Leaving his Mark

Brilliance of IMG founder McCormack will not be forgotten

When you think about it, these have not been very original times in sport. The most significant innovations of the last decade or so have been retro baseball stadiums and baggy basketball shorts. I suppose most institutions go through periods of stability or retrenchment, just as there are times of great upheaval. In sport, the revolution was the period following World War II, especially a time of perhaps 15 years from the mid-1950s through the early 1970s.

Integration came to the big leagues. Franchises moved. Expansion. Free agency. Strikes. Boycotts. New leagues. The accelerated power of television. The explosion of salaries. The Super Bowl. Women's sports began to flourish. And of those most vital people who changed sports forever during this period -- Roone Arledge, Pete Rozelle, Marvin Miller, Billie Jean King -- none would cast a greater shadow than Mark McCormack.

If McCormack had only invented the job of sports agent -- which he did, even though he despised the word "agent" -- he would be well remembered. But he then took the job and blew it up into IMG, the International Management Group -- management, you see, not agent -- which became an absolute juggernaut. Can there be any other company which so dominates a substantial global business as does IMG rule sports management?

International Money Grubbers. I'M Greedy. Darth McCormack and The Evil Empire. These are all names McCormack's competitors have called IMG. But McCormack never apologized for his company's supremacy or for becoming a billionaire. "If you take the risk," he said, "if you put up the money, then that's what free enterprise is all about."

And, of course, IMG expanded well beyond sport, representing such diverse interests as the Pope, the Nobel Foundation, the Smithsonian, Jack Welch, Itzhak Perlman and Raggedy Ann and Andy.

McCormack was certainly not a warm man. Work consumed him. His second wife, Betsy Nagelsen, a former tennis pro, once told me: "Mark only looked to the future so he could control it." None of his associates ever really considered him a friend. He paid his people well, but he never gave up a slice of ownership. Yet, he was the sort of boss who would be the first to offer praise in rough times and support in sad times.

He kept meticulous notes on a yellow pad about his every movement and thought, and on three-by-five note cards he detailed what all his lieutenants were up to. One of them recalls a Sunday afternoon when the Concorde was diverted to Newfoundland and, so as not to waste a moment, McCormack pulled out his three-by-fives, and, jamming himself into a Gander phone booth, started calling each subordinate at home. No detail, no edge, no moment overlooked.

I remember that in one of McCormack's best-selling how-to-succeed-in-business books, he wrote that when he was going to have a business meal with one other person, he'd always book a table for three, and since there were no tables for three he'd get a comfortable table for four. When I asked Mark if this wasn't really unfair to the restaurant, my point seemed a revelation to him. His mind was just so calibrated to make IMG better. To win.

It is impossible to imagine what will happen to IMG -- its reach through offices in 35 countries around the world -- now that the emperor has passed away. But then can any company control a worldwide business forever? There have been what we love to call dynasties in every sport. IMG has been different. What this one brilliant man, Mark McCormack, created is the only dynasty, ever, over all sport.

Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to SI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. He is a longtime correspondent for HBO's Real Sports and his new novel, An American Summer (Sourcebooks Trade), is available at bookstores everywhere.

 

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