Jerry Thornton - From Darkness to Dynasty: The First 40 Years of the New England Patriots

	THE FOOLISH CLUB

BILLY SULLIVAN AND THE AFL

Great moments are born of great opportunities.

HERB BROOKS, Miracle

I got to meet Billy Sullivan once. That would be the Billy Sullivan, founder and owner of the Boston Patriots. The man who single-handedly brought professional football to New England.

To most people who grew up in Massachusetts, this would be a throwaway story, one thats told in a casual, Guess who I met today, kind of way, repeated once or twice and then quickly forgotten. But to me, this was as big a deal as big deals get. I grew up as a football fan first in a football-first household on the South Shore of Boston at a time when almost no one in New England was a football fan first. So you bet meeting the man who gave birth to the franchise I loved and dedicated years of my life to was a big deal for me. Picture a political science major getting to meet the president. Or a jazz fan being introduced to Miles Davis. Picture a 30-year-old virgin in a Lieutenant Worf Starfleet uniform meeting Gene Roddenberry and youd have gone too far, but not by much.

I wasnt expecting a lot; the Sullivan-owned Patriots were without a doubt the worst-run organization in all of sports. At this time, I was in my late twenties and the Patriots of my formative years were almost always laughingstocks. For their first 40 years, they were as bush-league and incompetent off the field as they were bumbling and inept on it. In a popularity contest among the four Boston pro teams, the Pats couldnt make the medal stand. The region always belonged to (at different times) the Celtics, Red Sox, or Bruins. Id call the Patriots of the 60s through the 90s an afterthought, if I didnt think that would be a slur against afterthoughts.

I was introduced to Billy by my father-in-law on a summer morning in the mid-90s, when he took me for a round of golf at the country club he belonged to on Cape Cod. Its one of those exclusive private courses where you need to be an invited guest of a member to even make it through the gates. There were a lot of new-money members there, dot-com millionaires and so forth. But they still had a lot of the old guard guys like my father-in-law, a World War II vet who went to school on the GI Bill, made a decent living, and joined the club a generation ago when it was still somewhat affordable.

Id known that Billy Sullivan was also a club member, but on the few occasions Id been on the property Id never seen him. But Id always hoped to. After all, he was the man who founded the football team I loved. And who owned and ran the franchise most of my life, for better or worse. And it was mostly worse.

The impression I always had of the Sullivan Familyone that virtually every Patriots fan sharedwas that when it came to owing a professional sports organization, they were in way over their heads. That they had no football savvy and even less business acumen, and that you wouldnt trust them to run a snack bar at the beach, much less an NFL franchise.

So on this particular day, I was loosening up near the starters shed and waiting to be sent up to first tee when my father-in-law called me over because there was someone he wanted me to meet. It was Billy Sullivan. A lifetime of preconceived notions prepared me to be unimpressed.

And the life lesson I learned from the meeting was, no matter how low your expectations of anything are, you can still walk away from it disappointed.

Billy Sullivan was a very nice man. Friendly, gregarious. An affable old Irishman with a lilt in his voice and a loud laugh. The kind of guy pubs, offices, and golf courses around Massachusetts are lousy with. And a man it was impossible not to like. Someone very much like my wifes father, only with the baggage of being the undisputed Worst Owner in Sports.

And thats where the crushing disappointment hit. As I was standing there shaking the old boys hand and listening to the two of them bust each others chops about their golf games, it struck me that these could be any two old bucks Id ever met. Theres a pair of guys like them sitting at the bar in every Knights of Columbus in New England, talking over one another and laughing at their own jokes. It hit me that, while I wasnt expecting more out of Billy Sullivan, I was expecting, well... more.

Part of me wanted to feel like I was meeting a titan of industry. A business giant with power oozing out of every pore. An NFL owner is one of the great icons of American culture. So on some level I wanted to see something befitting a powerful man. An entourage, maybe? A security detail of sinister guys in mirrored shades wearing earpieces and talking into their cufflinks? I guess I wouldve just settled for him driving around Al Czervik-at-Bushwood style, in a Rolls Royce with a horn that plays Were in the Money. Instead, I got this unassuming, genial old man.

As fate would have it, a couple of decades later and under vastly different circumstances, Id get to meet Robert Kraft, a much more successful Patriots owner. Kraft would give off the same casual friendliness as Sullivan, but with an air of business savvy and power his predecessor lacked.

There is no more impressive and powerful a figure in modern society than the owner of a pro football team. None. Maybe 150 years ago it was railroad barons and industrialists, and I suppose for most of the 20th century it was politicians. They always said that the U.S. Senate is the most exclusive mens club in the world, but there are 100 Senators. There are 32 NFL owners. And as theyve proven thousands of times over, any nitwit can get elected. It takes real influence to buy a football team. So forgive me for thinking that anyone who owned a team would be larger than life; that, as Shakespeare said of Caesar, an NFL owner would bestride the narrow world like a colossus.

And Billy Sullivan shouldve been even more than that. Because he wasnt just some Lucky Spermer who was born rich and got to own Daddys team. This man was a pioneer. A founder of the American Football League. One of the dreamers who dared to believe they could found a league to rival the NFL, take on the behemoth and beat it at its own game. Those original AFL guys were visionaries. Real men of thought and action who made million-dollar deals over a steak, a cigarette, and a highball, then sealed it with a handshake. The kind of men that are a dying breed but whose names will live forever in the game because theyre cast in bronze on the Lamar Hunt Trophy and chiseled in granite at Ralph Wilson Stadium. You dont expect to find legends like that standing around in baggy shorts and a big sun hat giving your father-in-law a ration of shit about his backswing. You expect more of them. Its a bit like meeting James Bond as he leaves the mens room stall in a Wendys, and he says, You do NOT want to go in there, Chief. Its more ordinary than youre ready for.

Unless, of course, you happen to be a New England Patriots fan. At least, a Pats fan who remembers the bad old days. If you were following them back then, before all the Super Bowl championships and the dynasty talk and the new stadium, when every season was a struggle for even minimal respectability, then the Billy Sullivan I metthat run-of-the-mill, garden-variety, charming but not terribly impressive old Irishmanwas exactly what youd expect the founder of the Pats to be.

THE PIPE DREAM

Theres only one thing America loves better than a great success story. And thats a great success story that has humble beginnings. And as beginnings go, the birth of the Patriots is about as humble as they come.