From 'Jerry McGuire' to Finding Your Life's Mission after Loss

by Buffy Filippell

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I was Jerry McGuire. Maybe Geraldine McGuire.

I was the sports agent. Tennis players were my clients and I "showed them the money" from Wilson, Nike, Head, Prince, and adidas.

I was Andrea Jaeger's agent. Do you remember her? She was at one time ranked #2 in the World. At 17 years of age, she was in the French Open final and beating Chris Evert in the semis. At 18 she reached the finals of Wimbledon and beat Billie Jean King 6-1, 6-1 in the semis. Billie Jean King on grass!

That was over 25 years ago; 1982, 1983. I wasn't yet 30 years old.

But hold on. Let's back up 10 more years before that. It's 1973. Title IX had been enacted the year before.

I was a sophomore transfer from the University of New Hampshire. I lived in Briscoe. I tried out for the women's tennis team against a number of experienced players. I barely made the team. The coach said she selected me because I was nice when I lost. On the first day of practice she asked us to fill out a 3x5 card with our summer tournament results. I handed her the card back blank. She looked puzzled. I felt embarrassed. I told her I had never played a tennis tournament in my life. She turned around and I thought I overhead her mumbling under her breath as she walked away, "I knew I should have selected Bunny over Buffy."

"Get on with it," I'd hear my father say.

Within days, I can remember being glued to the tv set watching the epic "Battle of the Sexes" between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs on a small tv set in Briscoe. Jay Specter, who lived on another floor, invited me to watch the game on his black and white tv set. Billie Jean, my hero; won! Do you really know how much that helped promote women's sports, women's athletics. Think, Title IX had just been enacted the year before. Had she lost, it would have been a huge set back. Billie Jean King had a lot riding on her shoulders at that time. Really. Bobby Riggs had beaten Grand Slam champion, Margaret Court, earlier in what was called the Mother's Day Massacre. Had Billie Jean lost it would have been terrible. And I think she won in 3 sets. What a match.

I think Billie Jean inspired all of us. Our tennis team won the Indiana State Tournament and we had a winning record in the fall. Leafing through old newspapers, I see that my doubles partner, Kim Pendery, and I saw "limited play." And by the spring, I had won a few #6 seed singles matches.

That June of 1974, the USTA was hosting its National Women's Collegiate Tennis Championships in Kalamazoo, Michigan. 2 players from each women's collegiate tennis team were invited to play. I don't know why Cindy Bridgeland, our #1 player, didn't want to play; Holly Pope, our #2 couldn't, Elaine Robertson declined; Ingrid Montecino and Denise Donchetz said no, so I raised my hand. Can you imagine, I was Indiana University's only representative at that USTA National Women's Collegiate Tennis Championship. It rained on the first day, so I played in E. Lansing, indoors. I drew the #13th seed, Candy Reynolds, #1 player from the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. Just to give you a fast forward, Candy turned pro shortly thereafter and attained the world's #50 singles ranking and won the doubles championship at the French Open by 1983.

Candy and I walked on the court at 12:00 noon and we walked off the court at 12:15. That included 5 minutes of warm up. I lost. The ball didn't go over the net more than 3 times in a point. She had 19 aces.

My father was there. He had an encouraging word. He said maybe it was the racket. Better yet, he wouldn't let me hold the sorrow too long. "Get on with it," is what I remember him saying.

By the end of my junior year, I had advanced to the Big Ten Championships #3 doubles. My doubles partner, Kim Pendery, and I lost to Ohio State early so we ended up in the consolation round and won the Consolation 3rd doubles against Purdue. I played mostly #6 singles and #3 doubles.

I was one of the lucky ones to student teach under Marilyn Yeagley during the fall of 1975. Sharing her office at Batchelor Middle School was just the right thing. I loved sports. But we both knew I wasn't going into teaching but something in sports. She had faith in me. I graduated that December half semester early from IU only to find myself in a challenging work environment by January of 1976.

The teachers and advisors at the school of HPER were amazingly connected and determined to help all of us HPER grads secure jobs. I was hooked up with an IU alum who was the athletics director at Miami Dade Community College. He offered me a job as their head of public relations. John Brogneaux also connected me with a couple of schools in Florida who offered me teaching jobs. I had applied to many athletic departments across the country only to receive the usual turn off letter. My father encouraged me to consider going into a "business". And Wilson Sporting Goods was right in my backyard of Chicago. I applied for a job, got turned down. My father would say, "Get on with it." Encouraged to reapply by him, I was offered another interview and then was offered 2 jobs at Wilson! One a sales representative position in Denver and another was a promotions position right there in Chicago. The key qualification for the promotions position was whether I was good at having lunch with professional athletes like Jimmy Connors and Chris Evert. I said "I'm good at lunch!"

The fact that I'd been a Division I Varsity tennis player at Indiana University and participated in the national collegiate championships helped me get that job at Wilson Sporting Goods. Facing challenges of making the team, getting walloped in the national collegiate tennis championships, and yet supported by the teachers and advisors at the School of HPER gave me the courage and determination to face life's challenges. I didn't give up. As my father encouraged, "I got on with it."

In my first year with Wilson Sporting Goods I returned to the USTA National Championships, this time giving rackets and emotional support to many of the top juniors in the country - Tracy Austin, John McEnroe, and even Andrea Jaeger. I use to stencil the "W's" on the rackets. You didn't know you needed a college degree for that? I should have remembered my chemistry when the red ink ran all over my clothes in my suitcase. I negotiated endorsement contracts on behalf of Wilson with Chris Evert and other young American, South African and even Soviet Union women tennis players. I went to Wimbledon, the US Open, the French Open, Italian Open, this time as a business person. I carried rackets on airplanes, and I'm sure people thought I was the professional. Wilson transferred me to London in 1978 and I promoted Wilson Staff golf clubs and golf balls. Greg Norman, a new player on the men's tour, traveled around England with me and promoted Wilson clubs. By Wimbledon of that year, Mark McCormack's International Management Group, the largest sports management and athlete representation firm in the world, offered me a job back in Cleveland, OH. I would become an agent.

If you have ever wanted to be famous, and I can say that the thought had crossed my mind, this was as close to being famous as you can get without the talent. I represented some of the world's best women tennis players and some of the world's best Australian players, like Ken Rosewall, Rod Laver and Roy Emerson. I got to hit with them too! I negotiated endorsement contracts for Andrea Jaeger with Wilson, Fila and Bata shoes. I arranged for her to be in a Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial with her mother. I oversaw her financial advisor who managed her finances. She was the #2 player in the world in the early 80s.

I promoted more events like celebrity tennis events starring Charlton Heston, Rob Reiner, and Wayne Rogers. I traveled to many resorts and nearly ever weekend, I judged a resort by the thickness of their towels! And it was during this time I wondered how could I find people to help me run events? I needed help, and how could I find it. Colleges were starting sports management degreed programs. How do I find those students? I got married in 1982 and moved to Italy with my husband.

Within a year and a half in Turin, Italy, my husband and I returned and I needed a job. Sure, I guess I could go back to IMG, but I felt you just don't go back. I needed to keep moving forward. I needed to "Get on with it." My husband spotted a story in the paper about Peter Ueberroth becoming the head of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. He was "Time Magazine's" Man of the Year. Do you remember him? A firm called Korn/Ferry had recruited him. Why not do that?

I had worked on events around the country and often needed people. I couldn't find them. Now I'm looking for a job in sports. How do I find one? There were a number of schools offering degrees in sports administration, and where do they go? How do they find a job? I learned about headhunters. People who find heads of businesses and employees in companies. Was there anyone who does that in sports? If not, I would try to do just that.

I wrote to Dick Ferry, president of Korn/Ferry, and told him I wanted to start a practice recruiting heads of sports. A letter from the local Cleveland office manager followed that said thanks but no thanks. I called Dick Ferry's office once again, and said that if I was going to be turned down, he would have to turn me down, not some office manager in Cleveland. Well that must have created a reaction. The Cleveland office manager called me, interviewed me and hired me. I learned how to do recruit executives and got my first assignment - finding the new head of women's professional tennis!

I found the head of women's tennis, the head of the women's international pro tennis council, and then the director of marketing for the LPGA. My office support staff loved the pictures of famous athletes and the local sports gossip. I took a young man out of the NBA League office and put him in the LPGA. This was when NBA league marketing had 5 employees, now it has a thousand employees. He urged me to contact the Commissioner of the NBA, David Stern, to see if he needed help in finding a replacement for him. In retrospect, how gutsy was this? I called Mr. Stern, who I called "David" and asked. I told him I had just recruited one of his staff people for a job and would he like me to find his replacement. Well, that didn't go well, and I don't really remember what he said, but I think he hung up and me and I felt pretty sick. I thought to myself that I'd just made a huge mistake and will never get work from the NBA ever again.

This is a story about finding one's mission from a loss, and the losses up to this point were a few. They weren't as big as the next to come.

After 2 years with Korn/Ferry, my 62 year old father was to die suddenly of brain cancer. In Judith Viorst's "Necessary Losses", a book I used as comfort during this time, she says, "I've learned in the course of our life we leave and are left and let go of much of what we love. Losing is the price we pay for living. Losing is the price we pay for living. It is also the source of much of our growth and gain."

"Time" Magazine coincidentally during this time cited that many new ventures are started following a time of one's greatest pain - one such example, "Mothers against Drunk Driving."

In Daniel Goldman's book titled "Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence," he cited another author James McGregor Burns. Leaders who have lost major family members at a young age developed a dynamic will to succeed, a driving ambition that lasted their entire lives. He goes on to say, "I'm convinced this ambition, this passion, is an enhanced emotional awareness, which produces an even greater need to connect with other people."

My annual review was during this time, and my boss, annoyed that the office was rallying around my sports practice, urged me to look at other jobs saying he didn't believe I was cut out for recruiting. He really wanted to fire me.

I don't know how I landed at the office of Norton Rose, a former CEO of Cole National, who gave me advice. He was a large, imposing figure. You know sometimes you just are directed to the people who are supposed to give you direction. He was then head of Human Resources at Progressive Insurance at the time. He urged me to continue my dream of recruiting executives in sports. Norton had an interest in someone to help people with sports jobs. Norton's son is Chris Rose, the sportscaster host of the Best Damn Sports Show Period on Fox Television.

I left Korn/Ferry and within a few months of crying and searching out all my long lost roommates and friends to console me - you know you feel the need to connect with people - the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association called me, can you believe it - a non-cowgirl, named "Buffy" whose flashy belt buckle was made by Talbot's and I'm mighty afraid of horses no less. They wanted me to help them in their search for a new Commissioner. And then the call that really launched my career came. David Stern, that man who had hung up on me out on the phone, had recommended me - "calling me some gutsy broad from Cleveland" he said - to the owners of the Minnesota Timberwolves. They had spent $32 million to purchase an NBA expansion team and needed someone to help them get their money back! They were looking for a Vice President of Sales. I called David Stern to thank him, and when I asked him if he wanted to be Commissioner for the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, I can remember his reply, "I can throw a lot of bull, I'm not sure I can ride one."

For the Timberwolves, I found them Tim Leiweke, now one of the country's best known sports executives. Other teams followed until I had accumulated over 150 clients filling over 300 positions in sports in 20 years! I filled positions for Commissioners of Leagues, Presidents of teams, heads of ticket sales, public relations executives. I called the business TeamWork, because I worked for teams and I needed "teamwork" to help me find people for jobs. Along the way, I gave birth to a boy. I got a phone with a mute button so when he cried, you couldn't hear him. Well, you could, so that started many a personal conversation with my clients and my candidates.

As my son was matriculating through lower school and middle school, and the world was jumping on dot-com companies, I became involved with Bob McNair's $700 million bid for the 32nd NFL franchise to be placed in Houston. I was to help find their front office staff. This time, I flew down to Houston and actually sat in their offices - the former Cogen Technologies that Bob sold to Enron for $1.3 billion in 1999. As I was trying to help them fill their senior jobs, I was drawn into ALL their hiring. I couldn't handle 100 emails a day, and calls that started at 9am and ended at 6pm. There was no way to get any work done without answering the phone or emails about people wanting to work for an NFL team.

One call would be from someone who wanted to head up cheerleading. Oh, I forgot there is a cheerleading coach. Another call was for someone who wanted to be the athletic trainer. We only had a staff of 3 or 4 so there weren't many ankle injuries yet! And one fellow called from prison and asked whether Mr. McNair could hire him so he could get out of jail.

I had a file of 300 resumes and I couldn't find the right people and answer all these calls and questions. I threw up my hands.

Well, this was the dot-com boom and most of Houston was wired. So, we developed a system on their website to accept resumes which could sort the resumes, politely answer all candidate applications and make the resumes accessible to us. It was a godsend. And I called it TeamWork - Online.

TeamWork Online caught on 8 years ago during the dot-com times and today we serve over 500 sports organizations in helping them through technology post their jobs and recruit candidates for their jobs. We connect candidates to employers, employers to candidates. In the last 8 years over 15,000 young and veteran executives in sports and outside of sports have found their next employer through our software. We have 700,000 records of people wanting jobs in sports, and 82% of the jobs we post are filled with candidates who apply online. We are the only software of our kind in the sport business connecting candidates to employers. Teams like the Dodgers, Yankees, Red Sox, Tampa Bay, Celtics, Lakers, 49ers, Rams, Blackhawks, RedWings all use our TeamWork Online software to recruit their business staffs. We even got recognized in "Sports Illustrated."

Not long ago, I answered my home phone line one Friday night. "Hello," I said. "Hi, Buffy, it's Billie!" In one of those split seconds that feels like hours, my face flushed, my heart pounded. Was it an anxiety-attack or was it hot flashes (it's hard to tell the difference at my age?) Absolute total blankness in my mind. We call these "senior moments." I didn't know who it was. How many Billies...did it sound like female Billie do I know? A light went on. Wow, it's Billie Jean King!

"I wanted to thank you for contributing to my surprise 60th birthday party!" the voice continued.

It was Billie Jean King. The Women's Sports Foundation hosted her sixtieth birthday party on October 19th, right before the Women's Sports Foundation annual dinner and raised money in her honor to fund the Foundation.

I felt humbled. Whatever amount my gift was, I never thought I'd receive a personal thank-you call from Billie Jean King. We talked for about 20 minutes. Her enthusiasm and energy hasn't waned. And her refrain is the same as it has been for nearly 40 years - most all her life. She kept espousing the importance of helping young girls and women participate in athletics. Tennis. Sports. IU, I thought. "Get on with it." Also came to mind. How true it has been for me, too. I thought back to my IU days and watching Billie Jean King win the "Battle of the Sexes." I wrote a story online about her, and I was astonished how pleased she was. Me, Buffy, that girl that barely made the women's tennis team making her hero, Billie Jean King, happy!

Throughout the years, I have tried to give back to IU by joining both the Dean's Advisory Board of HPER - recruited by Kathy George head of IU's recreational program - and the IU business school advisory board for sports. This past July I saw the fruits of my labor. I wasn't surprised to hear that Robert Rardin, an IU business school student, applied through our software for a job in sports. Here was the announcement I received:

I am pleased and excited to announce that Robert Rardin will be joining the Orlando Magic as our new Database Marketing Manager. Robert comes to us from the Washington Nationals baseball team where he was the Senior Consumer Marketing, Database and Research Manager. Before working with the Nationals, Robert worked for the National Geographic Society as their Senior Group Direct Mail Marketing Manager. With over 5 years of database marketing experience and a MBA concentrating on Marketing and Strategy from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, Robert will be a great addition to our team.

Necessary Losses. While writing this speech, I have noticed I had to lose quite a few things along the way. Necessary losses. Losses I see have been the currency to connect me from one place, one person to another place and person along my journey. It's funny how it all seems to come full circle. Life's circle.

My coach here at IU lost confidence in me before I even started. I surely should have lost confidence after playing in the national collegiate tennis championship. I was turned away from Wilson Sporting Goods and fought back to get a great job. I was first told I wasn't accepted into executive recruiting. And then a couple years later, I was told I shouldn't pursue executive recruiting/headhunting from my boss at Korn/Ferry. You would think I'd get the message and turn away.

But while these one-way signs urged me backwards, my teammates, teachers and friends urged me onwards. You've pushed me forward. You've told me to "Get on with it." You've kept me going. You've honored me. Once through your sports management program and once through the HPER Alumni Achievement Award in 2006. I'm humbled to be asked back to serve on the business school board, and I'm privileged to come speak today at the Women's Colloquium. My giveback to the school is my time with students and teachers, my recollection of experience and a few dollars donated. Along the way, if I can get a few students jobs, that's even better. From my heart, I thank you.

In many of my interviews with executives in sports, I've come to learn quite a few of life's lessons. Mine were perseverance and passion. Respect those who help you along the way and express gratitude - give back. And don't be surprised if you happen to carry on your heroes' mission.

Coming upon my 33 years since graduating from IU, I've truly understood the importance of connecting people. It's been my life's mission. But we are all connected to our families, our friends, our teammates, teachers and our college. We are here for each other, enclosed in a circle, in a group, in a hoop that never ends. I keep coming back to IU - the tennis, teachers, teammates, classmates and friends. Thank you.

"And we are all connected to each other, in a circle in a hoop that never ends."

- Vanessa Williams - "Colors of the Wind"