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February 1, 2004

It's Only the Beginning

Panthers' owner realizes his team is an NFL infant

By Joe Menzer | JOURNAL REPORTER

The way Jerry Richardson looks at it, this is only the beginning for his Carolina Panthers. Richardson, the majority owner of the NFC championship team that will play the New England Patriots today in Super Bowl XXXVIII, finally has bragging rights. After years of having to explain himself over a comment he made almost 10 years ago, when he predicted that his Panthers would win a Super Bowl within their first 10 years of operation, he stands on the brink of being able to say to the world, "I told you so."

But even if the Panthers win today, he said that he won't.

"I don't think like that," Richardson said.

Yet, Richardson will concede that he has changed his way of thinking on a number of fronts during the first nine years his NFL team has been in business. For starters, he expected fantastic results instantly. And when he pretty much got them - the Panthers won their division and played in the NFC championship game in their second season - he thought that was realistic.

It wasn't.

Asked recently about the Panthers' run to one victory from the Super Bowl after the 1996 regular season, Richardson said: "I think it was a total setup for us to fall into the trap. That includes me personally and the fans. I would put us in the same category.

"In hindsight, it may have been better had it not been that way. But that is not the way things were. But if you look at the franchise, it's not like we've been in business like the Steelers or the Giants or the Bears. We're just getting started."

Richardson came to that conclusion during a recent lunch with Wellington Mara, the longtime owner of the New York Giants. Sure, there have been difficult times during his ownership of the Panthers, but that is the nature of just about any business when you buy in for the long run, Richardson said.

"There have been times when I didn't enjoy some of the pain we went through. And when we lose, it's not fun," Richardson said. "But I'm at a point now where I'd better understand it's a long process. We're really new.

"When I had lunch with Wellington Mara (two weeks ago) in New York, we talked about the history of the NFL and his experiences. He's in his 80s, and he has grown up in the league. And when you sit down and hear a man talk about his franchise in the perspective of 70 and 80 years, you realize that for me, nine years is not going to define the Carolina Panthers. I have a better appreciation that this is a long deal. I hope and expect that our family will own the Carolina Panthers for a long, long time."

The dark times

Richardson doesn't like to talk about the dark times, and who can blame him? After the glorious year of 1996, when everything seemed to be going so right, it looked as if the Panthers were going to be a force for years.

Quarterback Kerry Collins stood on the steps at Ericsson Stadium, which recently was re-named Bank of America Stadium, and proclaimed to thousands of roaring fans that they were witnessing the birth of an NFL dynasty. Richardson even confirmed his faith in the 10-year pledge and boldly added that perhaps he had underestimated the time frame necessary to produce a Super Bowl championship.

From there, the Richardson dream rapidly turned into a nightmare from which, at times, it seemed there might be no escape.

Collins, the team's first draft pick, went out drinking the last night of training camp the next summer and ended up uttering racial slurs at, and then fighting with, some teammates. It undermined his ability to lead the team on the field, and he never really recovered. Collins eventually walked into Coach Dom Capers' office four games into the 1998 season and said he wanted to quit, so Capers waived him.

The Panthers finished 4-12 that year, and Capers was fired, only two years after taking them to the NFC championship game.

More bad stuff followed:

• Tshimanga Biakabutuka, the 1996 first-round draft pick, tore an anterior-cruciate knee ligament four games into his rookie season, beginning a maddening series of injuries that frustrated Capers and his successor as head coach, George Seifert, for six years before the club finally gave up on him.

• Rae Carruth, the 1997 first-round draft pick, followed a solid rookie season with a trip to state prison after being convicted of conspiring to have his pregnant girlfriend, Cherica Adams, murdered by men who it was alleged had been trying to arrange a drug deal with Carruth.

• Fred Lane, the team's all-time leading rusher, was gunned down at his south Charlotte home by his estranged wife, Deidra, shortly after being traded to the Indianapolis Colts.

• On the field, the team bottomed out at 1-15 in Seifert's final season in 2001. Attendance at Ericsson Stadium, which seats 73,366, was 21,070 for the final game of the year - a 38-6 loss to the Patriots, who went on to win the Super Bowl. That was the last time the Panthers played the Patriots.

There were other mishaps on and off the field. For a team and an owner who constantly preached character and told every new player that good behavior was expected on and off the field, the track record that followed was hard to believe: From the Panthers' first year of existence in 1995, they went through six consecutive top draft picks who didn't pan out, either because of injuries or troublesome issues away from the game.

Eric Davis, a cornerback who played for the team from 1996 through 2000, took note of all the problems and one day wondered aloud, "Did you ever notice we have a black cat as our team mascot?"

Collins eventually checked into an alcohol rehabilitation program, but it wasn't until he was two teams removed from the Panthers that he finally got himself straightened out. Biakabutuka could never stay healthy. Carruth was sent to jail for a minimum of 17 years. Jason Peter, the 1998 first-round pick, couldn't overcome a string of injuries and also was arrested once for driving under the influence of alcohol. Chris Terry, the team's top draft pick in 1999, gave the Panthers a couple of productive years, but was released in 2001 after failing to show in court to address domestic-abuse charges being brought against him by his estranged wife.

For six years in a row, the Panthers failed to land a single top draft pick who was able to contribute to building a long-term foundation on which a winning team might be built.

In free agency, the Panthers didn't fare much better. They threw tons of money at aging veterans such as defensive linemen Reggie White and Chuck Smith, and got little or nothing in return. They gave up two first-round draft picks and $46.5 million over seven years to sign Sean Gilbert, another defensive lineman who proved to be only a little above average while crippling management's ability to sign additional free agents for the next several years.

Cleaning up the image

The Panthers finally started putting their many problems behind them and building something positive when Richardson started making some fundamental changes. First he replaced Seifert with John Fox, largely on the recommendation of Marty Hurney, then the team's director of football operations.

Then Richardson, who had stubbornly refused to hire a general manager for years, promoted Hurney to GM. It was the first general manager the Panthers had since Bill Polian left for Indianapolis in a huff after the 1997 season. Polian wanted the power of being team president more than the actual title, but he foresaw getting neither when Richardson named son Mark the team president after the popular Mike McCormack's departure.

Hurney said that since his arrival around the same time as Polian's departure, Richardson has been an ideal owner, because he always wanted to do the right thing, even when bizarre circumstances turned elements of the team the other way.

"Mr. Richardson stresses good-character people. But sometimes you can never tell (with players who are brought in). It's an inexact science," Hurney said. "I think now in the last couple of years, I don't know what it is - whether it's the way we've come together as a team, or what - but our players understand what's expected from them. I think the fact that we are so cohesive maybe plays into it.

"I think one of the things that we've done is we've tried to learn from our mistakes and that's in all areas. I think some of the adjustments we've made as far as how we're trying to build our team and how we operate have come off that learning process."

The players say they have received the message loud and clear, according to defensive end Mike Rucker.

"Most people don't understand that all the stuff went on," Rucker said. "There was a lot of off-the-field stuff, and Mr. Richardson got to the point where he said, 'Enough is enough.' He got rid of the coach and brought in Coach Fox, and that's when everything turned over. The off-field stuff, the winning ... it all changed for the better. It's nice to be headed to the top. We've been through the valleys, and now we are at the peak."

Rucker said that the team's success now will help the general public forget about its sometimes sordid past. "They talked about Fred Lane and Rae and Collins and that was all Charlotte was known for - the negative stuff. Whenever you said Charlotte, that's what they referred to," Rucker said. "Now we are giving them something to refer to that is positive, something that will overshadow the other stuff. I really feel like people will remember us for what we are doing now and the other stuff will go away."

When safety Deon Grant had a minor off-the-field problem early during his tenure with the team, Richardson personally intervened as he usually does.

"When I came here and I saw what they had going in Charlotte, it was like a curse," said Grant, a second-round draft pick in 2000. "You had people getting killed. So I knew I didn't want to bring anything negative into it.

"I got into some trouble my first year, and he pulled me to the side, and he said that this would be the only time we'd discuss it, but he told me I am either going to get my stuff together or he was going to have to let me go because he was trying to clean up Charlotte.

"That's the attitude we have now. We have to think like that in our minds - because we know if we mess up, we're not going to have a job."

Richardson says now that he grew increasingly frustrated by the team's repeated failures on and off the field before Fox's arrival. But he also said he grew to understand that a 53-man professional football roster can be a microcosm of any society - there are going to be some problems sometimes.

"Every time we bring a new player in, they know conduct is an important issue," Richardson said. "If any of us thinks over the next 30 or 40 or 50 years that everything is going to be hunky-dory, we¹re being naive. But I'm confident the players in that locker room understand how I feel about this. I think there is zero chance that they do not know.

"Does that guarantee everything's going to be wonderful? I don't know that."

Life is wonderful

But life, for the moment, most definitely is wonderful for Richardson and his family. Ask him where this rates among his many lifetime achievements, though, and his answer is unexpected.

"This is a pretty high moment, but my life has not been a ho-hum life," said Richardson, who made the money required to make his bid for an NFL team by founding a food-service company that operated such restaurants as Hardee's, Quincy's Steakhouses, and Denny's. "I've had some other things that were pretty significant in my life. This happens to be a current one.

"For example, being listed on the New York Stock Exchange by the time I was 40 was a big deal. I grew up in the Carolinas and started a business when I was 25 years old. And I would squirt mustard on a roll first, then ketchup, and then add a pickle.

"We said we wanted to be listed on the stock exchange by 1976, when I was 40. And I can't tell you how many people thought it was a joke to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange for selling hamburgers."

Yet Richardson made it.

"There were only three companies at the time founded in South Carolina listed on the New York Stock Exchange. And in June (of 1976) - my birthday was in July - we were listed," Richardson said.

Then he looked at the handful of reporters listening to him tell this story.

"That doesn't mean anything to you, and I don't expect it to," he said. "But seeing Spartan Foods going across there was a big thing. In my mind that is like winning the Super Bowl."

Another grand lifetime achievement, he said, was simply landing the Panthers' franchise after seven years of relentless effort.

"Getting the franchise against the odds - and not only getting the franchise but to be the first of all those cities (seeking expansion teams) selected, and to be unanimously selected, knowing what I know now, that's a miracle," Richardson said. "I know that. You all don't. But I know that."

So today, Richardson looks for the completion of another miracle: from 1-15 to Super Bowl champion in two years. Who said it couldn't be done? The same people who told Jerry Richardson he couldn't land a team in the Carolinas? The same critics who scoffed at his 10-year pledge?

Richardson is growing used to proving naysayers wrong, and now he says he's just getting started.