SUPER BOWL XXI : THE NFL OWNERS : THE AFC EAST

EDITOR’S NOTE

Who are the people who own the teams that compete in the NFL, and strive each year to make it to the Super Bowl? What kinds of people are they? Are they all rich? Are they all self-made? Do they own teams because they love the sport, or because the teams are good investments? The Times assigned staff writers Bob Oates and Earl Gustkey to research and write about the NFL owners with these, and other, questions in mind. Their stories appear in the adjoining columns. Oates writes about the AFC’s owners, Gustkey the NFC’s.

LEON HESS, New York Jets

As football men, the managing general partner of the Raiders and the chief executive officer of the New York Jets could hardly be more different.

Al Davis, a former football coach, operates the Raiders with an involved, personal passion, and lets the rest of the world go by.

Leon Hess, an oilman with an estimated net worth of $280 million, bought the Jets as a favor to a friend. He will never be asked to coach anybody’s football team. Not long ago, he didn’t know an offensive tackle from an inside linebacker.

Reportedly, the Jets used to ask themselves: “What does Hess know (about football) and when did he know it?”

In one respect, though, Hess isn’t so very different from Davis after all. As chief executive officer of Amerada Hess Corp., Hess, 72, operates the giant oil refining and marketing company with an involved, personal passion.

He either does, that is, or he did. He isn’t saying.

It turns out that he is also as secretive as Davis, and as controversial. Neither man gives interviews. Hess doesn’t even have a public relations department at Amerada. He employs no publicists except those with the Jets.

In that regard, he’s one up on Davis, whose team doesn’t even have a public relations department.

Hess, who has 100% of the Jets, is possibly the only NFL owner who looks like what he is, a powerful business figure. If you called Central Casting and asked for a Wall Street tycoon, you might get Leon Hess.

Tall, thin, and normally dressed in expensive suits, he makes it a habit to ignore photographers, though he was once caught smiling pleasantly. The Jets have put this picture in their press guide.

He was born in Asbury Park, N.J., where his father, an immigrant from Hungary, ran a small fuel delivery business with two trucks. At 18, Hess left school and entered the commercial world, driving one of those trucks. From that beginning, he built the business into what it is.

Father of two daughters and a son, he lives on Park Avenue in New York and on the beach at Deal, N.J.

In the oil world, they say, Hess runs his company as if it were a mom and pop store. He even functions as his own lobbyist. When necessary, he goes to Washington and calls on U.S. Senators and cabinet officers.

One day Hess flew to Washington, unannounced, to see Sen. William Proxmire--without an appointment. As it happened, the Wisconsin Democrat wasn’t in town that day. So Hess sat down and talked for an hour with the only Proxmire assistant who was.

“Hess is enthusiastic about his job, and nobody in oil is more knowledgeable,” a competitor once said.

Those familiar with the way he operates say his lobbying once won him an important federal subsidy that guaranteed Amerada Hess billions in sales and millions in profits.

“An investment banker calls Hess a genius,” Business Week magazine reported. “Detractors are less charitable. They suggest that much of his competitive advantage stems from successful Washington wheeling and dealing.

“As they see it, Hess’ father-in-law, David T. Wilentz, a one-time Democratic national committeeman from New Jersey, provided the political contacts during the 1960s that helped Hess get an oil import allocation and substantial tax concessions for (his major) refinery.”

Two early contacts, the magazine said, were former Interior Secretary Stewart L. Udall and former Sen. Henry M. Jackson, “to whom Hess contributed $225,000” for a political campaign in the days when Jackson was chairman of the Senate Energy Committee and thus the wielder of “a considerable amount of influence over national oil policies.”

Campaign contributions and federal subsidies are, of course, nothing new in Washington. And Hess’ federal subsidy has since been cut, Business Week said. But even in an era of trouble for oil, Hess is apparently still making ends meet.

He leaves his football team largely up to Jim Kensil, the club president, and Coach Joe Walton.

Hess tells intimates that his father lived to be 92, and that he is just getting started, and so, he hopes, are the Jets. ROBERT IRSAY, Indianapolis Colts

When Robert Irsay phoned for a truck one midnight in Baltimore three years ago and swept the Colts away to Indianapolis, he took a bad team with him. It hasn’t improved.

Shirley Povich, writing not long ago in the Washington Post, concluded: “Irsay holds one NFL record. Never was a franchise destroyed so quickly and completely by one owner.”

As pro football reckons time, never means 67 years. That’s how long the league has been around. Is the owner of the Indianapolis Colts really the worst since the beginning?

Here’s the chart:

--During the 15 seasons before Irsay took over, the Colts had a record of 138-59-5 (.700) and won three NFL championships.

--In the last 15 years under Irsay’s leadership, the Colts have a record of 80-140-1 (.364). In three years at Indianapolis, the Colts are 12-36 (.250). In 1986, they were 3-13 (.188). In his 15-year stewardship, Irsay has led the Colts through 12 losing seasons.

“One of the great dynasties in professional sports (was) dismantled by (this) one man,” E.M. Swift summed up in Sports Illustrated.

Former quarterback Bert Jones, who used to play for Irsay, told the Baltimore Sun: “He’s a liar, cheat, crude, with no manners, and he drinks too much.”

It would be helpful to have Irsay’s reaction to these and other things that are said about him, but he didn’t return a phone call.

Instead, his uncle, Bill Ingram of Laguna Beach, told The Times that the family has a trenchant case against Irsay, which is a Hungarian name, he said, that should be pronounced Irshay.

“Robert says he’s an Illinois graduate, but actually he was thrown out of school,” Ingram began. “Then he was thrown out of the (U.S.) Marine Corps.”

These are serious charges. Are they true?

At Illinois, they say Irsay didn’t graduate. And though he claims to be a wounded war hero, the Marines say Irsay was discharged in the States on April 3, 1943, “for the convenience of the government.”

That is neither an honorable nor a dishonorable discharge. A spokesman said that the Marines, with other pressing things to do in wartime, simply wanted Irsay out of the way, quickly, after he had been picked up in a truck that he had no authority to drive.

He was arrested at 12:30 a.m. on March 13, 1943, three weeks before his discharge.

“Said truck had been involved in an accident,” Irsay’s Marine Corps record reads.

There’s some evidence that his problems have come as no surprise to Irsay’s mother, Elaine, who told Swift: “He’s a devil on Earth, that one. He stole all our money and said goodby. I don’t even see him for 35 years.”

Nor was Ingram surprised. “Robert stole over a million dollars from his father in eight months,” Irsay’s uncle said.

“Robert’s father, my brother, Charlie, trustingly gave him full power of attorney when (he had to be away from his air-conditioning business). When he came back, Robert was gone, and so was his money.

“And it wasn’t the first time. The first time, Robert only stole $37,000 from his father.”

Ingram said that even after Irsay had run it up to a million, his parents were reluctant to bring charges against their son.

“I finally convinced Charlie to go to the police,” Ingram said. “But I couldn’t convince his mother.

“It shocked me when Elaine stood up and said, ‘If you go to the police, I’m going to jump out of this window.’ ”

Only later was she to call her boy a devil, though in truth he doesn’t look it. A big man with a bulbous nose and wavy gray hair, he could be a harmless old defensive tackle.

In his hometown, Chicago, Irsay, 67, made enough money in construction and air-conditioning to buy the Rams for $19 million in 1972, when, by prearrangement, he swapped the club to Carroll Rosenbloom for the Colts.

The mother of Irsay’s two children, his wife, Harriett, says: “He’s got a drinking problem but won’t admit it.”

Does anybody like him?

A Chicago friend, lawyer Samuel Skinner, told the Baltimore Sun: “He’s a very bright, charitable, dynamic guy.”

But that’s only one side of him, according to John Malmo of Memphis, Tenn., who battled Indianapolis for the Colts’ franchise.

“Certain times, he can be extremely cordial, friendly, enthusiastic,” Malmo said. “At times, he is totally antagonistic, insulting and explosive.”

Said Ingram: “Robert has charisma when he wants to use it, but if he had to tell the truth, and it would do him good, he would lie anyway.”

Whatever else he may be, he’s an NFL owner, in good standing, who has the blessings of the other NFL owners. JOE ROBBIE, Miami Dolphins

Joe Robbie of Miami is probably the NFL’s most remarkable club owner. For instance:

--Only Robbie bought a franchise costing $7.5 million--the price of the Dolphins in 1966--without putting up a penny.

--Only Robbie started with nothing and emerged with 100% of the shares in a football team that is worth an estimated $80 million. Even George Halas always had partners as long as he owned the Chicago Bears.

--Only Robbie has built a stadium costing $102 million--the price of Dolphin Stadium, which will open this summer--without putting up a penny.

--Only Robbie has built a comparable stadium on private land with nothing but private capital. In Los Angeles, even the builders of Dodger Stadium had some public assistance, persuading the city to trade a nearly worthless minor league ballpark for a downtown treasure trove, Chavez Ravine.

--Only Robbie has borrowed the money to build a stadium by putting up his football team as collateral--with the understanding that if things should go a little wrong, he would lose everything.

Finally, and maybe most important of all, Robbie has proved to be one of the game’s leading executives. He is probably in the top three.

“The thing that I think I have is an eye for (leadership) talent and the will to get it,” Robbie says.

His handpicked leaders--his coach, Don Shula, and personnel experts such as Joe Thomas, Bobby Beathard and George Young--have hoisted Robbie into the Super Bowl five times.

But who is Joe Robbie? Well, he’s a former trial lawyer from Minneapolis and Mitchell, S.D., who at 70 looks like the late entertainer Phil Silvers’ kid brother.

In 1916, shortly after he was born in Sisseton, S.D., his father lost his means of sustenance--the rooming house, the restaurant and even the pool hall. Including Joe, there were four toddlers, three boys and a girl. Somehow they got by.

Subsequently, at Northern State and then at the University of South Dakota, Robbie got by on debating scholarships, and came out a lawyer.

As a Democratic lawyer in a Republican state, he ran for governor one year but lost. Then he ran for the legislature, and made it, and even made friends with the Republican governor, Joe Foss, who years later was to become commissioner of the American Football League.

Robbie had a wife and nine children when Foss helped him get the AFL’s expansion franchise in Miami just before the 1970 merger.

At the time, Robbie was living by his wits as a lawyer. That’s all he had to invest in the Dolphins.

In personal relationships, Robbie can be, and usually is, amiable. He loves his family. But behind those horn-rimmed glasses is a hard man. Don’t cross him, and above all, don’t underestimate him.

For example, although Robbie knew nothing about football when he came into the league, it took him about 10 minutes to identify Shula as the game’s finest coach.

Next, Robbie noted that Shula was off-limits as the coach of another team, the Baltimore Colts. So he waited.

Then one day, Shula fell out with Colts owner Carroll Rosenbloom. There had been a Super Bowl game that Rosenbloom thought Shula should have won from Joe Namath and the Jets.

When Rosenbloom left the country, briefly, to forget it, Robbie quietly asked permission of the Rosenbloom family to talk with Shula. He got it, then got him, and he’s had him ever since.

“Why not have the best?” Robbie asks. “Don is the best--and the most expensive--coach in the country.”

Robbie pays him more than $1 million a year, which, privately, Robbie doubtless considers a steal.

Some of the others who have underestimated Robbie are still in Miami politics or on Miami newspaper staffs. For years, these people fought him on remodeling the Orange Bowl, which for years was all he wanted.

Finally, Robbie threatened to build his own stadium. And in Miami, that was the funniest joke of the year. Everybody laughed until the tears flowed.

And they’re still flowing, for Robbie’s gone now, and he took the Dolphins with him. He may even call his team the South Florida Dolphins, which is what they are now. The people of Miami have bought fewer than half of the club’s 1987 tickets.

Robbie is financing the stadium the way he financed the team--by borrowing at the bank against Dolphin ticket receipts. Other millions are rolling in from the luxury suites that have been leased for the next 10 years.

“The bank and I own (the team and stadium) outright now,” Robbie said. “The bank is the only partner I have left.

“Last night, I figured it out on a little pocket computer. I’ll have everything paid for by 2016.”

He’ll be 100 that year. BILLY SULLIVAN, New England Patriots

William H. (Billy) Sullivan, the owner of the New England Patriots, is a man who got started on the wrong foot. To begin with, he was the son of a newspaper city editor in Lowell, Mass. Worse, Billy dreamed of life as a sportswriter.

It was former football coach Frank Leahy who straightened him out.

Nearly half a century ago, when Leahy moved to Notre Dame from Boston College, where Sullivan was a young publicist, he took the lad along as an assistant.

Then, a quarter century ago, when Sullivan was working for a Boston oil company, and Leahy was general manager of the Los Angeles Chargers, Leahy got in touch with his protege again.

“We need one more (AFL) franchise,” Leahy said. “We have seven firm cities now, and you can have Boston if you want it.”

“How much?” Sullivan asked.

“Twenty-five thousand” Leahy replied.

“I’ve only got $8,000,” Sullivan said.

“Borrow the rest,” Leahy urged. “You’ll never regret it.”

It isn’t true that he’s never regretted it, but Sullivan, sure enough, got into pro football on borrowed money, and, to stay there, he has been borrowing ever since, more or less.

An acquaintance once said: “Billy’s the only guy I know who could run an $8,000 stake into a $30-million debt.”

He’s still aboard, though. He’s talking about selling the Patriots, but he’s still aboard, and still enjoying it.

He says there are two reasons for that.

Stealing a line he first used as a young journalist, he said: “You meet so many interesting people.”

Then he said: “I’m still a football fan, and not many fans get to own their own team.”

He smiled as he said that. The man’s trademark is a big smile.

Sullivan has spent most of his 71 years in Massachusetts, where he and a twin sister were the oldest in a family of five. She still writes for the Quincy Patriot-Ledger.

He and his wife, Mary, who have six children and a bunch of grandchildren, live on Cape Cod, where their many big windows overlook Vineyard Sound.

When they briefly left home earlier this month for the Patriot playoff game in Denver, Sullivan took the whole family along for a skiing weekend.

As a rags-to-riches entrepreneur, Sullivan remembers with some bitterness the Depression days in Massachusetts.

“I usually had a job myself, but it was tough on the Irish kids who didn’t,” he says. “The bottom line in most of the newspaper want ads was NINA--which meant, no Irish need apply.

“Starting where I started, I’ve had a lot of fun competing against (the NFL’s) representatives of entrenched wealth.

“There’s a theory in this country that money can buy anything, but I’ve always thought that work and performance are more important than money. And it’s been personally rewarding to me to show that wealth doesn’t always triumph.”

Otherwise, in a long and busy life, Sullivan has:

--Won distinction as the only NFL owner whose scholastic endeavors include four years of Latin and two of Greek.

--Won a letter as a 137-pound quarterback at Boston College. The letter was personally mailed by the coach, who suggested that Sullivan give up football.

--Feuded incessantly with Al Davis.

--Brought up a daughter who ran for the U.S. Senate and then married Davis’ lawyer, Joseph Alioto, who once taught school in Harlem.

--Served the U.S. Naval Academy and then the old Boston Braves as a publicist.

--Served the winning team as publicist in the 1941 Sugar Bowl, when Boston College upset Tennessee, 19-13.

--Scheduled Patriot home games at Boston College, Boston University, Harvard, Fenway Park, Birmingham, Ala., and, finally, at his own park in Foxboro, Sullivan Stadium.

But, mainly, Sullivan has been trying to prove that the late NFL commissioner, Bert Bell, was right when he told him: “You don’t need millionaire partners. If you are hungry for success, you’ll be a better owner.” RALPH WILSON, Buffalo Bills

For Ralph Wilson, the founder, president and owner of the Buffalo Bills, time began in 1950 when television came to pro football.

The nation previously had shown little interest in Wilson’s game. Consider:

--Football was essentially a college sport in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It appealed to campus people and alumni but to few others.

--Although NFL football began in 1921, the working crowd much preferred baseball and boxing, which it found easier to understand.

--As late as 1950, indeed, the turnout was only 29,751 in Cleveland’s huge Municipal Stadium for one of the NFL’s story-book championship games, won by the Browns over the Rams, 30-28.

Wilson, then and now a Detroit business man, remembers that it was about that time that he first saw televised football. And he clearly remembers the Sunday in the early ‘50s when he and his wife were first invited to a football brunch.

The host put TV sets in corners of the living room and den. But the small black and white screens of the day could hardly be seen through the shouting fans who surrounded them.

“Some of those fans were good friends of mine who, I knew, wouldn’t be caught dead at a football game a year or two earlier,” Wilson said.

“I knew those people, and I knew that if football could hook them --on television--it could hook anybody.”

If the game couldn’t, the announcers could. Almost certainly, it was TV’s first football announcers, explaining the fine points, who converted the nation. In an open stadium, no commentator is talking to the casual fan, who can only become rabid when he knows what’s going on.

In the 1950s, in any case, Wilson was one of the first to realize that football had become something else, something wholly different from the campus festival that Knute Rockne knew.

Acting on his discovery, he first invested in the Detroit Lions, with his father as a partner. Limited by a club rule to a small percentage, they sold out and tried, unsuccessfully, to buy other NFL teams.

Finally, in the late ‘50s, Wilson was reading a newspaper at a race track in Saratoga, N.Y., one afternoon when he turned idly from the charts to the back page and saw the item that changed his life.

“It had a Dallas dateline,” he said. “It said that a young fellow named Lamar Hunt was starting a new football league. The rest is history.”

That history includes one bizarre chapter. Hunt gave him his choice of five cities, Wilson said. “They were Cincinnati, Buffalo, St. Louis, Louisville and one other, I’ve forgotten which.”

He somehow wound up in Buffalo. “But I can’t say that I’ve regretted it,” he said.

At NFL owners’ meetings, Wilson is the one who invariably looks like a big-city banker. A well-dressed, friendly banker.

He was born 68 years ago in Columbus, Ohio, where his father had the first Cadillac agency.

An only child after an older brother died in infancy, Wilson was 3 when his family moved to Detroit. Despite the lures of Buffalo, he has never left.

He has a wife, Jane, five daughters and a son.

He plays tennis three times a week the year around.

As a prisoner of his generation, Wilson learned to love football--where else?--on a college campus, when he was a student at Virginia. He also studied business there and, back home, went into insurance with his father. His principal business interest now, he says, is TV.

Far flung describes Wilson’s empire. He has a racing stable at Saratoga, TV stations in Texas, Michigan, Indiana and San Jose, a winter home in Florida, and a football team in Buffalo.

He moves around in chartered seven-passenger jets and rental cars.

“No limos,” he said. “I like to keep control.”