More than 1,100 store managers from Sterling Inc., anationwide jewelry chain, are up on their feet -- standing on theirchairs, in fact -- joyously bopping to the Macarena in the ballroomof Disney World's Contemporary Resort. They have been brought hereto Orlando by their corporate overseers in Ohio for three days ofstrategizing, training, partying and motivation. It is a strange andvery American industry, this business of 'motivating' salespeopleand mid-level managers. Success gurus, sports coaches, timemanagement wizards -- fit, tanned, square-jawed men and women withconfident strides and sonorous voices -- travel from convention toconvention the way Elmer Gantry preachers did in the era of tentrevivals. Only now it's . . . Disney World . . . and the Sterlingjewelry managers are wearing black T-shirts emblazoned with yellowlettering that proclaim the motto of the week: Power Up. Raucouswhoops go up as the music segues into the techno-pop dance number'I've Got the Power!'
The meeting planners who picked Susan O'Malley to address thisthrong have chosen well, as becomes apparent when she emerges frombehind the stage. She's a 5-foot, 1-inch Energizer Bunny, her blondhair elegantly coiffed and a smart olive suit draping just above herknees. A tense smirk slices across her face.
At 35, O'Malley is president of the organization that runsboth the Washington Bullets and Capitals. She is thesalesperson-in-chief for the glittery new MCI Center rising indowntown Washington. She is one of the most senior-ranking women inprofessional sports -- the only female president, in fact, of aNational Basketball Association franchise. She also happens to be aborn cheerleader, a master motivator and a skilled spin artist in anindustry where hype and exaggeration are coins of the realm.And what she's spinning today, as she does on many publicoccasions, is the Susan O'Malley story.She descends from the giant stage, microphone in hand, andstalks purposefully through the vast hall, working the crowd a laRicki Lake or Jenny Jones. She disarms her audience with locker roomtalk and self-deprecating gibes. 'They tell me you guys had a prettygood year,' she says, putting hands on hips. 'Which surprises me,based on your speakers. Last year, you had Cindy Crawford. Thisyear you had me. If you keep getting better, you're reallyscrewed!'The Sterling managers roar. O'Malley is just getting startedon a familiar plot line she's helped nurture over the past fiveyears: a tale of revival, of how she helped turn around the businessside of a struggling sports franchise -- the Washington Bulletsbasketball team -- with pluck, hard work and marketing savvy. Thestory has attracted attention from publications such as SportingNews, Business Week and USA Today, and it has landed O'Malley onAdvertising Age's list of the top 100 marketers in America. In theWashington area, she sometimes seems to be as much in the spotlightas Abe Pollin, the man who actually owns the two teams she helpsrun.'When we took over the Washington Bullets,' she tells heraudience, 'I went to my first {NBA} Board of Governors meeting.Twenty-six men and myself, because there were only 27 teams. And Isat through this slide presentation on the state of the league. AndI thought that everything was in alphabetical order.' She ticks offthe lists, making clear she's talking about the team's last-placepositions:'Attendance -- Washington Bullets. Radio revenue -- WashingtonBullets. Wins . . .'She pauses for dramatic effect.'I found out that it was not in alphabetical order . . . Andso we set about to make a difference. And what we did was weimplemented eight rules within our office.'Rule No. 1: Make your bed every day. 'Write that down,' sheinsists as the Sterling managers laugh in unison. 'I think it's adumb rule, but the other seven rules have worked out so well that Idon't want to jinx myself.'She's well into Motivational Speak now, and the cliched maximstumble out one after another: Outwork everybody; when you mess up,make it right; do the right thing; plan your work -- work your plan;have fun. Still, she delivers this pap with moxie and laces inenough humorous bits to keep the crowd chuckling for the next 45minutes.Rule No. 4, for instance: Set expectations. O'Malley tells thestory of a former Bullets intern named James who openly cheered forthe New Jersey Nets at USAir Arena. 'No one told me I had to cheerfor the Washington Bullets,' James said when challenged by O'Malley.'I thought, in some bizarre way, that James had a point,' she tellsthe Sterling managers, so she wrote down yet more rules for survivalin the office, including Rule No. 13: 'You will always cheer for theWashington Bullets.'When it's all over, she is hustled out the back door, into theback seat of a white stretch limousine that will speed her back tothe Orlando airport. In the ballroom, the Sterling managers are leftbuzzing as they break up. At least the way she has presented it, theSusan O'Malley story is funny and inspiring and uplifting -- andthey loved it.Of course, it's not the whole story. How could it be?Susan O'Malley is the sort of manager who sometimes waits bythe elevator in the morning to make sure people are in their officesby 9 o'clock -- those who are even a few minutes late might have tobuy doughnuts for the entire staff. 'If you aren't here by 9o'clock, then in a sense you are taking advantage of your fellowemployees in my mind,' she explains.She is the sort of person who, in high school and college, wasthe 'force behind our class,' as high school classmate Rick Morelandputs it. She served in student government, organized proms andfloats for homecoming parades and such groups as an 'I Hate MondaysClub.' In college, she decorated her room with Snoopy paraphernalia.She is the sort of person who, in a rare discussion of herprivate life, says that while she wants to get married and havechildren some day, she doesn't seem to have room in her life for asustained relationship. 'Last time I checked they required time, andI'm not great at giving time these days,' she says. 'I don't havetrouble meeting people. I think I have trouble committing thetime.'She is, in short, complicated.She is the sort of person who some people admire enormouslyand others despise actively.As the influential steward of two important Washington areasports franchises, O'Malley is arguably the most accomplished womanin her field. She has much praise and criticism heaped upon her byothers, but the only real claim she makes for herself in public --as she did before the Sterling managers in Orlando -- is that shehas helped raise the Bullets from the dregs of the NBA to box officesuccess, building a platform for (still anticipated) on-courtsuccess as well.When O'Malley took charge of the team's front officeoperations eight years ago, the average attendance at a Bullets gamewas 9,814, dead last in the NBA. Five years later, even though theBullets were still playing pathetic basketball, average attendancehad jumped to 15,116. It rose to 17,100 in 1994-95, the first yearthat marquee players Juwan Howard and Chris Webber wore Bulletsuniforms. Last year it held steady, and when the Bullets and Capsmove downtown to the new MCI Center this fall, O'Malley and otherteam officials are counting on night after night of packed houses.'She's a joy -- an unadulterated joy,' crows Bullets and Capsowner Pollin, to whom O'Malley reports directly. 'She's brilliant.She's full of innovative ideas. She works very hard. She sets anexample for her staff. She is loved by everybody she comes intocontact with, including all the people who work for her. She isvery, very tough, but very fair, and that's the way I like it.'Fair enough -- they're Pollin's teams, after all -- but it ishardly true that O'Malley is loved by everybody with whom she comesinto contact. Her critics range from those who have clashed with herin office struggles or been forced out during reorganizations tocolleagues in the NBA who have nothing personal against her but whoquestion whether O'Malley's business achievements are all that theyseem.One common line of dissent is that O'Malley's attendanceachievements are hollow, that she fills USAir Arena with warm bodiesby using discounts, giveaways and other gimmicks, creating theappearance of success but leaving her teams lagging in terms ofrevenue and profits. O'Malley pleads partially guilty to thischarge, saying that creating sellouts and pumping up attendance byany means is part of a deliberate marketing strategy: By creatingthe appearance of demand for game tickets, she creates momentum forthe team, which translates into real demand for game tickets. Sincethe financial accounts of the Pollin organization are closelyguarded secrets, it's impossible to sort out exactly how herperformance looks on the bottom line. Pollin himself, who knows whatthe books say, declares that he is very pleased.O'Malley also gets lambasted in some quarters for the way shedeals with people. Some of the criticism she attracts gets verypersonal. The New York Post, in a headline over an acerbic column byPeter Vecsey, dubbed her the 'Liar of Landover' after Bulletsgeneral manager John Nash was forced out last spring in a personnelchange widely seen as engineered by O'Malley. Her reputation as asuccessful sports businesswoman is 'hype to me,' says Bruce Zalbe, acorporate salesman at USAir Arena from 1987 to 1994 before quittingafter a reorganization. 'She's deceitful. There's this perceptionin the general public that she's wonderful. She's done a lot ofgreat things. But I think that as a manager, trying to run anorganization, she tries to run by fear.' Adds Marv Brooks, thelongtime public-address announcer for the Bullets and Caps, who wasfired by O'Malley: 'I wish Susan were warm. Maybe this is acompliment, but she is cold and calculating and aloof. Maybe she hasto be, because she is so powerful.'Would a man doing the same job -- even a man with a very toughmanagement style during a time of company reorganizations -- hearthe same kind of criticism O'Malley does? Perhaps. Does O'Malleythreaten some people in the pro basketball and hockey worlds becauseshe is a woman in a position of power? Definitely. Does she deserveeither as much credit as she gives herself or as much criticism asher enemies hurl at her? Very much debatable -- and very activelydebated.One difficulty in assessing O'Malley's professionalperformance is that she has, in some ways, an unusual job. She cantake credit -- and she may very well deserve credit -- for some ofthe good things that have happened to the Bullets and Capitals asbusinesses in recent years. But she's essentially blameless when,for instance, the Bullets stink on the basketball court -- it's WesUnseld and John Nash who have handled the key decisions about whichplayers to sign or let go in recent years. And on the business side,the big and risky strategic decisions, such as whether to build thedowntown arena and on what terms, very much belong to Pollin, whohas functioned as an owner-operator throughout his tenure. SusanO'Malley is not a chief executive, then, in the typical or classicalsense.That's no reflection on her. But it does reflect on thecharacter of the Pollin organization. These days, many major sportsfranchises are the playthings of unimaginably wealthy corporatetitans -- Microsoft magnate Paul Allen in Portland, entertainmentmogul Wayne Huizenga in Miami, Jack Kent Cooke in Washington. Theselate-life showmen-gladiators with deep pockets tend to care muchmore about winning games than about turning a profit at the gate.The Bullets and Capitals, by comparison, operate more as a mom andpop shop -- dedicated to winning, to be sure, but without vastresources, managing themselves week to week and month to month as akind of family business.Which, in the case of Susan O'Malley, is exactly what thePollin organization represents -- a multi-generational familyaffair.The Baltimore Bullets came into Abe Pollin's life in 1964,when he and two partners purchased the team for what was then arecord price of $1.1 million. Pollin bought out his fellow investorsin 1968 and began looking at a possible move to Washington to stemfinancial losses; he had grown up in the District before making hisfortune as a real estate developer. The trouble was that theDistrict had no adequately sized arena, nor a building site thatPollin deemed appropriate. So, he decided to construct his new arenaon 60 acres just off the Capital Beltway in Prince George's County-- an area widely viewed at the time as a backwater, ruraljurisdiction.Many believed Pollin's plan was a crazy, long-shot venture.First he waged a tenacious campaign to land one of two expansionfranchises the National Hockey League was planning to put on the icein 1974. He figured bankers would be more willing to lend him moneyto build an arena if he could promise two pro teams. Pollin alsofaced serious political and legal obstacles in Prince George's.To steer the deal through, Pollin was referred to athirtysomething lawyer then beginning to make his mark as a backroom Maryland power broker. The lawyer looked so young, Pollinrecalls, that the first time he met Peter O'Malley in his office,Pollin had to check himself from saying, 'Excuse me, I have anappointment with your father.' The son of a postal worker fromClinton, Mass., O'Malley had worked his way through GeorgetownUniversity Law School as an elevator operator and police officer onCapitol Hill before setting up practice in Prince George's. In themonths and years ahead, as he became Pollin's consigliere, O'Malleymore than proved his worth. He steered the arena deal through courtsand regulatory agencies, demolishing legal opponents and making surethat then-named Capital Centre opened when Pollin had promised itwould, on December 2, 1973.It was the first of many missions that O'Malley would performfor Pollin over the next quarter of a century. A few years after thearena's debut, Pollin asked O'Malley -- who had no sports backgroundother than his legal work for Pollin -- to serve as president of theCapitals. As the team struggled to gain respectability on the ice,O'Malley helped Pollin assemble the business side of the fledglingfranchise.O'Malley resigned the post in 1978, but stayed on as legalcounselor for the team. In 1982, he helped Pollin secure a tax breakfor the Capitals that the owner deemed necessary to assure theviability of his hockey franchise. That success added to theconsiderable cachet the O'Malley name enjoyed in the back rooms ofMaryland politics. As O'Malley prospered, his contacts reached deepinto the Washington-area establishment. He served stints aspresident of the Greater Washington Board of Trade; as chairman ofthe University of Maryland Board of Regents; as chairman of BlueCross and Blue Shield of the National Capital Area; and as a boardmember at such corporate powerhouses as Pepco and Giant Food.Peter O'Malley is soft-spoken, intense, task-oriented andcharismatic, capable of smoothly switching between solicitous charmand outright intimidation. One longtime observer sums it up thisway: O'Malley, he says, is the only person he knows who could call ameeting at 3 o'clock in the morning, and everybody would show up,simply out of curiosity.So the first and perhaps most important fact in the SusanO'Malley story is that she is very much Peter O'Malley's daughter.Abe Pollin, who knows both well, says it simply: 'She's a clone ofher father.''Why do you want to do the most boring story in the world?'These are the first words out of Susan O'Malley's mouth, theopening gambit in an unusually persistent and energetic effort toshape this profile to her liking. The O'Malleys have always workedhard to make sure their family is described publicly in the mostpositive light possible. Not exactly an unreasonable goal, but onefather and daughter have sometimes worked on with exceptional vigor.Peter O'Malley does not like to see his name in the papers. Susan isless press averse, but no less focused on control: As she built hercareer in sports management, she schmoozed the media, going out ofher way to cultivatejournalists at The Washington Post and localtelevision stations. And when she sets a target, she is relentlessin pursuit.In this case, amiable stonewalling yields eventually to acharm offensive that she playfully launches on the day of an initialinterview at USAir Arena in Landover. O'Malley personally greets hervisitor at the reception desk; winding back to her office, itbecomes clear that she has arranged a little joke.'You're fabulous, Susan,' yells out Maureen Lewis, the publicrelations director for the Bullets, as she crosses paths with herboss.'You're great!' exclaims one of the secretaries.Even Wes Unseld, the wide-bodied Hall of Famer who is one ofO'Malley's closest friends, gets in on the shtick. As O'Malleypasses by his corner office, Unseld looks up from his desk andmumbles absent-mindedly, 'Susan, you're so great -- why don't youattend this meeting for me?'O'Malley's office is cluttered with pictures and sportsmemorabilia. A big photo of Pollin and Unseld hamming it up hangs onone wall. Another wall holds a giant calendar with upcoming Bulletsand Capitals games, as well as other special events, inscribed inmagic marker.In The Speech that converts O'Malley's life into motivationalslogans, this office is the destination she dreamed of from a youngage, and which she arrived at only after indefatigably overcomingthe world's obstacles. One of her most oft-repeated anecdotes isthat when she was just 13, she wrote a paper for school declaringthat her goal was to someday run a professional sports franchise.O'Malley says the teacher wrote at the top, 'Good paper, but notvery realistic.'Susan came of age during the 1970s when her father was workingintensely on the Landover arena project -- that was when she firstbecame interested in professional sports. She met Abe Pollin for thefirst time after church one Sunday, back when the arena site wasstill a cornfield. Peter O'Malley introduced Pollin to his childrenin grandiose fashion: 'This man is going to build the best arena inthe world.'She was raised in a household, she says, where her parentsencouraged her to believe that she could do anything. The familylived in a colonial five-bedroom house in Clinton, then a rural partof Prince George's County; her father installed a basketball courtin the back yard, which the kids paved over with water in the winterto play ice hockey. Susan was the middle of five children. Theoldest, Peter, grew up to be an investment banker; her older sisterKathy teaches at Mount St. Mary's in Emmitsburg; her younger sisterMary is an assistant attorney general in Maryland; and the youngest,Jennifer, is a schoolteacher and an usher at USAir Arena. It was atraditional, devoutly Catholic, achievement-focused family that keptits feet on the ground -- all but one of the kids graduated frompublic schools, and for all of Peter O'Malley's growingachievements, he did not seem interested in his or his family'ssocial station or the trappings of wealth. Susan's mother, Jan, wasthe family's 'domestic engineer,' in Susan's phrase, who made sureeverybody got to Little League on time, nursed wounds large andsmall, and kept the freezer full of ice cream.Of the O'Malley children, Susan was always 'probably the mosthard-charging,' says Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), a longtimepolitical associate of Peter O'Malley. 'Susan is the most like herdad in some ways. She's very focused, she's very disciplined andvery goal oriented. As a child, you knew that this was a young ladywho was very goal oriented.'After he became president of the Caps, Peter O'Malley wouldpick up Susan and Mary and take them to watch games at the arena,where they became friendly with the vendors and other employees.Susan graduated from Surrattsville High School in 1979 and then wenton to her father's alma mater, Mount St. Mary's, a small Catholiccollege. While there, she worked as an intern with the Bullets andCaps. But when the time came to start her own career, she decided toleave for a while. She traces that decision to a piece of advicefrom a blunt-talking former Pollin lieutenant named Tom Hipp.'Women aren't going to get from here to here,' Hipp told her,as O'Malley recalls it, indicating the distance from the bottom tothe top. 'So don't come and take some entry-level position and thinkyou're going to climb your way up the ladder. It's not going tohappen. Go get some experience, come back, take a mid-level positionand work your way up.'That's exactly what O'Malley did. She took a job at the localadvertising firm of Earle Palmer Brown, whose founder was a closefriend of her father's. Three years later, she applied for the openposition of director of advertising at the Bullets.Pollin says that at the time, he had no idea that O'Malley hadapplied for the ad director's position. The Bullets' top businessexecutive then, Garnett Slatton, says he did not know about SusanO'Malley's family connection until after he decided to hire her.It's certainly possible that both men are recalling thingscorrectly, but their memories strain credulity. For her part, SusanO'Malley makes no bones about the role nepotism played in launchingher sports management career.'Yeah, right,' she says with a smile when told of what Pollinand Slatton recall. 'I think the door was opened to me because ofnepotism . . . I think people are given opportunities, and then youhave to make the best of it.'Once on board, O'Malley picked up a lot about business andmanagement from Slatton, a former consultant and a whiz kid in hisown right. When Slatton and Pollin agreed that it would be best thathe leave three years later, Pollin called O'Malley into his office.She was a month shy of her 27th birthday. On the way toPollin's office, she says, she seriously thought that she was aboutto be fired, that her turn had come.Instead, Pollin asked O'Malley to take over the business sideof the Bullets on a temporary basis, while he looked for a permanentsuccessor to Slatton.'I was sort of shellshocked,' O'Malley recalls. 'I said,`Yeah, sure.''And I left the office, and I said out loud, `And I'm notgiving this job up.' 'And she hasn't yet.On a hot summer day, a buzz of excitement is coursing throughthe late-afternoon crowd at Chevy Chase Pavilion, the FriendshipHeights office and shopping complex that houses Falk AssociatesManagement Enterprises. Television cameramen mill about; small boysperch themselves on milk cartons in an effort to see what the fussis all about. Around them, young employees of the Bullets beginwaving at passing motorists, holding signs that declare 'Honk if youlove Juwan.'It's the day that the Bullets are to begin contractnegotiations with star forward Juwan Howard, and Susan O'Malley isstaging the kind of media event that has become her signature. She'sheard from the Howard camp that Juwan wants to feel loved inWashington. 'I want Barnum & Bailey all the time,' is the way shelater explains her philosophy. 'I want different!'At about a quarter to 6, a New Orleans-style jazz band strikesup a tune and Bullettes cheerleaders start a kick line alongWisconsin Avenue. A plane flies overhead dragging a sign that reads'We Love Juwan.' Shortly afterward Wes Unseld, wearing a blueblazer, and O'Malley, tucked behind sunglasses, turn the corner andstride to a bank of microphones set up on the sidewalk. Unseldanswers a few questions, then disappears inside to startnegotiations with Howard and his agent, David Falk.O'Malley remains and takes her turn at the mike. 'Hoops {theBullets mascot} will stay at Booeymonger's until Juwan is signed,'she declares. 'The sandwich of the day at Booeymonger's is also theJuwan Howard sandwich . . .'Have a great day,' she tells the assembled media, beforeconcluding with another of her trademarks: providing the number ofthe Bullets ticket office. 'Call 301 NBA-DUNK !'In the end, of course, O'Malley's antics had little practicaleffect on the cool, self-interested calculations that governtransactions in the NBA these days. Howard bolted the Bullets for ahuge offer from the Miami Heat in what was widely viewed as acolossal blunder by Bullets management -- a screw-up from which theywere amazingly rescued by the NBA when officials ruled the Heat'scontract with Howard invalid. O'Malley came in for considerablebashing from hard-core fans, who saw the Bullets as overmatched inthe negotiations with Falk. But, as is typical, O'Malley sharedresponsibility. Unseld was the team executive directly in charge ofnegotiating with Falk and Howard. And Pollin, in the end, must signoff on any decision to spend tens of millions of dollars on a singleplayer.If anything, the scene outside Falk's offices that dayunderscored the kind of scrappy, almost ragtag reputation theBullets have developed around the NBA. While the Knicks were wooingfree agent guard Allan Houston with a slick video featuring SpikeLee, the Bullets were reduced to schmaltzy scenes on the sidewalk.Susan O'Malley lacks the resources to go toe-to-toe routinely withcorporate goliaths like ITT Corp. (owner of the Knicks) or cruiseship magnate Mickey Arison (owner of the Heat). And while mostcredit her with adding sizzle to the Bullets, her critics wonder inthe end, 'Where's the beef?'O'Malley makes no pretension to being a great marketinginnovator. She says she has traveled the country in search of thebest ideas initiated by other franchises. 'I'm the greatest thief inAmerica,' she declares. 'I don't believe there are any originalideas.'She brought to the Bullets a definite philosophy aboutmarketing the team: that the best way to create demand was to createthe perception that Bullets tickets were scarce. It wasn't so easyin the early days. The year O'Malley took over from Slatton as'acting' head of the Bullets business operations (Pollin soonsolidified her position by naming her executive vice president) wasthe first year of an eight-year Bullets playoff drought that haslasted to this day. It was all the harder to take because the NBAwas in the midst of a surge in worldwide popularity. But as theBullets struggled year after year, excitement associated with theteam was close to nil.So O'Malley set about 'forcing sellouts,' as she puts it. Shescrapped a plan that allowed partial season ticket holders to pickany 10 games they wanted. Instead, she picked the games for them, amove that immediately ensured a sizable base of fans for at least aquarter of the home games. She made sure there was a halftime showevery night and loud pop music at breaks in the action. Shedeveloped a half-hour TV show about the team. And while she found ithard to sell the Bullets themselves, O'Malley sold the NBA. Come seeMagic Johnson! Come see Michael Jordan! Come see Larry Bird! Thestrategy worked so well that at some games, it seemed, there weremore Lakers or Bulls or Celtics fans in the arena than Bullets fans-- a fact that annoyed an otherwise-pleased Pollin and later amazedChris Webber after he was traded to the team.'I said, `Here's the problem,' ' O'Malley recalls of herprogram. 'You have to get the season ticket holder to believethere's a reason for him to have committed to 41 games. And thereason might be that, early on, 10 times he could sit in his seat,in the best seat in the house, and look around and see a full arenaand look at his client or his girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever itwas and say, `Don't I have great seats for this big game?' They haveto believe there was a value to committing to all 41 games.'Bullets attendance rose impressively as O'Malley put her plansin place, but soon the whispers started that her attendance numberswere inflated, that the Bullets were giving tickets away to sponsors-- or at least discounting many so heavily that the turnstilenumbers were meaningless.During much of this time, the Capitals hockey team was top dogin the Pollin organization, more successful than the Bullets, as ateam and as a business. Capitals officials watched O'Malley work andconcluded that her attendance numbers were being padded mainlythrough heavy discounts for corporate sponsors and other groups.They laughed when they heard Bullets sellouts announced when therewere thousands of empty seats apparent around the building.'They sort of ran like a rah-rah organization,' says BenBuoma, a former Capitals sales and marketing official. 'We alwaystreated it like a joke in the sales office, like, `What are they upto now?' We knew that it was a facade -- they would tell people theywere having these sellouts. There were tickets for a dollar or two-- they {the numbers} were absolutely padded to us.'Such criticism is buttressed by sources who have seenconfidential NBA financial data that show the Bullets' gate receiptsremained among the lowest in the league, even as their reportedattendance rose during O'Malley's tenure. The Bullets' revenuepotential was certainly limited by what for professional sports isan obsolete arena, with its lack of modern luxury seating and clubsuites. Still, says one former NBA executive, the team's low revenueranking 'tells you they were discounting a lot.'Discounting per se is by no means an illegitimate tactic,marketing experts say, especially when you're trying to build faninterest in a struggling sport or team. The Bullets are hardly theonly sports organization that does it. But the method can bedangerous if it alienates season ticket holders who pay top dollarfor their seats -- and it can cut heavily into a business's profits.'She's a corporate executive in a highly competitive, big-timebusiness environment, and the decisions she makes aren't alwaysgoing to be popular,' says Falk. 'She's done a helluva job playingcatch-up ball for a franchise that hasn't displayed a contemporaryview over the past decade.'O'Malley, when asked about her performance, replies, 'I'd feelmore comfortable if you asked Abe Pollin.' But she goes on whenpressed: 'I think I've done a good job -- I really do . . . If yourun the arena and it's full, then people say, `Yeah, it's full, butthere are discounted tickets.' There are always those that are thenaysayers. And we've admitted it -- Wes admitted it, and I'veadmitted it -- that when we started out, sure, we would discount andcreate the perception . . . It was part of the plan. You have tobuild interest.'Neither O'Malley nor Pollin will provide the actual Bullets orCaps financial numbers, which would answer definitively thequestions about the impact of ticket discounting. Pollin, however,says that his bottom line has improved under O'Malley.'No matter what anyone else tells you,' Pollin insists.'You're talking to the guy who signs the checks.'Indeed, Pollin was so ecstatic about Susan O'Malley'sperformance one year that he presented her with a red Miata aftershe hit their mutually agreed upon sales target. 'She did a terrificjob of revitalizing the organization from top to bottom,' Pollinsays.One morning in 1991, Pollin asked O'Malley, 'By the way, howwould you like to be president' of the Bullets? As Pollin remembersit, 'She almost fell off her chair.''I can't be president, Mr. Pollin,' O'Malley answered.'Why?''Because you're president.''Okay, I'll be something else,' Pollin said. 'But you'represident.'Susan O'Malley was not yet 30 years old.BREAK Seizing her opportunity to run the Bullets, O'Malley did morethan just fill the arena's seats. She revived the concept ofcustomer service in the team's front office. She commissionedconsumer surveys that showed season ticket holders complaining thatthey never heard from the team until their invoice was due. 'Allright,' O'Malley decided, 'we're going to put together a newsletterand you're going to get it every month. We're going to call a seasonticket holder every day, the directors and myself. Every day, we'regoing to call a season ticket holder and say, `Hey, how's it going?What's going on?' 'O'Malley capitalized on a God-given gift for blarney. When shewasn't cultivating key media figures, she was thinking up crazyschemes to get attention for her team, such as the year she askedthe public for their best good luck charms to help the team improveits habitually awful fortune in the annual NBA draft lottery. Shehauled three trash bags full of such charms with her to New Yorkwhen the lottery was held, although the guards at BWI Airport wouldnot allow her to take former Orioles great Brooks Robinson's batwith her on the airplane.Within the Bullets organization, O'Malley adopted acarrot-and-stick approach to management. She would declare casualday at the office when the team recorded a sellout. She thought oflittle contests to motivate the sales force. At the end of hersecond year, O`Malley was so pleased by a dramatic run-up in ticketsales that she and another official went to Circuit City and bought100 items -- television sets, boom boxes, appliances. 'We stackedthem all here in the office,' she recalls. 'I put a curtain on thedoor and I said to everyone, `Congratulations on a great season. Mr.Pollin wants you to go in there and take whatever you want.' 'She was effective, too, in building strong relationships withsome key Pollin executives. She developed a close and genuinefriendship with Unseld, the only man who ever brought Abe Pollin aworld championship, a man who is seen as close to untouchable in anorganization that prides itself on bonds of personal loyalty.O'Malley also made sure she reported directly to Pollin and notthrough his then-deputy, Jerry Sachs. Sachs would become one ofseveral Pollin loyalists who saw their roles diminish as O'Malleyrose over the years.In O'Malley's management program, loyalty became paramount --excessively so, in the view of some of O'Malley's staff. MarvBrooks, the PA announcer O'Malley fired, remembers being hauled intoher office at one point after someone overheard him making anunflattering remark about a Bullets performance. 'I was ordered tosign a loyalty oath,' he says. 'It was two pages, and the gist of itwas I would never in public or private say anything negative aboutthe Bullets, and indeed if I refused to sign that loyalty oath I wasfired on the spot.'I was irate,' Brooks goes on. 'I asked, `What about the FirstAmendment?' I remember this as if it were yesterday. She said, `TheFirst Amendment doesn't apply in this situation.' 'O'Malley says she doesn't remember such an exchange withBrooks. She says she has never required employees to sign documentsdeclaring their loyalty to the organization.O'Malley endured open acts of hostility: Someone trashed hercar in the parking lot of USAir Arena one day. Pollin remainedsupportive, but as she became more visible and more powerful, thewhispers about her spread and the pressures on her mounted.Some of these pressures had to do with being a highly visiblewoman in a position of authority in a professional sport run almostentirely by men. O'Malley would receive constant, if inadvertent,reminders that she was an anomaly in a male world. She tended tohandle slights with humor. One year, O'Malley was traveling with theteam when it took an overnight flight from Los Angeles toIndianapolis. She was the last off the bus as the team arrived atthe hotel in the morning, and as she scampered to catch up with theplayers, a security guard stopped her and said, 'Hon, why don't youwait until tomorrow to get their autographs -- they've beentraveling all night.'Pervis Ellison, the former Bullets center and a cut-up, turnedaround and exclaimed, 'Thank GOD ! She has been following us sincethe airport.'O'Malley says Unseld finally sorted things out by telling theguard, 'She's signing the checks, so you better let her through.'Unseld, who knows what it feels like to be an outsider, saysthat while she doesn't necessarily show it, O'Malley feels pressureand responsibility. 'I think she feels that if she doesn't do thisjob right, I really believe she thinks that women won't get a crackat this' again, he says.In the spring of 1993, Roland W. Betts -- a wealthy New Yorkdeveloper, movie financier and sports entrepreneur -- began thinkingabout getting into professional hockey. Betts was the principalowner of the Texas Rangers baseball team. He was friendly with thecommissioner of the National Hockey League, who put him in touchwith Abe Pollin.As Betts tells the story, he and Pollin got together and theconversation drifted around to a deal for all three of Pollin'smajor properties -- the Bullets, the Caps, and USAir Arena. Bettssays he talked openly about his interest in building a new arena forthe teams in downtown Washington, a facility he was positive woulddramatically increase revenue for the teams. The two men worked outa price and, Betts says flatly, 'We had a deal.' The only thing leftwas a month or so of 'due diligence' work to check each party'sfinancial and legal position.But when the two men got back together to consummate thetransaction at baseball's all-star game at Camden Yards, Pollindeclared that he had changed his mind. Betts and his prospectivemanagement team -- including former football star Calvin Hill --were furious.Betts came away with the strong suspicion that Peter O'Malley,who he says was in all the meetings, had convinced Pollin that hecould build his own downtown arena. Betts also suspected thatO'Malley harbored his own family concerns: In Betts's opinion, thetwo Pollin teams were not functioning well, and, as he puts it,Susan O'Malley 'wasn't in my plans.''There's a family unit there, and I guess I would havedisplaced that family unit,' Betts says. 'I was disappointed itdidn't happen.'Peter O'Malley says that Betts's claim that the two sides hadmade a deal is 'completely inaccurate.' As to the charge thatO'Malley tried to undermine the deal to protect his daughter'sposition, O'Malley says that is completely ludicrous and that, inany event, Pollin makes his own decisions. 'Mr. Betts has come upwith a novel excuse to justify his inability to achieve his wishes,'O'Malley says.Soon Pollin promoted Susan O'Malley yet again. In the summerof 1994, in what was widely seen inside his organization as a signof things to come, Pollin gave O'Malley yet more responsibility,placing her and Unseld in charge of corporate advertising andsponsorship at USAir Arena. The move did not go over well with theveteran sales force, and some of the top salesmen quietly left theorganization. In the aftermath, Pollin decided to reorganize hisentire sports empire -- and he expanded O'Malley's writ yet again,turning the Caps' business operations over to her and Unseld.In many respects, the reorganization made a lot of sense. TheCaps clearly needed a shake-up, and the longtime internalcompetition between the Bullets and the Caps was creatingunnecessary friction and confusion with potential advertisers andother customers. Pollin, intrigued by the successfulhockey-basketball partnerships in Vancouver and Denver, saw anopportunity to improve his organization's performance by pulling hisfragmented operation together.But the reorganization was quick, violent and -- in the viewof many former Caps employees -- cold-hearted. Not in keeping atall, they felt, with Pollin's reputation as a paternal, loyalbusinessman who runs his companies like a family grocery store. Someof Pollin's longest-serving lieutenants were demoted. About 10employees were fired. To this day, ill feeling about thereorganization endures, and much of it has been directed towardO'Malley. It was she and the other Bullets people, after all, whotook over the top jobs in the newly combined organization.O'Malley and Unseld both insist they had little to do with thereorganization. In fact, they say, they had to be coaxed into thechange by Pollin. 'We talked about it for a day,' recalls Unseld.'Why would we want to do that? That's what we talked about . . . Weknew there were going to be some very unhappy people.'Pollin, Unseld and O'Malley all say they regret the bumps thataccompanied the personnel changes. O'Malley says bluntly that someof the personnel decisions were 'mishandled,' but she won't say bywhom. 'Decisions were made about people they wanted laid off in themerger, and those people were not communicated to fairly,' she says.'Those decisions were made before Wes and I took the helm.'In the same breath, talking about the former Caps employees,O'Malley suggests with no particular warmth that those who were letgo had lost Pollin's confidence. 'You know, in some ways it's okayif they want to blame us,' she says, referring to herself andUnseld. 'That's okay. Because it keeps the memory of the otherstuff intact for them. Better to have these outside people come inthan believe the inside people didn't have confidence in them.'It's mid-November 1996, and the new Bullets and Caps seasonsare underway. The Bullets are up in New Jersey and the Caps aretaking the day off. Susan O'Malley, decked out in a rather loud redblazer with a black leather fringe, settles down over a steak in abooth at the Capital Grille, a downtown restaurant favored bycigar-smoking lobbyists and Republican operatives. It makes somesense that this is one of her favorite hangouts: O'Malley says sheis a Republican and doesn't eat vegetables. In politics at least,O'Malley is not entirely her father's daughter; Peter O'Malleyfamously presided over Prince George's County's Democratic Partyduring the 1970s.This is a typically overscheduled week for O'Malley. Mondaynight brought a dinner with Abe Pollin to honor the former Bulletswho made the NBA's all-time list of top 50 players. Tuesday nightwas the Bullets-Pistons at USAir Arena. Wednesday night is thisinterview. Thursday night will be another dinner, this time to honorPollin for the anti-violence campaign associated with his plans tochange the Bullets' name to the Wizards. Friday and Saturday nightsshe plans to be at the arena once again, supervising her employeesduring Caps and Bullets games.While her steady ascent has allowed her to delegate moreduties to her top deputies, O'Malley is spending much of her timethese days on yet another big Pollin project: selling luxury suites,club seats and other aspects of the new downtown arena toWashington's corporate community. It isn't an easy task. She'sfacing competition from two new NFL stadiums and new federal ethicsrules that limit the gifts and entertainment from lobbyists that canbe accepted by legislators and their staffs. Still, O'Malley saysthat 80 percent of the arena suites already have been sold, alongwith a third of the club seats -- a figure that sounds disappointingbut that she insists is well ahead of other comparable facilitiesaround the country. Each week brings new pitches to more potentialsponsors. The arena has been named for MCI and the rights to sellsoft-drinks have been sold to Coca-Cola, but she's still puttingtogether long-term deals with an official credit card issuer, cardealer, sports retailer and eight or nine other categories ofbusiness.O'Malley is never down, at least never outwardly. 'God did notmake Susan O'Malley with an off switch,' says Pat Williams, anexecutive with the Orlando Magic. Indeed, she has an astonishingcapacity to store any anger, fears or weaknesses she may feel behindher perpetually upbeat game face. 'I've never seen her not incommand,' says Rick Moreland, her friend from high school and aBullets executive.Still, friends worry about the personal costs of O'Malley'srelentless drive. They say she is even more guarded, harder to read,than she was 10 years ago -- a sign, perhaps, of the greaterscrutiny and pressures that come with her new responsibilities.'Her work consumes her life -- it consumes every aspect of herlife,' says Dawn Higgins, a public relations consultant in NorthernVirginia who is one of O'Malley's closest friends. 'She's not ascarefree. There's a tenseness about Susan now. She has a lot ofknocks that go with her position. She's been knocked in the press abit. She's very quiet about it, she doesn't complain. But you can'tsay it doesn't hurt you.'O'Malley is well aware of the criticism that swirls behind herback. 'I know there are people out there who say, `She's a phony;she comps tickets; Abe loves her; he's blinded; she got the jobbecause of her father.' I know all of the things -- the negatives.They are not my jury. I'm my jury. And so there's self-imposedpressure. I have to do a good job to be successful.'As to her professional performance, she sounds very much as ifshe knows where she is going. 'I think you say: `Where did you startand where are you now? Where have you grown this company?' And thatto me has been the measure. Have we moved into the top echelon ofthe league? Probably not. Will we? Absolutely.'About her non-professional life she seems decidedly lessconfident. In fact, what it is possible to glimpse about that lifelooks surprisingly fluid right now. She lives in a rented house inOld Town Alexandria. She loves to relax on the water, but her boatremains docked most of the time just across the Bay Bridge.Her closest friends are Higgins and Cecilia Penaherrera, anexecutive at Signature Flight Service who worked with O'Malley atEarle Palmer Brown. They are among the few people, along withUnseld, with whom O'Malley says she can 'totally relax.'Sometimes, O'Malley acknowledges, she even allows herself tothink about a post-Bullets and Caps life -- a life with time,without stress. She says her future would not include politics ortrying to move into team ownership, ambitions she is sometimesrumored to possess. She's thought of trying to start and manage herown charitable foundation. Perhaps, she says, she'll open a coffeebar in Charleston, S.C., one of her favorite places. 'It's prettymuch Starbucks with alcohol,' she says of her fantasy escape.'Something like that. We'll see.'But for now, she emphasizes, she's not going anywhere.'I love this job. I love what I do,' Susan O'Malley says.'There's a country and western song that says, `Living for a momentthat I would die for.' And that's how I feel. I'm doing somethingthat I would die for.'Michael Abramowitz is a reporter for the Metro section of The Post.
