Adams Family Values

The friends of Bud -- and he does have them -- argue that the public has never known what a generous and loyal guy he truly is. Some of them have been FOBs for four decades. He's had the same wife for 50 years. And despite the many changes on the front lines of the Oilers -- the team has had 15 head coaches in its 36-year history, while the Cowboys have had three in the same time -- many other employees at Adams' companies have been with him for 30 years or more. In the '80s bust, Adams was one of the few oil company CEOs who actually tried to retain employees, offering them a cut in pay instead of laying them off, notes Sam Fletcher, a reporter with Oil Daily who's followed Adams' oil business over the years.

And while Adams' disputes with various Oilers are legendary, there are some former players and coaches who remain grateful to Adams for favors he's done them. Joe Spencer, a former Oilers assistant coach, says Adams may have saved his son's life in 1965, when Spencer's son was seriously injured playing football at Tulane. The boy was growing worse in a New Orleans hospital, so Spencer turned to Adams, who dispatched his private plane and pilot to bring Spencer's son to the Texas Medical Center.

Other FOBs tell stories of small kindnesses. Isabel Gerhart, who until recently owned an upscale women's clothing shop near River Oaks, says that since the death of her husband, Adams has offered her counsel on everything from finances to finding a good plumber. The Gerharts were part of a crowd that met for supper at Bud's River Oaks home before every Oilers home game, then boarded a bus for the Dome. According to one former regular, laughing at Adams' lame jokes was the price for the trip. One line was especially grating, and it was heard every time the bus pulled up in front of the Dome.

"Here we are at Astrodome, the eighth wonder of the world," Adams would announce. "And here I am, the ninth ...."

But the ninth wonder of the world's friendships didn't stretch very far or very deep into Houston's power structure, and that left him at a decided disadvantage when he launched his campaign for a new downtown stadium in 1994. As Adams envisioned it, what others would derisively label "the BudDome" would have 75,000 seats for football, a retractable roof and could be adjusted to accommodate basketball and hockey.

The BudDome was a loser from the start. It turned out that Rockets owner Les Alexander, whom Adams said would join him in chipping in some private funding for construction, wanted his own downtown arena. And most of the city's business establishment, which had gone out and helped sell luxury boxes for the Oilers after the Dome was retrofitted in 1988, turned a cold shoulder to Adams.

"They had no interest in working with him," says Jim Kollaer, the president of the Greater Houston Partnership. "He had cried wolf too many times."

One person who did try to work with Adams was Mayor Bob Lanier, who began private discussions with the Oilers owner back in 1993 but came to take a hard-line stance against any public funding of a new football stadium for Adams. Last July, the mayor served notice on Adams that the city would not be subsidizing a new dome. Adams, in turn, sent a letter to Lanier's home threatening to move the team if the city didn't come around to his way of thinking by August 1.

The mayor publicly rejected the demand, and Adams' letter found its way to the press.

Spencer Murchison says that Adams gave up on Houston after Lanier went public with Adams' ultimatum. He likens the episode to Adams' firing of Bum Phillips as Oilers coach in 1980, after three seasons in which Phillips had led the team to the playoffs and had become just about the most popular man in town. It was without a doubt the single most unpopular move Adams had made before he started dickering with Nashville.

According to Murchison, Phillips committed a mortal sin in Adams' eyes by not only refusing to hire an offensive coach, but by going to the media and saying he wouldn't do it -- no matter who had asked him.

"Bud Adams," explains Murchison, "does not like to be criticized in public."
Murchison knew the consequences for Phillips after reading the coach's comments, and he remembers rushing to the phone to call Adams in an effort to head off the coach's firing. He reached Adams' secretary, who told him, "It's too late."

When he read Lanier's public comments last August rejecting Adams' ultimatum, Murchison didn't run to the phone. But he knew the consequences. Soon, Adams would "fire" Lanier and the city and begin negotiating with Nashville.

In doing so, Adams seemed to be reneging on the pledge he made after the Astrodome's 1988 renovation to keep the Oilers in the Dome for the duration of the team's ten-year lease.