The Best American Sports Writing 2013 (16 page)

Added Pete Penland, who worked in operations before retiring: “I just know that some of our bosses had always told us: be careful what we did, what we said, and where we were at in certain parts of the building.”

Donovan denied that conversations are monitored or that the building is bugged. He said that in cases of suspected policy breaches or criminal activity, phone logs have been requested.

“I'm not going to say that we've never done it, but it's not something we do,” Donovan said. “It's not how we operate this business.”

The capability was installed during Peterson's tenure, one source said, for the Chiefs to monitor emails, web traffic, and call logs. Willie Davis, a current Chiefs scout hired by Peterson, said a former colleague was reprimanded during the previous regime for emails sent to another team's scout. But a former Chiefs executive, who was familiar with the team's policies under Peterson, said calls and emails weren't routinely monitored. The technology was used more for flagging inappropriate material, such as pornographic websites.

But in the last three years, another former staffer said, printouts of emails, some of them months old, were occasionally requested. The former employee said the belief was that the Chiefs were trying to discover who could be trusted and who couldn't, who was loyal to the cause and who was a liability. Pioli pored over former president Denny Thum's call log, a former high-ranking employee said, before Thum was asked to resign in September 2010 after 36 years with the team.

Thum declined comment when reached by telephone.

Kirsten Krug, the team's human resources director, said that no current or former employee has shared uneasiness that conversations were monitored. Hunt said no employee, past or present, has broached this concern with him—including Haley.

But the suspicion was prevalent enough that, when some staffers wanted to speak candidly, they set appointments with coworkers to meet outside the building so they could talk face-to-face. Others, trying to skirt an impression that employees shouldn't fraternize with those from different departments, occasionally left the facility at different times, in different cars, so that team administrators wouldn't know they were having lunch together.

“I don't think that's ever been an issue for me. I know that people have done it,” Farmer said. “They don't want to be seen going with this person or that person. I understand—I hate to say this—I understand the process that some people felt they needed to take, but again, I never kind of adhered to that behavior.”

Donovan said the widespread suspicions were unfounded.

“I can't control their beliefs,” he said.

Hunt was more direct.

“It's not true at all,” he said.

Still, other staffers were nervous that someone might report to administrators that they were at a place with people they weren't supposed to associate with.

“Every day,” a former longtime staffer said, “you walked into the building like you were going to be put on the witness stand and be cross-examined, and you didn't know who it was going to be coming from.”

For some, the pressure was more difficult to deal with than others.

“Whether it's a licensed professional or somebody else,” the employee said, “hell yeah, you'd better talk to somebody. Because you'll go crazy.”

 

In January 2010, the worry was amplified and legitimized by a series of staff cuts. When Pioli took over, there were 19 employees in director or vice president positions. Many of them had been with the Chiefs for decades. Three years later, only three—Farmer, video operations director Pat Brazil, and special-events director Gary Spani, a former Chiefs player—are still in executive positions.

“As they term it out there,” Schneider said, “I was the class of '10.”

A year later, the “class of '11” was let go. More senior staffers were shown the door, in the form of layoffs, firings, and resignations. When the 2008 season began, before Pioli arrived, the staff roster in the team's media guide listed 155 employees, not including coaches and players, working for the Chiefs. More than three years later, 82 of those staffers are gone, though most positions have been filled, in some cases with modified titles.

“Scott did give me a chance to kind of earn my job and do what I'm doing,” Farmer said. “He could've parted ways with me. Why he didn't, I think that's probably a better question for him. But I would like to think that it's more based on my work product and what I'm able to accomplish.”

Donovan said the changes were aimed at improving the organization from top to bottom.

“Trying to be the best in the National Football League at what we do,” he said. “So that's going to come with people who get on board and thrive, and it's going to come with people who feel like it's not something they want to participate in, or maybe can't.”

Sure, the cuts have come during a down economy, and turnover is typical during an organizational change. Donovan said such change, even at the top, is common in sports. But when the
Star
examined the staff rosters of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Seattle Seahawks, and Denver Broncos, teams that also overhauled their franchises in 2009, it found that those organizations left senior staff mostly untouched. Even the Atlanta Falcons, another team influenced by a former executive from the Patriots' lineage, have made only a few changes to senior staff in the four years since Thomas Dimitroff became GM. The Broncos and Falcons reached the playoffs this season.

Any Chiefs employee who had once worked for Peterson was on alert.

“I just saw everybody else kind of disappearing,” said a former executive who had been hired by Peterson. “. . . When you're on the outside, it's pretty obvious you're on the outside.”

The team has had a different public relations chief, the franchise's conduit to media and fans, in each of Pioli's three years.

Three of the Chiefs' former high-ranking staffers—former community-relations director Brenda Sniezek, former controller Larry Clemmons, and former maintenance manager Steve Cox—have sued the organization for age discrimination. In Sniezek's suit, filed in December, she alleged that she overheard Pioli telling a coworker that he planned to “get rid of everyone who was with Carl Peterson, especially anyone over the age of 40.”

Sniezek, 52, alleged that she asked the team's PR staff to remove all references to her age on her biography. Reached by the
Star
late last month, Sniezek said that because of the suit, which sought damages of at least $25,000, she wouldn't discuss her nearly 29-year tenure with the Chiefs, and how it changed after Hunt put Pioli in charge.

“There will be a time, and all of this will come out,” said Sniezek, who was let go last January.

Clemmons's petition, filed in November, alleged that he was informed upon being asked to retire that “You're the last.”

Because of legal restrictions, Donovan said he couldn't discuss the suits, other than referring to a statement in which he said the claims “are both baseless and ridiculous.”

“The plaintiff's claims are completely false,” the statement read, “and we intend to vigorously defend ourselves.”

In the Chiefs' answer to Cox's petition, the team denied his allegations. Cox's attorney, Lewis Galloway, said depositions will begin this week.

 

Before Christmas, a group of about 20 gathered at a café in Independence. They were mostly former Chiefs staffers, although some current employees also attended, and they came together to reminisce. They called it a reunion.

“It didn't matter which department you were in,” said Cox, who is Melton's father, “everybody would pull together. It was amazing.”

Now, Schneider said, most employees simply keep to themselves. He said staffers used to volunteer to help coworkers out of a jam. If there was snow in the stadium, colleagues from other departments ran down to help shovel it out. Those days, he said, are gone.

“It got to a point where people just kept their heads down, didn't want to go outside the box and jeopardize getting in trouble,” Schneider said.

He went on.

“I still get calls from people who are still there,” he said. “All I can say is, ‘I feel for you.'”

Several former staffers admitted that it's difficult being without a job, particularly one in sports. But some said leaving the new Chiefs was more about relief than regret.

“I sleep a hell of a lot better at night,” a former employee said.

The Chiefs said they're happy now with the team's direction. But there hasn't been a significant improvement in the one area that Donovan said the changes were intended to support—the team's win-loss record. The Chiefs finished 7-9 in Pioli's third season, the team's second losing season since the changes began. Still, Donovan said the organization is in better shape compared to three years ago.

“There are a lot of people who have been here longer than I've been here,” he said, “who will sit there and tell you that it's a much better place to work today.”

In addition to the more than two dozen independent interviews conducted by the
Star
, the Chiefs arranged phone interviews with eight current employees. Farmer and Davis were among those, and their interviews were the only two conducted without a Chiefs PR staffer present. Each of the employees spoke favorably about the working environment and the team's direction. The team emphasized that the employees were not coached on what to say.

One of those was Allen Wright, the team's equipment manager, who was with the Chiefs when Peterson took over in 1988. Back then, the Chiefs also overhauled the staff: three years later, 62 percent of the staff had been retained, but seven of 10 department heads had been replaced. The organization was smaller then, but Wright recalled a similar reaction to the changes.

“I remember the same feelings and people saying the same things,” he said. “I was a young kid working in the equipment department, and everybody was talking about how everybody was worried about getting fired . . . Any time there's change, that's just the feeling that people have.”

 

On that Thursday in December, when Haley's suspicions peaked, the former Chiefs coach said he would be in touch to discuss the working environment—but that it would be from a number you didn't recognize. Haley's call never came, but in the time since, others have questioned how productive he could have been if he was so preoccupied with who might be watching him.

“No one could be successful in that environment,” a former director-level employee said.

Melton left the Chiefs in 2010 after arriving at a similar conclusion. More than a year later, she was asked if she could see any benefit from the changes. After a long pause, she answered.

“I'm sure there's some good that has come out of it,” she said. “I would be hard-pressed to be able to identify that right now, without really thinking about it. I don't think our football team is any better; I don't think our fans are being any more well-served.”

She paused again.

“I couldn't tell you,” she said. “I'm sorry. I'm not very helpful in that regard.”

Melton was at the reunion last month. She said they talked about how much they missed working together. She said they tried not to dwell on stressful times, but there were plenty of things that former staffers said they wouldn't miss about working for the Chiefs.

“I don't miss being scared to go in every day,” one former staffer said. “Thinking,
Who's going to yell at me now?
It's so sad, because it was a great job. There was a time that it was a great place.”

JASON SCHWARTZ

FROM BOSTON MAGAZINE

 

T
HE SUN IS BEATING DOWN
hard on the Dracut High School softball field, where Curt Schilling sits atop a bucket of balls beside the dugout.

He's helping coach his daughter's team, the Drifters, in a tournament, and they're on the verge of their second win of the day. Schilling could use the uplift: it's been a month since the extraordinary implosion of 38 Studios, the video-game company he founded and lost $50 million investing in. And though his face is not quite the ghastly shade of white it was at the height of his company's crisis, he doesn't exactly look good. Dressed in shorts and a standard-issue blue and orange coach's polo, his facial hair is scraggly and he's got heavy bags beneath his eyes.

“Come on! Let's close it out!” shouts the former Red Sox star, noted during his career for his precision arm and considerably wilder mouth. Moments later, there's a game-ending grounder to second. Drifters win, 9–0.

Despite keeping an uncharacteristically low media profile of late, Schilling has agreed to meet with me. So while the players wait for their next game of the tournament, the former pitcher takes a seat in a lawn chair and performs what winds up being an emotional, two-hour-long autopsy of 38 Studios. The company's death was grisly: before going under, it defaulted on the $75 million guaranteed loan that the state of Rhode Island had used in 2010 to lure it to Providence. As the money ran out, the company encouraged its 379 employees to continue coming into work, even though it knew it could not pay them. Staffers realized they'd been stiffed only when they noticed the money missing from their bank accounts. A pregnant woman had to find out from her doctor that her health care benefits had been cut off.

Add it all up, including interest, and already-cash-strapped Rhode Island could be out as much as $110 million on the loans. As Schilling sits beside the softball diamond, his company, with nearly $151 million in debt and just $22 million in assets, is being liquidated through Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

Asked about 38 Studios' failure, Schilling says his management team suffered from “significant dysfunction” and that his video-game developers worked too slowly. Those problems, he allows, are his fault. “As the chairman and founder,” he says, “who's above me?”