Mike Heimbach, vice president of security and facility operations, oversees 250 people globally.ESPN Images
Ten years ago, Mike Heimbach was pursuing al-Qaida as an assistant director of the FBI’s terrorism division, a position in which he reported to FBI Director Robert Mueller.
Next week, Heimbach will be at the CFP Championship game, where he still will be trying to combat terrorist threats. The difference is that he has traded the FBI for ESPN, where he is a full-time employee as vice president of security and facility operations.
Every network employs some version of Heimbach — a security officer who works with local stadium security and is tasked with keeping the network's remote productions and employees as safe as possible. Hired by ESPN in 2009, Heimbach oversees 250 people globally, and has spent the past decade as a constant presence at ESPN events — even if most people don’t know his name.
I caught up with Heimbach four months ago on the sideline of Clemson’s season-opening game against Georgia Tech — the first live game produced for ACC Network. Two hours before kickoff, as alcohol-fueled tailgates were in full swing, Heimbach was a picture of calm. His team of seven full-time employees and another 150 contractors were executing the plan that he had put in place.
“My philosophy is that you tighten the perimeter and you loosen the interior,” he said. “That means that you tighten up everything with the access, then you can loosen the interior, if you've done your job right on the access control.”
At Clemson that day, it was the first time the school used metal detectors at the football stadium’s entrances, which led to longer lines than usual outside of the stadium. But it was a development Heimbach was happy to see.
“It's an inconvenience, but it's worth it because you just don't know,” he said. “You'll get a lot of folks, even today, that don't want magnetometers, that don't want to go through the extra scrutiny. But the majority do. They love the extra level of protection. That's the world we live in.”
At Clemson, and next week at the CFP Championship game, Heimbach’s team works with stadium security and local law enforcement to develop security procedures. His team is responsible for protecting ESPN’s production compound and getting announcers from the compound to their sets.
At the season-opening game, Heimbach’s team also handled the hiring of the 150 contractors for security.
“We’re the managers of it,” he said. “Our team oversees them, puts them in the right place and gives them the guidance and instructions to handle the event.”
It’s easy to get terrified when you talk about security with someone like Heimbach. Threats are everywhere. Security experts have long viewed sporting events as soft targets for terrorist attacks, from radicalized lone wolves to the possibility of drone attacks.
Heimbach, though, projects such a calm and confident demeanor that security threats don’t seem as prevalent.
I asked Heimbach to relate his most harrowing experience during his time at ESPN. For a former FBI agent who investigated the 2008 Marriott bombing in Islamabad and the 2002 bombings in Bali, Heimbach chuckled at the word “harrowing.”
He’s had to deal with myriad threats at ESPN. But harrowing?
“We’ve had nothing harrowing,” he said. “There probably hasn’t been a serious life-and-death situation that l’ve had to handle here.”
The most angst comes when ESPN travels internationally, like it did for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa or MLB’s 2016 game in Cuba, when protesters interrupted Bob Ley during a live “SportsCenter” shot. The key for Heimbach is to have his team make as many advance visits as it can to build relationships with local law enforcement and mitigate threats.
“We’re a storytelling company — we want to go in and get the best story,” he said. “When reporters wanted to visit a shanty town, we had to bring the right police officers with us and protect them. We rarely say no unless it’s a very high-risk area. We’ll tell the producers, ‘On a scale of 1 to 10, it’s about a 9 and here are our fears.’”
Heimbach wants to be as visible as possible at ESPN events, allowing him to earn the respect and confidence of executives throughout the company. During his first two years at ESPN, he went to virtually every event. Now, he’s choosier about the ones he wants to attend.
“I like to get out in the beginning of the year,” he said. “It's our first year with the ACC Network, and I haven't met any of the talent. I came to Clemson to introduce myself to them. I try to stay close to our executives, like Jimmy Pitaro and some of his direct reports. I won't miss the Super Bowl. I won't miss a College Football Playoff. I'll always be at all the large, large events.”
Still, many of Heimbach’s responsibilities are a lot more mundane.
“I oversee everything from the cafeteria to all the mechanical, the electrical, the HVAC, snow removal, landscaping,” Heimbach said. “I'm even in charge of the toilet paper when people complain.”
