Razzle Dazzle

By Robert Blair Kaiser

Headstrong Jessica Burns inherits the sorry, ever-losing New York Jets and vows (against the advice of her father, a winning high school coach in Colorado) to bring more fun and less violence to the NFL. She does this despite the opposition of the other owners, and the disbelief of most of the media, by finding a washed up coach in a wheel chair in the Arizona desert, falling in love with him, and hiring him to bring his revolutionary new razzle dazzle offense to New York. Win Markey was an offensive coordinator at the St. Louis Rams until his Porsche crashed on a snowy highway and left him a paraplegic. Now, given new life and a new love in Manhattan, he coaches with heart and wit (out of a wheel chair!) that surprises the football world and takes the Jets--and Jessica Burns--through a wondrous, record-breaking season all the way to the Super Bowl.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Blair Kaiser
• Release date: Mar 9, 2012
• ISBN: 9781452494425

Robert Blair Kaiser

Reporter for The New York Times, prize-winning foreign correspondent (for Time) and, later, for Newsweek in Rome, journalism chairman at the Univ. of Nevada Reno, author of 13 published books and one prize-winning musical comedy.

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Prologue

MY FATHER CAME RIGHT OUT AND TOLD ME I should sell the club. You know football, Jessica. But you do not know the football business. The other owners will treat you like you slept your way to the top.

I made a face, but I ignored the slept part. (If he only knew.) I told him. Dad, I can bring more fun and less violence to the NFL.

He growled at me. He said he didn’t think it was fitting for us to be talking about the Jets so soon after Charlie’s drowning in the surf off Golden Beach. We had left St. Patrick's Cathedral only minutes ago, and now we were in the backseat of my limo with Charlie’s ashes, headed to the cemetery above Sag Harbor. His voice softened. Charlie's not even in the grave yet.

Ashes. I toed the urn at my feet. Not going in a grave. In a vault.

Okay, Charlie Burns’s ashes are not in the vault yet, and you are talking about changing the face of the NFL. Now he sounded like a prosecuting attorney.

I bit my lip, and nodded yes, meaning that, yes, I did want to change the face of the NFL.

The owners will not let you do that. They do not want change.

Most of the owners are Republicans. They hate change.

They love profit.

Normally, I do not come off looking so sure of myself. But with my father, I make exceptions. He was a winner and he always encouraged me in the boldness it takes to be a winner. If they listen to me, I told him, they’ll make even more profit.

He shook his head. Jessica, their profits are at an all time high. What makes you think they will listen to you? I responded to that by smiling and bouncing in my seat, doing my best impression of Marilyn Monroe, Jello on springs. He blushed and said, "Oh, they will look at your Busen, but they will not listen to your ideas."

Because?

Because you’re a woman. I sagged. No argument about that. You will have zero power at the owners’ meetings. You will not have much power in the league office either. Goodell and his staff will only pretend to listen to you.

Goodell and his staff need me.

Why do they need you?

The game’s gotten out of hand and the league doesn't know what to do about it. It's become too violent. I want to show everyone we can take away some of the violence.

The real fans—American fans—love the violence. That is why pro football is the most popular sports thing in this country. Take that away and—

We replace it with fun. We can put fun back into football.

‘Back?’ It was never much fun, not even in the leather helmet days. Today, the NFL is a business. A big, tough, dangerous business.

Okay. I won’t say ‘back.’ I know how pro football started. I recited some of what I knew about the history of the game. Let me just say I want to make the game more fun than it’s been in my lifetime. More fun for the fans. More fun, and less lethal, for the players.

How you going to do that?

The limo had almost arrived in Sag Harbor. I’ve got some ideas, Dad. You may have some, too. Maybe at dinner tonight, just you and me?

My father shook his head, and muttered something in German. I didn’t understand the words. But I hoped they didn't mean that Hans Blessing wasn't going to give me his blessing.

He gave me a clue that he would when he reached over and gave me a fatherly hug, then whispered in my ear. Just one thing, Jessica, one bit of advice to save you from yourself, as you plunge into saving pro football.

I told him I was listening.

He pulled back, his blue eyes boring into my blue eyes. You cannot go into a league meeting like you are General Custer, guns blazing. Just promise me one thing. That you will do nothing for a year. Just let the boys in the Jets' front office run things their way next season. Go to the owners’ meetings, and smile, and vote with the majority, and say nothing.

That struck me as unrealistic. No matter what the situation, I generally have something to say. Do nothing for a year? I asked. Say nothing for a year?

I know. Hard for you to say nothing. But--

I cut him off. What do I do about the team itself? Say nothing about the dumb-ass coaches? Say nothing about our boozy linemen? Say nothing about our cretinous wide receiver who makes all kinds of noise, on and off the field, if he doesn’t get at least five touches a game?

You keep quiet for a season. Then you will be dealing from a position of--

Strength? I don’t think so. My strength will come from my ideas.

Yes, but in a year you will have time to prepare those ideas. Life is preparation, preparation, preparation.

Who said that?

Johnny Cochrane?

I scoffed.

Well, you must give him credit. He sprung O.J.

I snapped, That doesn’t win him any applause here.

He told me to lighten up.

At the cemetery, the limo eased to a stop. Whoever it was who underlined the need for preparation, I could only agree with him. But I didn’t want to give in so easily to my dad. I was still shaking my head dubiously when he tried to have the last word. Try to stay invisible. No news conferences. Keep away from the press. No telling your favorite reporters or columnists what your plans are. Promise me that?

I said I would think about it.

#

I did think about it, and so, for a year, I maintained a low public profile, and worked as a kind of apprentice in all the Jets’ business departments. Stadium. Season Tickets. Travel. Scouting. Media. Finance. Community Relations. That gave me something to do--a busy distraction--getting through my stages of grieving over Charlie while I suffered through an entire season. Home games in the owner's box at Met Life Stadium in New Jersey. Away games, I stayed alone with my 3D-TV in the shelter of my penthouse suite in the Trump Tower--except for the company of my father on the phone in Aspen. He commiserated with me every Sunday. A few lucky wins at home, none on the road. A veteran quarterback who amazed me with his ability to avoid serious injury. Coaches on the sidelines who never smiled. Cheerleaders who smiled because they were getting paid to smile, but had little to cheer about. At times, even I, always expecting the best, and usually getting it, fell into despair. Surprisingly enough, my father, the same guy who wanted me to sell the team when Charlie died, half-encouraged me now to see what I could do with the Jets. I think he wanted to see some of his old fantasies play out in me. Now I was ready to make my debut.

#

CHAPTER ONE

Manifesto

A minute after the final gun of the season’s last game, a 49-9 drubbing in Gillette Stadium at the hands of the Patriots, I left the visiting owner’s box, took an elevator to the locker room for a 12-second meeting with the coaching staff, then caught another elevator to the pressroom.

I am firing Coach Voaring and his entire staff tonight, I announced without delivering any kind of preamble. In fact, I just did. I told him a few minutes ago. Jack Tracy here will stay on. I pointed to my general manager standing in back of the crowd. He knows the territory, and he will give the club some continuity. Tracy, an offensive guard for the Jets in the 1980s, now a hundred pounds over his fighting weight, waved at the crowd and smiled.

I am going to keep this club, I told the media, because I’ve decided to make it into a winner.

A buzz went around the room and I knew what that was all about. Yes, I know you’ve heard these rosy promises before. Six seasons ago, just a few weeks before our honeymoon. Charlie Burns took over the stadium PA system in the last minute of our horrible last-game-of-the-season against the Dolphins and apologized to the fans and told them, in three years, his Jets would be playing in the Super Bowl.

The reporters cackled over the memory.

You’re laughing now, I told them, because you knew Charlie Burns knew how to make billions in real estate. You soon learned he didn’t know how to run a winning club in the NFL.

General nods from the press crowd over that. They stopped nodding when I said, I think I do. I think I know how to make the Jets into winners. And I am going to bring them back to Manhattan.

At first, stunned silence in the press room. Now here was this 39-year-old blonde who carried herself like Princess Di, standing before three dozen reporters and seven TV cameras in a red silk Armani suit with matching red silk shoes from Ferragamo, bedizened with three million dollars worth of baubles, bangles and beads from Bulgari. This bimbo had the, the guts to make a boast like that? The dog ass Jets? Winners? And they couldn’t even imagine what I meant about bringing the Jets to Manhattan.

It looked like these members of the press would pretend they didn’t hear me, too polite to remark on the equivalent of a big belch at the dinner party. They’d just keep quiet, hope I’d change the subject, or maybe have a humility attack or something—anything they could report that would make me look the part their editors had long ago assigned me—a dumb blonde who had fallen into a franchise in the NFL.

But no, they couldn’t hold their tongues. Representatives of the Boston press broke the silence first, out-toughing their New York colleagues. A half dozen of them cried out the same question at the same time, How you gonna make the Jets into winners, Mrs. Burns?

When the uproar subsided, I smiled and took my time before I spoke, trying to make contact with every pair of eyes in the room and with the lens of every camera. "Let me tell you what I believe about the NFL. If you take an objective, scientific, measurable, quantifiable look at the players in this league, you’d have to say that, between them, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference. All the running backs and wide receivers run the forty in four point five seconds or less. All the linebackers can press six to nine hundred pounds. All the offensive linemen have high I.Q.s. The difference is in the coaches. Some coaches just know how to win. They don’t win with X’s and O’s. They win, as my dad used to say, mit Herz und Witz. Und mit Leib und Vernügen. With heart and wit. And with love and a sense of fun.

I paused while the press people conferred with one another. Who’s she talking about? Who’s her dad? One of them had done his homework, and he whispered the basics to the men and women reporters around him, and they, in turn, shared with the rest, until, in moments, the whole group knew: Jessica Burns’s dad was a high school football coach who had won nine 5-A state championships in Colorado.

I let the news about my dad circle the room. When the hum subsided, from the sea of hands demanding to ask the next question, I singled out the man who had done his homework. You there, the man next to the ESPN camera?

Bill Schwarzkopf, Mrs. Burns. One obvious question. You going to hire your dad?

My dad, Hans Blessing, is seventy-five years old. He and my mom live in a cute little chalet in Aspen, enjoying their retirement. She paints. For more than five months a year, they ski almost every day. In the summer, they play a pretty good game of tennis, doubles mostly, and they have some favorite catch-and-release trout streams nearby. They both tie their own flies. He’s the happiest man I know. And she’s the happiest woman. He’d never come work in New York. And she wouldn’t let him if he wanted to.

So, if not Hans Blessing, who? Where you going to find men who will coach as you say,--Schwarzkopf consulted his notes—with heart and wit and with love and a sense of fun?

I smiled, pleased with a reporter who took good notes. Not sure I’ll find ‘em available in the NFL But I am sure those kinds of men are out there, maybe on a college campus in Minnesota, or maybe they’re coaching in some high school in California or Texas or Florida. In fact, I have a sudden thought. ESPN may help me find them. Tell Stu Scott at Sports Center to ask his audience if any of them know the kind of man I am looking for.

Women needn’t apply? asked Schwarzkopf.

Gosh, that’s a mischievous question. To be politically correct, I should say women can apply, too. But I don’t need to be politically correct. I am not running for public office. And even if I were, I’d say what I believe about women. Women can do a lot of things men can do, and a lot of things men can’t do, like have babies, for instance. But they can’t–and shouldn’t—make war. Women should make peace, not war. I don’t think the U.S. Army or the Navy or the Marines or the Air Force should send women into combat. And I don’t think we ought to have women coaching in the NFL—which is also a kind of battleground if you stop to think about it.

A hum of approval from this crowd. Schwarzkopf turned to his soundman. You get all that, José? José gave him a thumbs up.

I smiled. Any other questions?

Rick Goldberg, the beat reporter in New York for the Associated Press, said, I will take a chance here and ask an even more obvious question, Mrs. Burns. Where does a woman get off running a team in the NFL?"

I was ready for that. Georgia Irwin Geiger Johnson Wyler Hayes Rosenbloom Frontiere did it with the St. Louis Rams. Went to the Super Bowl three times.

He nodded. I think he was wondering how I could remember the names of Georgia’s six husbands. Yes. But we did not see Georgia as much of a hands-on owner. And she did not have to operate in New York City where the media pressure—

I interrupted him. Mr. Goldberg, I know about media pressure. For five years, I was one of the people applying that pressure.

Okay he said. He knew I ended my broadcast career—before I married Charlie Burns—with my own interview show on ESPN. You will handle the media, all right. Hums of approval from the newsmen and women here.

Ava Johnson Blake from The Times said she assumed I would get rid of the Jets’ cheerleaders.

A-S-S-U-M-E, Ms. Blake, makes an ass out of you and me.

In an upper class New York honk, she corrected me. Johnson-Blake.

Sorry. Ms. Johnson-Blake.

She accepted my apology and asked for clarification. You mean you are not going to get rid of the cheerleaders?

I told her that when I was working in the club’s p.r. office in October, I polled our season ticket holders and asked them to rate our cheerleaders. I was surprised to learn that 72 percent of them indicated strong approval, and only 4.3 percent strong disapproval. We did an analysis of the nay-sayers. Most of them were professional celibates.

She frowned. So you’re inclined to keep the cheerleaders on?

I’d like to give the Jets fans what they want.

Even though the NFL cheerleaders represent an objectification of sexuality?

Come again, Ms. Johnson-Blake?

You’ve feminized these young women and eroticized them. Moans from the largely male press corps.

Feminized? That’s an abstraction, Ms. Johnson-Blake. Fact is, our cheerleaders were feminine long before they tried out for a dancing job with the Jets. And eroticized? What do you mean by that?

Hoots from the press.

Well, they are half-naked. Ripe for exploitation by television.

Ms. Johnson-Blake, I wonder if you’ve ever seen a network game on television? The producers in the truck hardly ever show the cheerleaders at work. Maybe a total of ten seconds every game.

Ms. Johnson-Blake gave a nervous laugh.

I should have let it go at that. But I didn’t. I couldn’t help telling her there were only six clubs in the NFL who didn’t have cheerleaders. I ticked them off. Green Bay, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and the New York Giants. I leave it up to you to tell me what those cities have in common.

The sportswriters in the room filled in Johnson-Blake’s silence with their buzz. What did those cities have in common?

Dave Gunnerson of The Times asked the thoughtful question I was waiting for. You are one of the wealthiest women in America. Why do you need your own team in the NFL? What are you trying to prove?

I was ready for that. The game’s gotten out of hand and the league doesn't know what to do about it. It's become too violent. I want to show everyone we can take away some of the violence.

Gunnerson said, The real fans—American fans—love the violence. Take that away and—

We replace it with fun. Why do you think people are calling it the No Fun League? We can put fun back into pro football.

‘Back?’ It was never much fun. Not even in the leather helmet days. Today, pro football is a business. A big, tough, dangerous business.

I smiled I’d like to help make it a big, tough, less dangerous, more fun business.

The reporters did not smile. The look on their faces said, Well, good luck with that.

Suzie Carter of The Boston Globe changed the subject. Mrs. Burns, several years ago, you established yourself as something of a peacenik. Your full-page ads in our paper, and a lot of others, I guess, were pushing for worldwide nuclear disarmament. How does this square with your desire to run a football team in the NFL?

Where’s the conflict?

I mean, how can a lover of peace condone the violence in the NFL?

Football’s a tough game. But I don’t condone the violence. Not the kind of violence that leads to concussions and makes some of our linemen senile at age forty-five.

Ms. Carter persisted. You have something in mind that will prevent brain damage in the NFL?

Let’s say ‘make it less likely?’ Yes. Roger Goodell and his staff and the players’ union have already taken some precautions—to keep men out of the game after they’ve had a concussion. I have some other ideas, about preventing concussions in the first place. Maybe some rules changes.

More murmurs from the press crowd.

George Vessy of The Sporting News asked, Specifically, what rules changes?

Specifically, I can't tell you. Some better heads than I have been trying to figure out what changes we can make without destroying the game.

You wanna change the NFL to the NTFL? Vessy put the emphasis on the T.

So did I. "NTFL?

The National Touch Football League?

I said, That’s a reductio ad absurdum, my friend. There’s nothing wrong with good old-fashioned tackle football. For boys, not girls. All over the country young men in high school play in pretty fast competition. According to a recent study by the Nike Foundation, fewer than one in twenty thousand high school players come away with concussions. In my dad’s league in Colorado, they’ve had two concussions in ten years.

Mark Lipton of Channel 2 in New York broke through the uproar. Mrs. Burns, he asked. Did we hear you say you were going to bring the Jets to Manhattan? What about your fifteen-year-contract with the Met Life Stadium in New Jersey? Are you saying the Jets are going to skip out of that contract?

We won’t skip out. The contract has an escape clause. The Jets can use that escape clause, if the Jets are willing to pay the penalty.

"What is the penalty?"

I don’t know exactly. But whatever it is I can afford it.

Laughter from the press crowd.

Where in Manhattan are the Jets going to play? This from a writer for Sports Illustrated who came to the Jets’ final game because he had a tip (from me, actually) that I was coming out of seclusion today.

We will build our own stadium. The Charlie Burns Stadium. We already have the land in midtown and hired the architects. Eventually, we’d like the development of this stadium to trigger a remake of Manhattan's West Side. More murmurs from the crowd. We hope to break ground in the spring. My p.r. people will have an information packet for you as you leave today. It’s embargoed ‘til five p.m. Wednesday. That will give you time to digest the plan before my lawyers and I take your questions about it at a news conference in Manhattan on Tuesday. Ten a.m. at the offices of Cravath, Swain and Moore.

General hullabaloo, some reporters interviewing one another, some texting editors on their cell phones.

You sound pretty well prepared, Mrs. Burns, said the writer from Sports Illustrated.

That’s the secret of life, Mister – uh, Mister? I pretended not to know him.

Jones. Cabot Jones.

My dad had once guided this writer on a newly discovered trout stream in Colorado, and I had gone along on the trip. Jones and I had become friends. Three secrets in life, Mr. Jones. Preparation, preparation, preparation.

Who said that?

Originally? Maybe Alexander the Great. My father, Hans Blessing, used to drum that into his kids during his practices at Cheyenne Mountain High. He had a lot of other sayings, too. They were corny, but the kids believed them. And won with them.

"Mike Lupica from The Daily News, Mrs. Burns. What about the Giants? They going to stay in the Met Life?"

You’d have to ask the Giants about that. They can do what they want.

Lupica said, The Giants will not be happy—big time—if the Jets come to Manhattan–and they have to stay in Jersey.

I hope they don’t stay. They can come back to Manhattan, and lease their Sundays from us.

At what price, Mrs. Burns?

I just don’t know right now. Depends on a number of things. I flashed a big smile. If they’re nice to me, I could be very nice to them.

#

IN GENERAL, THE PRESS WAS NICE TO ME. In a Monday column, Dave Gunnerson, the grand old man of The Times, called my coming out proclamation the Burns Manifesto, a phrase that had a geo-political ring to it, one that recalled the ambition of a Karl Marx. Gunnerson reached into sports history for an even better metaphor. Her promise, Gunnerson wrote, had a Ruthian flavor, reminding us of that day in the 1932 World Series when the Sultan of Swat called his shot into the center field bleachers at Wrigley Field. But that was only one grand gesture, one home run of the many that marked Ruth’s career. Jessica Burns outRuthed Ruth yesterday by a factor of ten. Only thing is, she hasn't hit any home runs yet. Or won a single football game. She's got a long way to go, baby.

I fared a little better in an editorial in The Wall Street Journal:

Mrs. Burns is one the first tycoons of America’s new gilded age, and the first woman. She and Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are turning their vast wealth to philanthropy, as John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and John Jacob Astor did a century ago. This trio, all New Yorkers, gave back much of their wealth to the community that made it possible for them to earn it. Which it seems Mrs. Burns is doing now, with her announcement that she intends to start remodeling Manhattan starting with a football arena in its core.

She says she won’t be able to do it all herself. The Burns’ will was probated this week. Charles W. Burns left her his whole estate, $32 billion, and she says she has allocated $10 billion of it to remake Manhattan. Remaking Manhattan, she admits, may take several trillion dollars. She calls her $10 billion mere seed money. She believes she will get other entrepreneurs involved in the rebuilding of our nation’s first city, people who won’t mind doing well as they do good. And our guess is she will find the venture capitalists she is looking for.

No, Mrs. Burns did not earn her fortune. She inherited it from her deceased husband, Charles W. Burns. But Mr. Burns took advantage of a peculiar new moment in history, when he was able to leverage his early earnings in New York real estate with a singular application of vision and hard work. He multiplied his billions by taking his company public—as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have done, and Mrs. Burns has hinted she might take the Jets public, too.

We thought Mrs. Burns was merely a trophy wife. But it seems--against all expectations–she has the same qualities that vaulted her husband to the top: an ability to think outside the box, courage, and the smarts to see things not as they are, but how they might be. We salute her smarts and her seeing.

I don’t know where the editorial writer for The Journal got that bit about my taking the Jets public. At that time, I’d never even thought about it. But no matter. I’ve had good press and I’ve had bad. And, believe me, good press is better.

Roy Blount made me smile when he rhapsodized over Jessica Burns in a guest commentary for 60 Minutes. For awhile there, the sports scene was beginning to bore me. Now, this Burns woman has re-started my engines. I cannot wait to see how she intends rebuilding Manhattan's West Side, and, at the heart of it, a new football stadium. Most of all, I cannot wait to see what she does to bring fun back into the No Fun League. God, I love this woman.

In a Monday morning blog in The Post, Harold Stein, a political columnist, said he was charmed by the huge gamble Jessica Burns was taking--attempting to spur a rebuilding of Manhattan's West Side. But he voiced skepticism over my wish to bring fun back to pro football. The other owners in the NFL didn’t get where they are by being romantics. Their game survives and thrives because it appeals to the brutish elements in American society that love violence. That’s on the field. Off the field, these gentlemen will not take kindly to a curvy blonde who wants to make the game into a love match. Take kindly? That’s an understatement. I know one or two of them who would (if they could) cut her heart out with a whiskey bottle.

CHAPTER TWO

Blessing

My father growled at me when I called him on my iPhone the morning after my news conference. I was on my headset, working out on my Power Plate my3 in the fitness room of my suite in the Trump Tower. It was 6 a.m. in Aspen. I guessed he was sitting at the breakfast table in his chalet, pouring himself his first cup of coffee.

Turn on Sports Center, I told him. You might see me—

He cut me off. I saw your news conference from Gillette Stadium last night. Live on ESPN. I am disappointed. I know my limitations. I wish my only daughter knew hers.

Dad!

"Face it, Jessica. You do not know Scheiss about running a franchise in the NFL." He’d been an American citizen for 40 years, but he still tended to cuss in German.

"Don’t know Scheiss? I almost shouted. I thought my father and I had already gone over that. I lived with Charlie Burns. For as long as he’d owned the Jets. For six years, I watched him—"

He interrupted. You watched him make more than thirty billion dollars in New York real estate. That should make you an expert in New York real estate. You also watched his Jets struggle through six losing seasons. That should not make you any kind of football expert. You should stick to real estate.

I’m not interested in real estate.

You lie. I saw your eyes light up in that news conference last night when you talked about making over Manhattan.

Dad, believe me. Remodeling Manhattan was only an afterthought.

Too bad. You could make a lot of money.

"I already have a lot of money, Dad. I am filthy rich. I am interested in the Jets. The headline writers at The Post have been calling them The Jest. I want them to start winning."

That figures. You always wanted to win. Needed to win. I detected a note of pride in his voice, not shame, when he confessed, I know. My fault. I am the guy who made you into a competitor. He couldn’t help doing that. He had been a World Cup racer when he met my mom in Aspen.

Yes. What was I? Four? Five?

Yeah. We started you skiing at four, and entered you in local races a year later. He wasn’t surprised–given my nature and my nurture—to see me excel on the slopes. I wound up with a skiing scholarship at the University of Colorado, and made the U.S. Olympic Team in 1994. I was on my way to winning a medal at Lillehammer in Norway when I blew out my knee on an icy slope overlooking Lake Mjøsa.

So why are you fighting me now–for wanting to win with the Jets?

He sighed. I have no problem with your wanting to win. But how are you going to do that?

Charlie taught me how to do it.

Charlie taught you? He pointed out Charlie Burns’s Jets had won exactly twenty games in six years. That is –

Three and a third games a season.

Right. Now nobody wants to pay to see the Jets play any more. Real New Yorkers, the dumb hopeful ones, will watch the Jets on TV–up to a point. But they won’t make the trip across the Hudson to watch them.

That’s my point, Dad. From Charlie, I learned what not to do.

So you’re going to do the exact opposite?

Uh huh.

"Very clever. But that is a vague formula for success. What exactly is the opposite?"

I’ve been watching the Jets for seven seasons, listening to Charlie’s stomach grumble a little louder through six of them, and listening to my own stomach growl for the last one. By now, I know what their problem is.

"What is their problem?"

Looking at my gold Rolex, I said, Just a minute, Dad. I dismounted the trainer, wrapped myself in a pink terry cloth robe, and accepted a protein and blueberry skim-milk shake from my Dorothy, my maid, and asked her to feed Muggsy. I had had him for three years, since he was a puppy, a pit bull whose mild temperament belied his breed’s reputation.

My father repeated his question. "Tell me, what is their problem?"

They weren’t having any fun. Charlie wasn’t having any fun. I have never seen Coach Voaring smile, not once. One day two seasons ago, when I was late getting to the owner's box before the Ravens' game, I saw four assistant coaches marching, heads down, to their skybox. Talk about grim! They looked like four of Hitler’s officers on their way to the bridge at Remagen.

What do you know about the bridge at Remagen?

Not much. But I saw the movie. The Germans got their asses kicked.

He admitted the analogy was a good one. The Jets’ coaches had to be a lot like those German officers. They knew they were going to get their asses kicked. They were getting their asses kicked every game. How could they be having any fun?

Uh huh.

So when you tell the whole world you are going to bring fun back into pro football, what do you mean? How you going to make the Jets–and the Jets fans—start laughing?

I. I’m not exactly sure. I guess they’ll start laughing when they start winning. But I have an intuition they won’t start winning until they start having fun. I think the two things are connected, but I don’t know which comes first.

He said that, in his 21 seasons coaching high school football in Colorado, his teams won and they had fun, but their winning and their fun were all of a piece. Hell, the kids even brought a turntable to the locker room and hooked it up to some big speakers and sang their songs before the games! He’d encouraged that. Their music kept them loose. But that was high school stuff, Jessica. How does a coach create the same magic with old pros playing the most violent game there is? For them, football is not fun. It is a serious, dangerous business. These men are faster and bigger and stronger than the players were only ten years ago. They hurt people, real bad, put men on crutches and wheel chairs, often for life. And they have very short careers. What is the average earning life in the NFL? A little more than–

Three point six years. For running backs, a little less.

He was glad I saw the point. So, what can you do to change that? Go to the competition committee and plead they alter the game? Make ‘em play flag football maybe?

I giggled at my father’s absurd suggestion. I knew the men on the committee, the long time owners from Pittsburgh, Detroit, Denver, Washington. They didn’t like changes of any kind. Three years ago, I had insisted Charlie Burns go before the committee and propose kick offs from the twenty-yard line–to give the runback specialists a better chance to break away. Eighty percent of the time, then, kick offs from the thirty-yard line landed in the end zone for touchbacks. A simple rule change could have restored one of the most exciting plays in football, the kick off runback.

Charlie took this to the competition committee? I never heard about that.

You didn’t hear about it, because Charlie kept the proposal to himself. He didn’t want to start a public debate about it before he took it to the league’s old men. They hated the idea. John Horgan of the Giants in particular. He took a long puff on his cigar and blew a big fat smoke ring and snarled something awful at Charlie. But Charlie stood up to the old coot. I was proud of him. He asked Horgan, ‘Any particular reason why you hate the idea, John?’

Were you there?

Are you kidding? They wouldn’t let a woman into those meetings of the competition committee. No, I wasn’t there. Charlie told me about it later.

What did Mr. Horgan say?

‘Blah, blah. And blah, blah, blah, blah.’

He actually say ‘blah blah?’

No, Dad. He said, ‘I don’t have to give you a fucking reason, Mr. Burns. I just don’t like it.’ All the owners voted with him. All except Al Davis. He abstained. Then, two years later, they went ahead and, instead of moving the kick off tee back to the twenty-yard-line, they moved it up the thirty-five. Now you hardly ever see a runback. They might as well just give the ball to the receiving team on the twenty.

CHAPTER THREE

Vertical

CONSTRUCTION OF BURNS STADIUM was not going to start as soon as I had imagined it might. In mid-January, Jean LaSalle, my chief architect, told me, before construction could begin, they would have to demolish four entire city blocks, the area called Hell’s Kitchen (80 percent of which I already owned) and truck the debris out to barges and send it to sea. That might take four months.

"You tell the demolition companies fifty percent bonuses if they can do it in two months. I want to see us open at home in Burns