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Champions 2015: Sharing stories

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SBJ Podcast Archive:
From Jan. 5: Executive Editor Abraham Madkour and Champions editor Tom Stinson discuss the 2015 class of The Champions: Pioneers & Innovators in Sports Business.

The Champions of 2015 gathered April 8 at the IMG World Congress of Sports in Los Angeles, where they entertained and inspired attendees with stories from their successful careers and their connections to their fellow honorees.

PHOTOS BY TONY FLOREZ PHOTOGRAPHY

DONNA DE VARONA

    It is amazing where sports can take us. I never thought when I bribed my way into my brother’s Little League dugout, which I did by offering bubble gum to the players, that this sports journey would take me to such inspiring places. …
     After hanging up my Speedo swimsuit at 17 for lack of opportunity to turn professional for my first stint as an expert analyst on ABC, I found myself in an exhilarating, creative environment, as we painted the once-blank canvas of how to cover amateur and Olympic-style sports. Continuing to stay in the spotlight through my on-air work helped me continue to play a role in opening up opportunities for women to take to the playing fields. …
     What I love about the Olympics is its ability to bring together a world of individuals seeking common ground. It gives us hope that there’s a possibility out there that we can work together. Since the rebirth of the modern Games, this celebration has inspired remarkable imitations … the Special Olympics and, of course, the Paralympics. …
     I just hope we continue to embrace what the world envies about all of us: our love of sport, our creativity, our diversity and inclusion, all values we must protect in expanding the rich sporting marketplace we have built right here in America.

LEN ELMORE

    If this award identifies me as a pioneer and innovator, then I believe that it has been punctuated by outspokenness, adherence to principle over politics as well as over profit, and also it’s been punctuated by a focus on the benefit of education presented through athletics and the resulting empowerment to effect positive change.
    It was through participation in playing sports and the business of sport that I received opportunities to advance in life. It was through sport that I was prepared to accept and overcome many of the challenges that life has presented.
    Make no mistake, though, the business of sports still requires more advocacy for inclusion, for tolerance and for principle. You know, associate these names with change: Jackie Robinson, Billie Jean King, today Jason Collins and even sadly, a Ray Rice. That’s the power of sport. I’m hopeful that sport and the business of sport continues to evolve as a model for a society of which right-thinking people can dream and strive.
    By accepting this honor I promise to continue to be an advocate, to be that voice allowing, even forcing, sport and the business of sport to remain an important spearhead toward positive social change.

DAVID FALK

    Mark McCormack, who founded IMG, was one of the people I really admired in my career. He and another mega-star here in L.A., Michael Ovitz, were two people that stretched the boundaries of what a person like myself trained to be a lawyer could do in the business. I’ve had an opportunity to make movies, open restaurants, car dealerships, do things I never could’ve imagined when I was a young law student.
    It’s really because of their influence and pioneering efforts decades ago that opened the doors to people like me (that at one time were young) to do these things that were very fun and rewarding.
    Another person that’s been a really major mentor in my life is coach John Thompson, who I’ve had the pleasure of being friends with for the past 35 years. It’s unusual, since a lot of us in this room are lawyers, to be in the business of representing clients and giving them advice, been paid for your advice, and after 35 years feel that you should have paid your client for the amazing advice that he gave. He’s motivated me, he’s taught me things I could never have even imagined [and] seen things from a perspective I could never have seen.

RUSS GRANIK

    I’ve known David since my first year at the NBA. We both started in the business just about the same time, and I think we have always been very friendly adversaries. Tom and I have been good friends for more than 20 years, since the eminent Dave Gavitt got us together and let us know that he thought it was about time that the NBA and the NCAA started talking together. And that’s what we did.
     I don’t know if Len remembers this, but I’ve got to tell you this. I tell you, at the bottom of a file cabinet somewhere in Cambridge, Mass., there is an old letter, and some of you may remember when we used to do business communications on 8 1/2-by-11-inch pieces of paper that we put in the mail. It’s a letter from a very young NBA deputy commissioner urging his law alma mater to take our chance on a thirtysomething basketball player, not your typical applicant to law school but one who was widely known around the NBA to be of the highest intellect and character.
     And I really don’t think that my letter had that much to do with Harvard’s decision, but I’m sure they have never regretted it for a moment. …

TOM JERNSTEDT

    Early in the 1970s after I left the University of Oregon, I was working in San Francisco and working for a company in sales making $12,000 a year with a company car, and about a year or so later I received a call from my coach at Oregon, Len Casanova, who offered me a job with the University of Oregon for $6,000 and no car as the events manager in the athletic department. I couldn’t wait to get back. …
    I began to realize that sports was really more than fun and games, that there was, and is, a business piece that goes with it.  …
    At the Final Four in Indianapolis … they had over 140,000 people in the stands on two occasions. Years ago in the earlier years, we were fortunate to have [30,000] to 40,000 people there, and it’s grown and grown, and it’s a wonderful tribute to the student athletes that play the game and the coaches that coach the game.

MIKE TRAGER

    I’ve been carrying a copy of Sports illustrated around for about 30 years now. … The cover of Sports Illustrated in 1986 read as follows: “Why TV sports are in big trouble.” …
    Peter Ueberroth, he was commissioner of baseball at the time but then had just come off two years after running a very successful L.A. Olympics, and his quote was, “The fact is that revenue from television most likely will not be flat but will decrease. There are going to be some really lean times ahead.”
    Here’s one from Roone Arledge. … At the time he was president of [ABC] news and sports. “Cable TV will remain an idea whose time is yet to come. Cable will have to make do with minor sports events.” …
    All of us that think we’re visionaries sometimes, we’re just not.

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