RB AJ Dillon - Photo from packers.com/news
By KEN BELSON
On a sunny summer day two years ago, Mark Murphy hosted one of the most unusual events in corporate America: the Green Bay Packers’ annual meeting. Thousands of the team’s shareholders — almost all of them fans who had paid hundreds of dollars for nearly worthless shares — filled Lambeau Field and listened to Murphy, the team’s president and CEO, provide updates on the state of the franchise.
Murphy is the antithesis of corporate slick. He speaks bluntly, eschews jargon and disarms critics with a dry sense of humor. One of the many topics he covered that day was the coming season’s schedule. He said the Packers would play the most games in prime time of any team, a sign of their success and popularity. Then he addressed a frequent complaint from fans who said night games at an open-air stadium in Wisconsin were too cold.
“I often hear from fans that, gosh, it would be great if we had more noon home games,” he said. “Well, here’s the reality. If we have a lot of noon home games,” we’re a terrible team. Murphy substituted an expletive for “terrible.”
The fans erupted in laughter. Murphy made his point, but with a smile.
On Monday, Murphy will preside over his 17th and final shareholder meeting. Next year, he will hit the Packers’ mandatory CEO retirement age of 70 and must step down. Ed Policy, the team’s chief operating officer and general counsel, was chosen last month as his successor and will take over next July.
“I feel very fortunate to be in this position,” Murphy said. “I’ve been in it for a long time now.”
Policy, who has worked alongside Murphy for a dozen years, is best known for creating Titletown, a 45-acre development across the street from the stadium that includes a hotel, offices, restaurants and apartments and provides the team with an extra source of revenue. But the CEO of the Packers is a different, one-of-a-kind job.
As the leader of the only publicly owned, nonprofit professional sports team, he represents the Packers at NFL meetings, where his vote counts the same as owners who paid 10 figures for their clubs. Unlike them, he flies commercial and doesn’t report to family members or limited partners, but to a board of directors and 539,000 shareholders whose stock pays no dividends and can’t be traded.
The CEO is also the titular caretaker of an original NFL franchise and a globally recognized brand that doubles as a civic institution in Wisconsin.
Policy, whose father, Carmen, was a longtime executive with the San Francisco 49ers and the Cleveland Browns, has plenty of NFL experience. But fully replacing Murphy will be difficult. Murphy has a law degree and a master’s of business administration, and before joining the Packers in 2007, he played eight seasons as a defensive back in the NFL and won a Super Bowl with Washington, tried cases for the Department of Justice, and worked as a college athletic director at Colgate and Northwestern universities.
He sits on the NFL’s influential competition committee, where his views on player safety get attention. His experience at the NFL Players Association — where he was a player representative during the 1982 strike, and later worked for the union’s chief, Gene Upshaw — was a big reason NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell asked him to join the owners who negotiated the renewal of the league’s labor agreement in 2011.
“He was always thoughtful because he could give both perspectives, and he was respected,” said Pete Abitante, a former longtime NFL executive. “But Murph is so understated I’m not even sure how many players knew he was a former player.”
Murphy, who grew up in western New York and went to Colgate, gets that the Packers are a quirky outlier in the NFL. Founded in 1919, the Packers are a link to the league’s early years, when teams dotted the Midwest. In keeping with the team’s public ownership, Murphy is remarkably transparent by NFL standards. He writes newsletters to fans, where he sometimes discusses uncomfortable news such as the league’s recent defeat in an antitrust lawsuit challenging the Sunday Ticket television package. Murphy holds conference calls to discuss the team’s earnings, providing a window into the league’s tightly guarded finances.
This month, the team said its operating income fell 12.5%, to $60.1 million, last fiscal year. Revenue grew by 7.2%, to $654 million, nearly three times as much as when Murphy arrived in 2007.
“I think the finances are important because we want to make sure that we’re providing the football side with the resources they need to be successful,” Murphy said.
Because the team is without a deep-pocketed owner who can absorb losses or splurge on big projects, Murphy has built a $536 million corporate reserve that grew by $76 million last year.
“This is kind of our alternative to having a rich owner — nothing against rich owners,” Murphy quipped.
Some Green Bay residents chafe at Titletown and other ways the Packers have encroached on the surrounding neighborhood, not unlike neighbors who live near Chicago’s Wrigley Field and Boston’s Fenway Park, which have expanded their footprints. Others wonder whether the complex will erode some of the small-town charm that makes Green Bay unique.
“It’s something we’re sensitive to,” Murphy said recently. “I’m a little biased, but overall, Titletown is a great addition to the community. We have all kinds of events going on year-round. I think it’s been overwhelmingly positive.”
The visiting crowds will get larger in April when the NFL holds the draft in Green Bay, a three-day event that Murphy lobbied for and will end up being his swan song as the most visible nonplayer in the league’s smallest market.
“You do get some criticism,” Murphy said. “But knock on wood, I think we’ve been successful enough that most people think, well, you didn’t screw it up too bad.”
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