Feature Attraction : Hollywood Producer Jeffrey Lurie Is Center of Attention in Philadelphia as Owner of Eagles

Who is that man in the luxury box next door? And why is he screaming, leaping and high-fiving?

Irritated Candlestick Park patrons wondered. Then they acted, setting down their finger sandwiches and papering the side window of their box with giveaway posters so they wouldn’t have to see him.

Jeffrey Lurie, Hollywood producer and new owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, just smiled. And pulled his baseball cap lower over his forehead.

*

Who is that man on the field? Doesn’t he know that nobody wearing a suit walks around the edges of the stands at Veterans Stadium before a football game?

What part of the term beer shower doesn’t he understand?

Curious Philadelphia Eagle fans wondered. Then they acted, crowding the railings to get a glimpse of . . . well, what do you know?

Jeffrey Lurie spent the next 30 minutes on the toes of his wingtips, stretching halfway into the seats while calloused hands stretched halfway back. He basked in the fans’ warmth, listened to their dreams.

“You know,” whispered close friend Jack Rapke of Creative Artists Agency, “this has to be better than 1,000 movie premieres.”

Lurie just smiled. All his life, he had known.

*

It’s too late. Officials can complain that his behavior is in violation of the same NFL rules that prohibit touchdown celebrations or droopy socks, but it doesn’t matter.

It’s too late. Jeffrey Lurie is in.

He holds the deed to a real, live professional football team. Those guys with their big cigars stinking up the league’s back rooms are reeling from the fresh air.

“You know something?” Lurie recently told friend Jim Jacobs. “I look at the team on the field, and I still can’t believe I own it.”

Neither can those who thought the invasion of lawyers and corporations upon the professional sports world was complete.

But the bottom-line guys missed a neighborhood. Lurie, 43, frustrated with making sweet movies nobody watched, moved in.

The Eagles cost him $185 million last May in a surprise deal for a team that few knew was for sale. The price was the most ever paid for a professional sports franchise.

Yet he has behaved less like a businessman than an NFL junkie who, after watching games every Sunday for years, was magically given the power to step inside his TV screen and join the fun.

This was a guy who has had season tickets somewhere since birth. A guy who annually locked himself above his Beverly Hills garage to watch ESPN for the entire NFL draft. A guy unashamed to play video football, or admit it.

This was a guy who once drove to Santa Barbara nearly every Sunday to a cheap roadside hotel. He would check into a room and spend the next three hours sitting on the edge of a bed watching his hometown New England Patriots, whose games were rarely shown in Los Angeles.

The hotel manager felt so sorry for Lurie, he charged him only $20 for the room as long as he didn’t mess it up.

Those were the days Lurie wore a huge button with the Patriots’ team picture on it. A button with blinking lights.

Today, he oversees a team that has won four of its first six games and is considered a legitimate NFC contender.

In doing so, he has also served what many feel is a more important role.

He has assured everyone that a pro franchise can still be owned by Joe Fan.

“Every day has been an adventure,” Lurie said.

THE FIRST DAYS

At an outdoor reception in his honor in downtown Philadelphia, he impulsively pulls out six new NFL footballs and throws them into the crowd.

Philadelphians, accustomed to the absentee and sometimes-arrogant reign of former Eagle owner Norman Braman, cheer wildly.

They wait for him to ask for the balls back. He does not.

THE NEXT DAYS

At his first appearance at Veterans Stadium, he is cheered louder than any of the Phillies. Then he wins a home-run hitting contest without ever hitting a home run.

“But I hit ropes,” Lurie said. “And you can win those things with ropes.”

At his first mini-camp, he notices disappointing second-round draft pick Bruce Walker wearing Reggie White’s No. 92 jersey. He nearly becomes sick, and immediately orders that the jersey not be worn until somebody has proved himself worthy.

White is so touched, he phones Lurie the next day to thank him.

“I just saw this guy wearing Reggie’s jersey and I said, ‘Whoaaaa,’ ” Lurie says, shrugging.

Took the words right out of about 60,000 fans’ mouths.

THE MIDSUMMER DAYS

Lurie finds the money to sign every veteran and rookie before the end of July. It is the first time in recent memory that every player shows up for training camp on time.

“I can’t tell you how good that made the team feel, to have no distractions from unsigned rookies or holdouts,” says center David Alexander. “The advantage that gave us was huge.”

Unlike most owners, Lurie doesn’t even have trouble signing his No. 1 draft pick, tackle Bernard Williams from Georgia.

Perhaps it is because during negotiations, Lurie sends his lawyers to Memphis, Tenn., after Williams has been roughed up by police in a case of mistaken identity.

Williams signs shortly thereafter, and is now the league’s top rookie tackle.

“It is my philosophy that once you are involved with a player, you do everything possible to create the atmosphere that we are all in this together,” Lurie says.

THE LATE SUMMER DAYS

Lurie shows up at the team’s West Chester University training camp with a suitcase. He collects the key to one of the dorm rooms.

Much to the amazement of the team, he announces that he is moving in.

“I couldn’t believe he would actually stay in one of those tiny rooms,” Alexander says. “But it was neat to have him there. In the past during training camp, our owner has been in the south of France.”

Lurie never actually sleeps in the dorm, but rests there while working 15-hour days.

THE EARLY FALL DAYS

He makes his first mistake. It is the sort of mistake that would be made only by a fan.

Instead of cutting good players to have an injury cushion under the $34.6-million salary cap, he orders his coaches to decide upon the 53 best players.

Then just days before the start of the season, he asks six of those players to take 30% salary cuts.

He figures as long as the best players are in the locker room, that locker room can survive any discontent. He figures wrong.

The six players file a grievance through their union. The only starter of the six, tackle Broderick Thompson, says that the cuts were on the team’s mind when they opened the season against the New York Giants.

“Once you get across the line and you get on the field, you think you’re going to forget about it,” Thompson says. “But it’s still in the back of your mind. It’s still a distraction. Even when I woke up that (Sunday) morning, I was thinking about it.”

They fell behind in the first quarter of that game, 14-0, before losing, 28-23. Since that fateful first period, they have outscored opponents, 140-92.

“I’ll admit, I made a mistake in the timing, but I just wanted to make sure we started the season with our best players,” Lurie says. ‘I’m going to make mistakes, but I think the people will respect a well-intentioned owner.”

The grievance was recently settled when the players had much of their pay reinstated. Judging from the most popular signs at Veterans Stadium these days, all has been forgiven:

Lurie, Lurie Hallelujah!’

Lurie Be. The Norm Storm Is Over

“I bought this team only as a guy obsessed with building a Super Bowl champion,” Lurie says. “I had no idea all these other things came with it. I had no idea the impact of a team on a community’s spirit.”

He received his first clue during one scary moment last summer while walking a downtown Philadelphia street in search of a map.

A large, smoking bus screeched to a halt in the middle of the street, directly in front of Lurie. Out jumped a red-faced driver with an attitude.

“Is that really Jeffrey Lurie?”’ the driver yelled.

“Uh, yes sir,” Lurie replied, startled.

The driver didn’t want to curse him. He wanted to embrace him.

“I had to stop the bus when I saw you,” the driver told Lurie. “I wanted to thank you on behalf of everybody in Philadelphia. You’ve uplifted our city. You seem to know how important the Eagles are to us.”

Lurie eventually purchased the map, but it has not helped. It’s difficult to follow road signs when you’re walking on air.

*

If nothing else, Jeffrey Lurie is football’s first owner who got so excited after a regular-season victory, somebody actually mentioned the numbers 911.

It happened after the Eagles’ stunning 40-8 victory over the San Francisco 49ers. Lurie was so full of congratulatory words for defensive coordinator Bud Carson, he lost his breath during their postgame meeting. Bystanders nervously waited for him to hyperventilate.

“He is off the meter,” said Joe Banner, team vice president and longtime friend. “As kids, we would stand around acting like general managers, making trades, talking about games. All those years, we dreamed about something like this.

“And now, Jeff is living it.”

Growing up in suburban Boston as an heir to the General Cinema Corp. fortune--one of the largest movie theater chains in the country at the time--Lurie had season tickets with his family for the Boston Patriots’ first season in the new American Football League.

Lurie has since seen the Patriots at the Boston University Field, at Fenway Park, at Foxboro . . . and in Mexico City.

That is where he flew once while making a movie in a rural coastal area of Mexico. The Patriots were in a playoff game and, as best he could figure, only one hotel in the country was showing it on TV.

He checked into that hotel, watched the Patriots lose, repeatedly slammed his fist on the bed, fell into a depressed sleep, then awoke the next day and returned to location.

“I was crushed,” he said. “I practically broke my wrist that day.”

Lurie was born into privilege but grew up not feeling very privileged. When he was 9, his father died of a brain hemorrhage. His brother Peter was autistic.

He later responded by becoming a community activist and watchdog for those without influence.

Before moving west, he founded and taught at an alternative high school for needy students in Boston.

“I have always been attracted toward those without power,” he said.

After moving to Hollywood eight years ago, as the owner of Chestnut Hills Productions, he says he tried to make movies that made social and political statements.

Judging from ticket sales, though, the only statement his three feature films made was, “Don’t watch me.”

“Sweet Hearts Dance” and “I Love You to Death” were critical successes, but nobody was watching. Then he made, “V.I. Warshawski,” an ill-conceived female detective film that was considered among the worst in recent memory.

“I learned that in movies, it’s more about the deal,” Lurie said. “It is so difficult to be able to keep the vision intact about what you want the movie to be.”

Eighteen months ago, when he saw that the New England Patriots were on the market, he knew exactly where to redirect his vision.

With money from not just General Cinemas, Inc., but the company with which it had merged, publishing giant Harcourt General, Inc., Lurie had the cash. And he certainly had the interest.

While bidding for the Patriots, he examined every strip of college tape of top prospects Rick Mirer and Drew Bledsoe.

He was so close to buying the team on draft day of 1993 that the Patriots actually phoned him in a room above his Beverly Hills garage where he was watching the proceedings.

Team officials wanted to make certain he could handle a lucrative contract for Bledsoe. By then he had already decided he liked Bledsoe over Mirer. He told them yes.

But while Bledsoe was becoming a rookie success with the Patriots, Lurie never left the clubhouse. He was ultimately outbid for the team by Robert Kraft, the Foxboro Stadium lease holder.

Enter John Shaw. Yes, the same John Shaw who has been shopping the Rams around the country.

Lurie was directed to Shaw, the Rams’ vice president, by officials in Baltimore who were hoping Lurie would buy the Rams and move them east.

Shaw said Georgia Frontiere had no interest in selling the entire operation. However, Shaw told Lurie, there is this owner named Norman Braman. . . .

The rest of the story can be found on the Veterans Stadium field, where the Eagles say they have never been more relaxed or confident of their direction.

“It’s a good situation now,” said cornerback Eric Allen. “We needed somebody to come in here and voice their concern about winning, somebody who will work right there with you. This guy is like that.”

The rest of the story can also be found on Philadelphia’s streets, where often-ignored segments of fans are receiving Lurie’s attention.

“He has a perspective you wouldn’t expect,” Banner said.

Lurie has already walked out of an important free-agent news conference to quietly attend the playground dedication at a nearby children’s welfare home.

“He is the first pro sports person in this town to actually invite me to his office,” said Donald Smallze, a disabled Vietnam veteran and local charity fund raiser who recently posed for pictures with Lurie. “He is the kindest man in this business I have ever come across.”

Unfortunately for some Eagle employees, though, the rest of the story can also be found in the team’s front office.

Expect Lurie to clean house this season if the Eagles don’t win a couple of playoff games. Coach Rich Kotite will be fired and replaced by somebody with more charisma, somebody who can double as a general manager.

Lurie would love to hire Jimmy Johnson, but Johnson has said that Lurie sounds an awful lot like a potential Jerry Jones.

As the honeymoon ends, that will be Lurie’s biggest battle, avoiding the perception that he is a meddler, a fan who has fooled himself into thinking he’s a football expert.

“I will ask questions, I will sit in on meetings, sure,” Lurie said. “But I will leave the decision-making to the people who know this business best. I will let them do their jobs.”

Lurie’s job, as his discerning public sees it, is to keep on being himself.

Quite often that is enough, as he learned while signing autographs during training camp.

A woman approached and said, “Jeffrey, you have no idea what you’ve done for my family. You saved my marriage.”

Lurie said, “What?”

The woman said, “After last year, my husband insisted on giving up our season tickets. I said no way. This was a nightly battle that was heading us for divorce. But as soon as you took over the team and my husband watched your initial press conference, he agreed. We kept the tickets. We’ve been happy ever since.”

Lurie tells that story and smiles, implying that this has been the most rewarding part of his short tenure as an NFL owner.

Meeting die-hard, irrational, wonderful football nuts.

People just like him.