Marlins show way for other franchises

 

By Dave George, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, January 28, 2004

 

 

 

Soon the Florida Marlins will be back in Jupiter, reminding us of how simple the operation of a professional sports franchise can be.

 

You've got your owner over here, see, and he's got a general manager over there, and the two of them hire and fire managers as they see fit, which leaves plenty of time for the team president to order the World Series rings and stump for a new stadium.

 

Oh, sure, there's other stuff involved, perplexing stuff, like deciding which players to keep and how much to pay them, but most anyone would agree that Jeffrey Loria's basic organizational flow chart is as sensible and as streamlined as you'll find when it comes to making all of the big calls for the team.

 

Over at the Dolphins' offices, the organizational flow has all the sweet and sluggish consistency of syrup. Everybody there is thrilled to be working with everybody else. Everybody is eager to get started on the new season, too, if only somebody will point them in the right direction.

 

It got more interesting this week with Norv Turner departing Miami's staff to coach the Oakland Raiders. An instant replacement, Joel Collier, was named as offensive coordinator, with the bonus of a competent assistant head coach named Marc Trestman to supervise the quarterbacks. Call it a two-for-one special, and call in a traffic cop, too, because suddenly there are more big cheeses circling the training facility's parking lot every morning than there are prime spaces to accommodate them.

 

I don't know if this has happened yet, but it could.

 

Say Wayne Huizenga helicopters over from downtown Fort Lauderdale to ask his brain trust if it might make sense to move up in the NFL Draft to grab a hot young quarterback. Reasonable proposition, right?

 

So Mr. H pops in on Eddie Jones, the Dolphins' president, and the two get busy building a consensus. Dan Marino, vice president of football operations, is easy enough to poll. Reached on the CBS Super Bowl set by cellphone, he says, "Yeah, go for it. Absolutely."

 

Rick Spielman, the general manager, is a little more careful, saying he'd like to meet first with his scouts to discuss which college passers are capable of stepping right into the competition in Miami.

 

Spielman suggests, out of courtesy, getting an opinion from his old boss, Dave Wannstedt, but the head coach isn't available at the moment. Seems Wannstedt's key doesn't open the executive washroom anymore, so he went downstairs to shower in the players' locker room following his morning workout.

 

A call goes in to Collier, the offensive coordinator, who was in his office running off new plays until the copy machine shut down. He's racing around the building searching for toner, having decided that it probably wouldn't be proper to ask Trestman, the assistant head coach, to do that for him.

 

Just as well, really. Trestman is still outside looking for a spot to squeeze in his car, and Huizenga's helicopter is vanishing in the distance on the way back downtown.

 

Naturally, South Florida's other major-league franchises don't do it this way.

 

The Florida Panthers have a general manager, Rick Dudley, who fired the coach, Mike Keenan, and took that job extra job on himself. That's the way it will stay for the final three months of the season, sort of a maintenance mode. Who in the front office is going to complain about that? If the Dolphins have too many voices, the Panthers don't have enough.

 

Our next business model is the Miami Heat, which has a general manager and a head coach and a giant boulder teetering over both of them.

 

That's the way it will stay until Pat Riley decides what he wants to do with his life. Riley resigned as coach but he didn't leave. He kept his title as team president but can't possibly be fulfilled by those duties. What's more, Riley maintains some equity ownership in the franchise, which means empty seats might well bother him more as a partner than they did as a coach. Someday change will come again, and it likely will undo everything that has come before.

 

Soon the Marlins will be back in Jupiter, rulers of the universe. Strange to think that they have become the symbol of efficient sports management around here, compared to all those years when securing a fully involved owner was trouble enough.

 

Luring a plucky old pro like Jack McKeon out of retirement to run the club was pretty sharp, all right, but the real genius was in ordering the leadership process so that every significant party in the organization saw the problem in the same way, and agreed on the most direct way to attack it.

 

Even if it hadn't all turned out so miraculously, the staff meetings never would have been as squirmy with the Marlins as they are with the other teams. Neither would the paralysis over what to do next have been so profound.

 

dave_george@pbpost.com

 

 

Interesting article on how The Marlins are showing others team down in South Florida how to act and run a team.

 

Compared to the Dolphins :mad : Hopefully they get their act together this year.

not really a stretch......

 

 

look at the other south florida teams...

Everyone loves a winner.

 

But it's a little premature IMO. Cry and whine all you like about the Dollies and how screwed up the front office is, they are one of the most successful franchises in the NFL over the last 30 years - there are few NFL cities (and few NFL owners) who wouldn't trade the track record of their team in for that of the Dolphins.

 

Besides, I think it's pretty clear that the success of the Marlin FO breaks down to about 90% Beinfest and 10% Luria.

 

And of course the countless integral contributions the red-headed stepchild has made.