Baird Makes a Name for Himself Orchestrating Sponsorship Deals

Five years ago, the Oregon High School Activities Assn., the state’s governing body of high school sports, was almost broke.

The association was faced with the necessity of significantly raising its dues to member schools in order to continue running state championship events. “We were in trouble,” said Bud Lewis, director of the association.

But the organization made a dramatic comeback with the help of a former world-class pole vaulter-turned business entrepreneur.

Don Baird, a member of Australia’s 1976 Olympic team, orchestrated several sponsorship deals between small corporations and the Oregon association, helping keep it solvent.

Later that year, Baird helped complete a deal with the U.S. Bank of Oregon, which has provided $750,000 over the past 5 years to underwrite the state’s championships in 12 sports for boys and girls.

“I thank the man for getting us back on our feet,” Lewis said. “He helped save high school athletics in Oregon.”

Baird, 37, is a self-made man. He left Australia as a 19-year-old, boarding a ship for West Germany with $100 in his pocket and a goal of becoming a world-champion pole vaulter.

While training in West Germany, Baird befriended a department store owner who taught him some of the basics of business. Baird, competing in track all over the world, eventually wound up at Cal State Long Beach. He won the 1977 National Collegiate Athletic Assn. indoor championship in the pole vault and still owns the school record of 18 feet 2 inches.

When Baird retired as an athlete, he used his extensive contacts from track and field to help market athletic events and secure corporate sponsors for events.

He never earned a degree from Long Beach, but so far he has provided a textbook model of bringing corporate sponsorship into high school athletics.

Don Baird, savior? Well, not exactly. Above all, Baird is an aggressive, shrewd business man. He gets 25% of each deal he completes.

He has organized deals or is in the process of putting together projects for high school organizations in 13 states, including California. His biggest deal so far has been a $1.3-million, 3-year arrangement for the California Interscholastic Federation with Reebok and the Coca-Cola Co.

Oregon was Baird’s first high school sponsorship project. Once that was completed, he became a businessman with a plan. He foresees a nationwide network of high school organizations sponsored solely by major corporations.

Baird dares to think big, merging insurance companies and banks with the high schools, a revolutionary idea in the world of business.

“Don loves barriers and crashing through them, much the same way he did as a pole vaulter,” said Angel Martinez, corporate vice president in charge of business development for Reebok.

“He saw an opportunity, and he’s crashing through the corporate world with results.”

Last year, Baird formed School Properties Inc. in Yorba Linda and hired some other business people with big ideas. Larry Kent, the creator of NFL Properties, joined Baird with a plan of licensing high school apparel and products in the same manner that made owners of National Football League teams millions.

Elwood Gair, a former director of marketing for Quaker Oats Co., was hired as the national director of business development.

“The high schools lack the organizational structure to do this,” Baird said. “Educators, in general, don’t know what to give somebody (a corporation) for their money.

“Educators aren’t money smart. They either don’t know their value in the business world, or they don’t know how to represent themselves.”

Baird figured the 7 million spectators who attend high school athletic events each year in California represent a huge, largely untapped market.

“That’s just in California,” Baird said. “The National Football League pales in comparison to our high schools in terms of a potential market.”

Still, some educators are skeptical of Baird.

“I respect what Don Baird has done, but I keep asking myself, ‘Are we giving away the store to people that we don’t have to give it away to,’ ” said Tom Danley, athletic director at Katella High School and former president of the California Athletic Directors’ Assn.

Martinez said Baird isn’t given enough credit for bringing together the corporate and high school worlds.

“You’re dealing with two entities that traditionally have been about as diverse as possible,” Martinez said. “There was a problem of getting everyone to agree on something so new, so revolutionary.

“Don did a great job of packaging the program and conceiving the possibilities. I can see where he might turn off some educators because he doesn’t have a lot of patience.

“He turns some corporate people off the same way. He exceeds the limits sometimes, but that’s how he’s become so successful.”

Oregon’s Lewis said he was initially leery of Baird and his outgoing ways when they sat down to discuss proposals 5 years ago.

“He moved a little faster, talked a little faster and had a lot bigger ideas than most of the people I was used to dealing with,” Lewis said.

“Don told me that any time during our talks if there came a point when I thought we was full of BS, just tell him, and there were several times were I had to tell him he was full of bull.

“But the guy has several things going for him. He has an in-road with some big corporations in his back pocket. He dares to think big. He’ll ask for $5 million and strike a deal for $500,000.

“He’s a tireless worker with a unique ability to influence people. We couldn’t hire anyone like that.”