Bailey. Then Barnes cavalierly dismissed Bailey’s
objections. A little payback may have been another factor in the bond
allocation.
