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January 25, 2004

Riding the Glow

The Panthers' trip to the Super Bowl captures the heart of a region and shines up the image of sports in Charlotte

By Richard Craver | JOURNAL REPORTER

Panthermania is on the prowl in Charlotte. Fans, both longtime and fair-weather, are basking in the Carolina Panthers' first Super Bowl appearance and the possibility of celebrating the state's first major-league professional sports title.

It's easy to forget the pain before the pride. As recently as January 2002, the city's heart for pro sports was on life support. The teams were losing on and off the field, with well-publicized financial and criminal incidents involving players and executives.

That's one reason why Charlotte residents can be excused for embracing the Panthers' surprising season so hard.

"People are almost giddy over the Panthers, still saying 'Holy mackerel, we're in the Super Bowl,'" said Mark Packer, a sports-talk host for Charlotte station WFNZ-AM.

The Carolinas may be die-hard ACC and NASCAR country. But Packer said that not even an NCAA basketball championship has created as much community buzz about sports as Super Bowl XXXVIII. Some 8,000 fans greeted the Panthers at Bank of America Stadium upon their return from last Sunday's 14-3 win over Philadelphia in the NFC Championship game.

"Callers bring up the UNC basketball championships, the great Duke runs, the N.C. State title in 1974 at the Greensboro Coliseum, Clemson's football title and even Dale Earnhardt's death," Packer said. "But the Super Bowl is the great American sports holiday, and the Panthers' run to the pinnacle of professional sports has captured the heart of this region."

The Panthers' Super Bowl berth represents a full circle for a city whose passion for professional sports enabled the Charlotte Hornets to lead the NBA in attendance eight times, from 1988 to 1997. But then the passion cooled, and those heady days were overshadowed by often-tragic headlines involving combative Hornets owner George Shinn, former Hornets player Bobby Phills, and former Panthers players Kerry Collins, Rae Carruth and Fred Lane.

Shinn alienated the Hornets' faithful by trading away the team's stars after being burned by signing injury-prone forward Larry Johnson to a then-record $84 million contract. His ego led him to blow off selling an ownership stake to Michael Jordan, which probably would have led to Jordan ending his career in a Hornets uniform instead of with the Washington Wizards.

Shinn's reputation was further sullied in a 1999 trial in which he was absolved of charges that he sexually assaulted a woman at his home.

He craved a downtown arena, to be built with taxpayer money, so he could have more profitable luxury boxes than in the Charlotte Coliseum. Fed-up voters rejected the idea, and Shinn moved the Hornets to New Orleans.

Collins fumbled away his turn as the Panthers' quarterback because of incidents involving excessive drinking and a racist remark that affected his ability to lead the team. He eventually was waived from the team.

Phills died in an automobile accident in January 2000. He was racing his Porsche against teammate David Wesley when he lost control in a curve at 100 mph and crashed into an oncoming car.

Carruth, a first-round draft pick of the Panthers in 1997, is serving a prison term of 18 years and 11 months for plotting to kill his pregnant girlfriend, Cherica Adams, who was shot to death.

Lane, a former Panthers running back, was shot to death by his wife, Deidre. She was sentenced in November to a maximum prison term of nearly eight years.

"All those incidents had really turned off Charlotte fans," Packer said. "There definitely was a desire for more integrity and more leadership from the players and owners to help erase the bad taste in everyone's mouths."

For the Panthers, everything hit rock bottom on Jan. 6, 2002, when Carolina set an NFL record for most consecutive defeats in a single season at 15. The Panthers lost, ironically, at home 38-6 to the New England Patriots - their opponents in Super Bowl XXXVIII on Feb. 1. The Panthers drew just 21,700 fans to a stadium that holds 73,258. Area media labeled the team and the city with a "Loserville" tag.

Panthers owner Jerry Richardson fired George Seifer, the head coach, the next day and hired John Fox on Jan. 25.

"The rebirth of the Panthers began with that hiring," said Max Muhleman, a sports marketer based in Charlotte. "John set the tone with a physical, relentless style of play for a team of mostly unheralded players that people could cheer for without feeling like they were going to be let down again.

"There was a certain amount of stigma about all those off-field incidents that lingers even though those things happen in life and with other businesses. What happened to Carruth and Lane doesn't diminish who the Panthers have become, but it does tend to take on-field success to put those images into the past."

The next step to resuscitating Charlotte as a pro-sports town came in December 2002 when the NBA awarded an expansion franchise to Robert Johnson, the founder of the Black Entertainment Television network, for $300 million. Johnson became the first black person to hold majority ownership in a major pro-sports franchise.

Johnson was assisted in his franchise bid by the Charlotte City Council's commitment to build a $265 million downtown arena if the NBA would return to the city. About $125 million will come from a city hotel/motel tax and a car-rental tax. Charlotte's three biggest companies - Bank of America Corp., Wachovia Corp. and Duke Energy Corp. - plan to advance the city an additional $100 million, and the team will contribute $40 million. Johnson is attempting to mend fences with fans by hiring former Hornets favorites to front-office posts with the Bobcats.

But Muhleman said that because of the Hornets' debacle, Johnson wouldn't have a long honeymoon with Charlotte fans once the Bobcats begin playing this fall.

"Even though the Bobcats appear to be doing everything right so far, there will be a lot of eyes on how well they perform on and off the court," Muhleman said. "Even though there are more corporations here now than in 1988, there's only so much corporate sponsorship money to go around."

Charlotte received another pro-sports boost from Wachovia's decision to move its corporate headquarters from Winston-Salem to the city after First Union Corp.'s purchase of the bank in September 2001.

As part of establishing itself in its new hometown, Wachovia agreed to sponsor the Wachovia Championship, which became the first PGA Tour stop at Quail Hollow Country Club since the Kemper Open in 1979. The $5.6 million purse attracted most of the top-30 players on the PGA money list, and the tournament drew praise among the golfers as one of the top nonmajors on the tour.

"The last 365 days have certainly been a great sports run for the Charlotte area," Packer said.

One magical season may not completely erase all the bad pro-sports images about Charlotte among fans, said Scott Kelley, the director of the Center for Sports Marketing at the University of Kentucky.

"But Charlotte certainly can ride the glow from the Panthers for quite a while regardless if they win or not," Kelley said. "They are a feel-good story of a bunch of overachieving underdogs that I'm sure football fans will rally around as they get to know them in the lead-up to the Super Bowl."

Even though the Super Bowl is being played in Houston instead of Charlotte, the Panthers' appearance in the title game is "a chamber executive's dream," said Carroll Gray, the president of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce.

"This is the largest sporting event in the world outside the Olympics, and it's on a level by itself when it comes to a single-day event," Gray said.

"The national media already are calling down here to find out what we eat, how we entertain ourselves, what our top businesses are. I can't think of a better way to showcase Charlotte and the Carolinas to the nation and share the real image of our area compared with those stereotypes of the South being Mayberry and unsophisticated."

Gray said he is telling Charlotteans and Panther fans to live in the moment because of the ebb-and-flow nature of professional sports, especially the NFL, where parity and the salary gap serve to limit most teams' annual playoff hopes. "As young as the Panthers are, and with the commitment to quality and integrity that you've seen from Jerry Richardson and John Fox and the players, there's no reason that they can't make the playoffs on a consistent basis," Gray said. "But we're also striking for Super Bowl gold while the fire's hot."

Kelley said that it's important not to underestimate the role that professional sports play in a metropolitan area. "The establishment of the Hornets lent credibility to Charlotte that it was a major-league city," Kelley said. "The Hornets' debut roughly paralleled the timing of Charlotte becoming a major-league business city in banking and attracting other corporate headquarters.

"My guess is that the national media and football fans will discover the real Charlotte, just as it discovered the real Nashville when the Tennessee Titans made the Super Bowl."

Muhleman said that Charlotte has been dealing with lack-of-respect issues ever since he assisted Shinn with pursuing a NBA franchise. "I remember the day we made our presentation to the NBA in Phoenix that a newspaper columnist wrote in that day's edition that the best franchise Charlotte had a chance to get was one with golden arches," Muhleman said.

"We were able to overcome that image, which was pivotal because many people only perceive you as a big-league town when you have a big-league team. Even with the Hornets doing as well as they did early on, it took getting an NFL franchise to really put Charlotte on the pro-sports map."

Packer said that the Panthers' Super Bowl appearance would help the team and the city earn national media respect. "We laugh when David Letterman wonders if they are any hard-core Panthers fans, but that's the perception out there for a lot of people," Packer said.

"What epitomizes that perception was when ABC did the Dallas-Carolina playoff game and Al Michaels and John Madden were saying that West Coast fans didn't know which part of Carolina the Panthers were based, Charlotte, Raleigh or in South Carolina."

Packer cautions that Charlotte still has a ways to go when it comes to developing a pro-sports heritage. "Compared to the fan bases in a St. Louis, Philadelphia or Kansas City, we're not there yet because we don't have their decades of pro-sports heritage," Packer said.

"The passion in this marketplace likely will remain ACC basketball and NASCAR, and if the pro teams are winning, that's icing on the cake."