From Cleats To Wingtips: Gale Sayers, Roger Staubach, and other sports legends-turned-CEOs use lessons from the playing field to foster success in the workplace - Cover Story - Chief Executive Officers

Chief Executive, The, Nov, 2001 by John Steinbreder

It's been a long time since anyone shouted Gale Sayers' name over a public address system as he scampered down a football field, or marveled at the tight spirals Roger Staubach threw over the artificial turf at Texas Stadium. Mannie Jackson hasn't dribbled around defenders to the strains of "Sweet Georgia Brown" for decades now, and Lyndon Johnson was in the White House when Willie Davis played on his first Super Bowl championship team.

But it's not unusual to hear people talk about how well these and other former professional athletes are faring as businessmen. Sayers, 58, the longtime Chicago Bears halfback, is founder and CEO of Group, a Chicago-area computer services firm that posted $300 million in sales last year and employs 275. In his office are reminders of his celebrated past: framed jerseys from the University of Kansas (No. 48) and the Chicago Bears (No. 40).

Staubach, 59, the famed Dallas Cowboy, now quarterbacks a $240 million international real estate firm. Jackson, who declined to give his age, owns the Harlem Globetrotters, the barnstorming basketball team for which he played during the mid-1960s. Since taking over eight years ago, he has transformed an outdated and dying franchise into a thriving entertainment business expected to reap profits of $6 million this year.

And then there's Davis, 67, the former Green Bay Packers defensive end. He's now CEO of All-Pro Broadcasting, a Los Angeles-based company that owns and operates five radio stations, three in Milwaukee and two in southern California. At 6-foot-3 and 300 pounds, up from his playing weight of 260, Davis admits he can intimidate people who don't know him. But underneath, he insists, he's a "softie," as his friends call him, as well as a very capable executive.

Unlike many of today's professional athletes who own companies but leave the daily operations to others, these four men are operational executives who actually run their own businesses. They say there is value to the military-inspired sports cliches of preparation, perseverance, leadership, and teamwork. At the same time, they say, it hasn't been easy building credibility as businessmen independent of their athletic fame. But overall, their experiences--and celebrity--as pro athletes have proven a huge help to growing businesses and managing people.

Come to Games Dressed to Play

Long before they ever stepped into a boardroom, these Hall of Famers learned the importance of being prepared and paying attention to detail. For Staubach, that lesson came from Tom Landry, the legendary Cowboys coach who set a National Football League record with 20 consecutive winning seasons from 1966 through 1985.

"He was an engineer by training and a real management-by-objectives person who was very organized and big on preparation," says Staubach, also an engineer by training. "He believed in having goals that were achievable and measurable, and he believed that you needed to be prepared in order to do what you set out to do." That was never more clear, Staubach recalls, than the week before Super Bowl VI in 1972. Night after night, coach and quarterback studied videotapes of the Miami Dolphins' defense in Landry's hotel room. Together, they devised an imaginative offense that worked flawlessly, as Dallas trounced Miami, 24-3, to win its first Super Bowl. Staubach was named the game's MVP.

Staubach has applied that same degree of preparation to his real estate career. He knew he would still be a young man when he retired from football (38, as it turned out), so he entered business in the early l9ZOs, working in the off-season for the Henry S. Miller Co., a Dallas real estate firm. Squeezing in time at the office around his regular training workouts, he studied such topics as limited partnerships, land syndication, and corporate real estate tax benefits until he knew them as well as football X's and O's.

Today, The Staubach Co., which specializes in office, retail, and industrial space, has grown so large that it maintains more than 40 offices and a work force of 1,200. Company projects include 65 business locations in the Americas, Europe, and Asia for Netscape, and a major relocation for Mobil that included building 231,000 square feet of office space north of Houston.

But transitioning from celebrated athlete to successful business leader is harder than it looks--for Staubach, and for Sayers. Sayers says respect on the gridiron came easily. "I had a God-given talent," he says. He was such a star at the University of Kansas from 1961 to 1965 that he was known as the "Kansas Comet." In 1977, he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame at age 34.

But the world of computer business was another story. In 1984, Sayers and his wife Ardythe founded the Sayers Group--and confronted stereotypes. "Many people considered athletes dumb jocks, and I wanted to break loose from that barrier," he recalls.

To make matters worse, Sayers says, some people believe his company's success stems from quotas and government contracts. "I wish I could say that the world is perfect, but it's not, and we still have some prejudice about minority suppliers," the CEO points out.