His Life Is Anything but a Smooth Shave

You begin with the reminder that Victor Kiam, owner of the New England Patriots, is the author of a book titled, “Go for It: How to Succeed as an Entrepreneur.”

The book was written before he bought the Patriots.

If he had bought the Patriots first, it isn’t likely he would have written the book.

Poor Victor. Here was a rich man, looking for recreation, envisioning the joys that would come from football ownership.

Today, the world’s heart goes out to him.

The grief besetting Kiam may be unparalleled in American sports. Things must improve for him to feel well enough to go out the window.

The purchase price of the Patriots in 1988 was said to run roughly $85 million. The club was bought from the Family Sullivan, which had floated it from Fenway Park to Harvard to Boston University to Boston College before settling in a tenement constructed at Foxboro, Mass.

Known originally as Schaeffer Stadium, the place’s name was changed by the Family Sullivan to Sullivan Stadium, then was changed to Foxboro Stadium after the arrival of Kiam.

A graduate of Yale, having earned a master’s degree at Harvard, not to mention a degree in languages at the University of Paris, Victor asked himself how he could put these credentials to work. He got a job as a soap salesman.

You picture his father saying: “I send you to Yale, Harvard and Paris to learn to sell soap?”

Victor replies: “It’s a good way to clean up.”

And indeed he does. He buys a company, adds another, and soon he has acquired a diverse string of companies, most visible of which is Remington, whose shavers he decides to sell personally on television.

All over the land, viewers hear Victor promise that satisfaction is guaranteed, “or your money back.”

It is a break for Kiam he doesn’t offer the same warranty to buyers of Patriot tickets. The team goes 5-11 last season, forcing Victor to fire the coach.

The new one he hires is 1-11, the worst record in pro football. Victor also has Marc Wilson as a quarterback.

In the media, the Patriots are being butchered. Everyone is giving Kiam advice. He was doing a nice job selling his razors until a female sportswriter ventured into the Patriots’ locker room to interview a player.

While she is talking to the player, other players, who had seen her in the locker room before, decide to teach her a lesson. It was their contention--denied by her--that her eyes tended to stray in a precinct inhabited by naked men.

They labeled her a “looker.” She refuted this, too.

By most accounts, the players then proceeded in a manner not recommended at Sunday cotillion, exposing themselves crudely in front of the visitor. She charged sexual harassment, an evaluation supported by many. Some saw the case more as a vulgar prank.

Quick to defend his players, as owners normally do, Kiam jumps in and, forever the Ivy League gentleman, calls the reporter “a classic bitch.”

This leads women’s rights groups to mount a boycott against his razors. The women didn’t specify whether they aimed to stop shaving their legs, or merely stop shaving them with Victor’s product, but the boycott came at a most untimely juncture for Kiam--that period leading up to Christmas shopping.

Victor apologized to the reporter, as well as to womanhood at large, but the NFL still enlisted a Harvard professor to investigate the locker room indignity. The guy turns out 60 pages--maybe 15,000 words--with the following result:

The league nails Kiam for $50,000, half of which must go for educational literature outlining the public relations role of pro football.

Hard-pressed to believe it, Victor sits down in the afterglow, reviewing his life.

He had been a runaway winner. Industry applauded his business acumen. Honorary degrees came rolling in from three universities. He got other awards, even one from the Massachusetts State Troopers, who voted him man of the year.

And razors were moving big. He has to say to himself: “Dummkopf, in what fit of perversity did you buy a football team? If you wanted sports, why didn’t you buy a bowling alley?”

Compassion for Victor runs deep here. But he still is lucky. You can’t cut your throat with a cordless system.