As NFL VP/Player & Employee Development, MICHAEL HAYNES is uniquely qualified to assist players in their off-the-field pursuits and maturation. With 14 years’ experience on the field, he can relate to the adjustments that players make coming into and going out of the league. Haynes oversees career internships, financial education and management programs, continuing education and personal assistance. He is also responsible for the league’s personal conduct policy. Haynes joined the NFL after seven years at Callaway Golf, where he was Global Licensing Manager and VP/Recreational Golf Development, following a HOF playing career. One of the NFL’s greatest defensive backs, Haynes was a hit from the start. Named defensive rookie of the year in ‘77, he earned nine Pro Bowl selections with the Patriots (‘76-82) and Raiders (‘83-89) and a Super Bowl ring in ‘83. He was inducted into the Pro Football HOF in ‘97 and later named to the 75-year all-NFL team. Haynes spoke with SportsBusiness Journal New York bureau chief Jerry Kavanagh.
| FAVORITES |
| Piece of music: Anything by LUTHER VANDROSS. |
| Movie: “Jerry Maguire.” |
| Best football movie: “Remember the Titans.” |
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| Worst football movie: “The Longest Yard” (the old version, with BURT REYNOLDS). |
| Athletes you most enjoy watching: TIGER WOODS. And REGGIE BUSH, who’s unbelievable and one of the most exciting guys coming into the NFL in a long time. |
| Cornerbacks: TY LAW and DEANGELO HALL. I don’t really have a favorite. It’s fun to watch the match-ups, and every week is different. |
| Toughest one-on-one match-up: HAROLD CARMICHAEL, mainly because of his height. |
| Greatest competitor: STEVE GROGAN with the Patriots and JIM PLUNKETT with the Raiders. |
| Basic management philosophy: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. |
| Best professional advice you received: That being a leader is not always an easy thing to do. It involves a lot of tough decisions. |
| Best professional decision: To come back to work for the NFL and help players with transition and to support the league’s efforts in an understanding of the challenges that players face. |
| Daily rituals: I try to say “I love you” to my kids every day. |
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NFL VP/Player & Employee Development Michael Haynes |
Q: GEORGE WILL wrote, “Football is a mistake. It combines the two worst elements of American life: violence and committee meetings.” What’s the best thing about football?
Haynes: From a player’s standpoint, it was an opportunity to put everything on the line, to play without fear and see what happened in the end. I wanted to give 100% effort and to play every game as if it were my last. That was fun. It was a challenge every game.
Q: Is there a more challenging position in sports than cornerback?
Haynes: I don’t really know because after high school I never played the other sports I played as a kid. Basketball, for the guys who play in the pros, I imagine is a tough sport. And standing up there against a 95 mph fastball has to be pretty challenging.
Q: What’s your biggest personal challenge these days?
Haynes: Continuing to change the culture for off-the-field learning situations for the players. It’s such a tough job to win in the NFL. The on-the-field development is where the coaches want the players to spend most of their time. But these guys are not going to be playing football for very long. So, we try to get more coaches, owners, fans to understand that this off-the-field development for the players is every bit as important as their on-the-field development.
Q: For example?
Haynes: Let’s say a player catches a record number of touchdown passes. Everybody wants to love the guy because of his effort and his work ethic. But off the field he does something really stupid. That hurts the image he’s building for himself and it tarnishes the league. That would be terrible. Basically, our programs are trying to help the players make better decisions in their off-the-field lifestyle.
Q: STENDHAL wrote, “Life is short, and the time we waste in yawning can never be gained.” How do you keep from being bored?
Haynes: (laughing) You should see the job I have. I don’t have any time to be bored. In four years, I’ve been out to play golf six times. Before I came here, I played at least twice a month. I always tease my boss, [NFL Exec VP/Labor Relations] HAROLD HENDERSON, that he tricked me into coming here. But I’m so passionate about this. I feel like I have a real chance to do good.
Q: How?
Haynes: Because I was a player and I wasn’t a straight-A student, I relate to so many things that these guys are dealing with. They’re just 22 years old. Their brains are still developing. We had this thinking here that to do an internship, you had to have your degree. I said, “If I was making $7[M] coming out of school right now at 22, I wouldn’t go back to get my degree. Why do you go to school? To get a job. O.K., well, you’ve got a great job and now it looks like you could start a company. Don’t need a degree.”
So, we changed that. Just common sense things are what I’ve been bringing to the table. We tell the guys that they’ve got to keep learning. If they’re going to start a business, where are they going to learn those skills? We started entrepreneurial programs at Harvard, Stanford and Wharton to train current players.
Q: What’s the biggest adjustment for rookies coming into the NFL?
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| Haynes Says Money Issues Biggest
Adjustment For NFL Rookies |
Haynes: It’s probably going from making no money to making an awful lot of money, especially if they’re drafted in the first round. It could be a guy who has no single person in his family who has had the type of money that he has now. That’s a challenge because a lot of responsibility now falls on his shoulders. There’s nothing that prepares these guys for that. A lot of colleges are starting to try to do different things to help their athletes -- all their students -- to prepare for their careers with assessment tests. We do the same thing here.
Q: You bring them in for a symposium?
Haynes: Well, the symposium is not so much to try to figure out what their next career is but to get them used to the lifestyle of the NFL and some of the challenges that they’re going to deal with. We try to give them as many resources and experiences and opportunities to talk about those types of things before they go off to training camp. And we spend a lot of time talking to them about their responsibilities as players: to younger kinds, to the fans, to the media. We bring in current and former players to tell the stories, guys they can relate to.
Q: The NFL schedule itself is an adjustment for rookies.
Haynes: We have guys who were rookies the previous season come in and talk about what that was like. In college, most guys played 10, 11, maybe 12 games. In the NFL they’re going to play preseason games and then start the regular season. A lot of these [rookies] are wiped out by the 10th game. When I came in, I wore a size 10 1/2 shoe; by my second year, I wore a size 12. When I was on the Patriots, we played and practiced on Astroturf. It was like concrete. So, there was a pacing, and you had to play a whole year to figure that out and get it right.
Q: Who has been the most influential person in your career?
Haynes: There is not one person. I’ve always enjoyed looking at great leaders, great athletes -- even born athletes -- just trying to figure out their strengths and what makes them different and why they keep trying to get better.
Q: How do you define a leader?
Haynes: A person who is able to create other leaders. How many other great leaders has the commissioner developed? I think everybody here would say quite a few. I would love to be viewed the same way at some point in my life.
Q: What do you do now to satisfy your competitive passion?
Haynes: The passion that I had as a football player and putting myself in that tough, tough position, where I felt like I needed to pray before I went on that field, I don’t think I’ll ever be in that situation again. I have passion for this job, for what I’m doing now: helping the players transition into the game and prepare for transition out. I have a sense of what they’re all experiencing. My career was 14 years. It could have been two years. It could have been two games. I never knew how long it was going to be.
Q: What’s the biggest challenge facing the NFL?
Haynes: Selecting the next commissioner and preparing for the future. The young kids now have a lot of different things that are interesting to them, and we hope that in the future football will be as interesting as it seems to be today.
Q: You were mentioned as possible successor to PAUL TAGLIABUE. Have you thrown your helmet into the ring?
Haynes: I don’t think people really understand what being commissioner of the National Football League means.
Q: What does it mean?
Haynes: It means a 24/7 commitment 52 weeks out of the year and 32 different owners. When I first came here and people said, “Hey, you’re at the NFL. Maybe you’ll be the next commissioner,” I used to think, in my wildest dreams, “That might be kinda cool.” But I’ve been here almost four years now and got a chance to spend a lot of time with the executives and commissioner. And I see what’s involved in really making this league work. You have to have the perfect mate. I’m talking about your wife, who understands -- I almost hesitate to say this -- that she is less important than the league. Because it might be a serious meeting that she’s put on that she wants you to attend, but something happened in the league that’s more important. It could be a death, an incident, a hurricane -- all kinds of things that come up that are way more important. That would be challenging. I’m excited that my name was thrown in there. I don’t know if I would throw it in there myself, but I’m glad someone threw it in for me.
Q: What is Tagliabue’s greatest achievement?
Haynes: When I entered the NFL in 1976, the owners and the players didn’t get along. In Paul’s tenure as commissioner, the owners and the players are partners. That bodes well for the future of the league. He and GENE UPSHAW, and probably Harold Henderson, should get credit for that.
Q: Upshaw said the partnership between the owners and the players is the key to labor peace.
Haynes: It’s a huge thing. When I took this job, the first thing I said to the players was, “Man, you guys do not know what you have.” I told them that when I came into the league, we didn’t even trust the owners. Now, they’re partners. They invest in stadiums together. They share the revenues differently. The programs that the league now have, like my department ... I wish they existed when I played.
Q: What can the other professional sports leagues learn from the NFL?
Haynes: That it is a partnership. It’s exciting for sports fans to feel like every single team has a chance to win every year. I’m surprised that I’m saying that now because I remember when I was on the Raiders, AL DAVIS asked me what I thought about powerhouse teams. I said that I thought it was great for football. But actually now it’s not. This is clearly the best way for all sports teams. Starting the year, you feel your team has as every bit a chance to win as anybody else’s team. That’s got to be the best thing for you as a fan. A couple of years ago, there was something like 18 [NFL] teams with two or three games left to go in the season that had a chance to go into the playoffs. That’s a credit to the new system -- trying to have this balance around the league.
Q: The Raiders in your day were a renegade bunch. At the other corner was LESTER “THE MOLESTER” HAYES and his stick-um. You didn’t seem to fit that outlaw mold.
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| Goal-Line Cameras One Change Haynes
Would Like To See Implemented |
Haynes: No, I was the gentleman Raider. Those were fun years. Plus, the Raiders in those years were in Los Angeles, where I’m from. So I got a chance to play in front of family and friends.
Q: Does the game itself need any changes? If you could change one thing about the game, what would it be?
Haynes: I think there should be a camera on the goal line. There should be a way to tell if a player is in the end zone. So, enhancements like that that make the game better or take the gray area out of some of the calls, I would try to do something like that.
