The Jacksonville Jaguars begin their 15th season
in the National Football League amid hopes of improving on last year’s disappointing 5–11 record. Wayne Weaver has owned the Jaguars franchise since its inception in 1995 and has twice watched the Jaguars fall one game short of reaching
the Super Bowl. Prior to the start of the preseason games, Weaver met with Jacksonville Luxury Living writer Jeff Elliott and shared his views on the coming season, his concern about TV blackouts, the economic conditions in Jacksonville, his intent on not moving the Jaguars franchise to another city and more.
JLL: You’ve always been a positive person, especially at the start of each season. What excites you most about the upcoming season?
WW: Every year we go into the season thinking this team can compete. Our goal is always to compete to win our division. It’s hard to do. But when I look at our current team, I see a core of strong veterans. The thing that excites me is the young guys — the ones that we brought on to our roster at the end of last year and then the guys that we drafted. I’m really excited about this football team being able to compete. But the big thing I see is the chemistry of this football team. We had too many guys around here last year that were about ‘self,’ and that hurt us. We’re going to surprise some people this year in my opinion, so that is the optimism I do have. I’m also realistic to know that the AFC South has gotten stronger and that it’s going to be very hard to compete in this division. Realistically, we’ll probably be picked to finish last in our division, but it’s not always so bad to be the underdog.
JLL: A year ago, you extended Jack Del Rio’s contract and this past off-season, you brought in Gene Smith as the team’s general manager. How comfortable are you with these two men leading your team and making important decisions for this club?
WW: Gene has done every job in personnel for us throughout the years. I have so much confidence in Gene, number one as a person and what he stands for and his values. Gene’s disciplined attitude toward character and behavior pattern of players of the past is going to play into bringing in some young men here who are going to compete and really be good players and represent us on and off the field in the right way. When you can build that kind of chemistry, it’s about team and not self, good things happen. It happens in all my business operations. Gene has a great relationship with Jack. They’ve worked very closely together.
Jack’s record speaks for itself. When you look at our record since Jack has been here, we’re in the top ten or 11 in terms of wins in the NFL. We haven’t gotten to the point where we want to be but we went deep into the play-offs a couple years ago. I believe Jack is the coach that can lead us to bringing a championship to Jacksonville. So I have every confidence that Jack and Gene as a combination will be able to accomplish that goal for us.
JLL: Unlike some past seasons when some Jaguars’ players were involved in off-the-field issues, we didn’t hear that this year. Instead it was more what the players are doing in the community. Does that speak of the high character and moral values of players that are now the makeup of this team?
WW: Honestly, over the years, we’ve had good character guys here. Yes, we’ve had incidents like every other team. You’re always going to have young men that get big contracts and for the first time are out on their own and have money in their pocket. You’re going to have incidents. But I’m really proud of over the years that we’ve always stressed that character counts. We’ve always drilled into our players that you represent the National Football League and the Jacksonville Jaguars. It’s not a right, it’s a privilege. It’s a privilege to be a part of these organizations in the NFL. Unfortunately we have had incidences over time. I would say this year we have had more players out in the community early than we’ve had in some past years, but we’ve always had players participating. We’ve had some outstanding young men who have been great role models in our community, and I think the community embraces that.
JLL: You covered up nearly 10,000 seats a couple years ago in order to avert blackouts in Jacksonville. Now with ticket sales down, it appears that there will be TV blackouts for home games. How frustrating is that for you?
WW: One of the things that I’m the biggest proponent of is getting our games on TV because, to me, that’s a three-hour infomercial. You just can’t buy that exposure and you’re growing your next generation of fans, so it is frustrating from that standpoint. But you’ve got to be realistic that in this economy, none of us are immune to it. I’ve seen it in my other businesses. People want to be here, they just can’t afford it. In understanding this economy we’ve tried to make sure our fans have all sorts of different options. We want to do everything we can to make it more affordable for you to participate in Jaguars football, even to the extent of having value meals in the stadium, reducing some prices and making it less expensive for people to try to participate, whatever level they can participate in.
JLL: Have you lost any faith in Jacksonville remaining one of the 30 cities that have NFL franchises?
WW: I’ve said all along that we got a team here in Jacksonville probably early because we are a small market. If you go back, there was so much euphoria in this community. People embraced having a team and businesses bought more tickets than they could digest. Over time, they’ve had to settle down to a realistic number of tickets that our business community could afford. We’ve done a good job in selling out our games over the years. I think we’re just going through an abnormal period. I can tell you that in my 50 some odd years of business, I’ve never lived through a downturn like we’re currently experiencing. How long it’s going to take us to come out of it, who knows? I’m hopeful, I’m always optimistic.
JLL: Is it the young generation of fans that you’ll turn to as some of the team’s most avid supporters in future years?
WW: I run into young people that were 8, 9, 10, 12 years old when we came here 15 years ago. Now they’re out of college, in the work market and they’re die-hard Jaguars fans. Over the next few years, maybe 10–15 years, we won’t have the Giants tradition or the Green Bay tradition, but we’ll be starting to come close. We’ll have a core of fans that have grown up with Jaguars football that are always there for us. Right now in our market, we have probably 35,000 fans that are core, they’ll be here. Now some of them won’t be here this year because of the economy. We’ve gone back and looked at the history of that and we know we have that kind of fan base. That’s going to grow exponentially the next 10–15 years to the point that we’ll be uncovering those seats one day.
JLL: Over the years you have continued to emphasize that you will not relocate this franchise to another city. Yet there continues to be some national media that state otherwise. How do you combat that negative perception?
WW: It’s very frustrating and I don’t know how much clearer I can be that Jacksonville is a great NFL market and that we just need to be patient and take a longer term view. People need to focus on the positives rather than the negatives. Go back and look, we’re tied for sixth for the most wins in the AFC [since 1995]. We’re tied for ninth for most wins in the NFL. So we’ve found a way over the years to compete by spending to the cap, our fans are supporting us. If the national media would take the time to really look at the history of Jacksonville Jaguars football, they would find there are a lot more positives than negatives. We have competed. Sure we’ve blacked out games, but we haven’t blacked out as many games as other markets have over the years. Now because we are a small market — we’re in Florida that’s been hit by this economic crisis because of housing probably more than most cities have been hit — we’re suffering a little more right now. If you take it out of context, you can say, how can a city like Jacksonville black out all its games and that’s what’s going to happen this year. But you’ve got to take it in the right context as to why.
JLL: Someone who shares your passion and love of this team is your wife, Delores. What has she meant to this franchise with her work as executive director of the Jaguars Foundation?
WW: Delores is kind of the heart of the Jaguars, not just from a community standpoint, but an internal standpoint, making sure we’re always recognizing our staff and associates, making sure we’re doing the right kind of perks for them to make this a great place to work. She really is the conscience of the organization. Equally important, one of the things she said when we got this franchise, we’re going to have a Jaguars Foundation and we’re going to give back to the community, but we’re not going to compete with the other agencies that are doing great work in this community. So the organization is going to fund this foundation. The Jaguars fund this foundation every year with a million dollars. I’m really proud of what Delores does. She’s probably the hardest-working person in this building. Some nights I leave this office long before she leaves her office.
JLL: How do you personally cope with the ups and downs, the wins and losses of this franchise?
WW: You can’t describe it. In my other businesses, when things are going bad, you felt it but you don’t feel it with the same emotion as this one. Everyone in this organization wants to win. The guys are out there busting their butts 100 percent and the coaches are working hard to game plan for their opponents. There is nothing you can do that they haven’t already done trying to make sure that the outcome is positive. It’s a very difficult emotion. We have a 24-hour thing here where I want everyone to come into this building on Monday morning and if we lost the previous day, I want them to feel disappointed that we lost but that now we’ve got to go forward. I want our people to feel as bad as I do on Monday morning, but if we win, I want them to feel as good as I do because they all have a part of it and that they’ve contributed to our win. Jack and the coaches and Gene and his group are very good about interacting with our staff so that they do feel like they’re involved. It makes a difference when they come to work every morning. They’re excited about their jobs. It’s like that same team spirit in the locker room, you want that same camaraderie throughout the building.
JLL: There’s often debate about whether Jacksonville is more of a college or professional football market. What are your thoughts?
WW: There’s no question we have a huge college football following in this city. But the one thing I can tell you is that every Gator fan, every Seminoles fan is a Jaguars fan that lives in this city unless they grew up somewhere else and have an allegiance to another team, but they’re NFL football fans. That’s not just rhetoric. Go look at our television ratings compared to a college television rating. Our ratings are much higher. So there’s plenty of interest here, it’s just that we don’t have a big corporate community here, we’ve got to grow that over the next few years. We’re just not a big enough community, we just don’t have enough people. If you apply the percentage of households, what the percentage of people participate in Jaguars football in Jacksonville and applied that same percentage to other NFL communities, you’d see we have a much higher density of households that support Jaguars football than other communities. We’re just not big enough right now, but we’re growing into it, we’re growing those fans.
JLL: 2009 marks the 15th season of Jaguars football. Do you look back at that day in late November in 1993 when in a hotel near the O’Hare Airport in Chicago, the NFL awarded Jacksonville the 32nd franchise in the league and call that one of the proudest moments of your business career?
WW: There’s no question that it was. I’ve been blessed and fortunate and lucky to have had great success in my business career. I can tell you that nothing compares to being a part of the National Football League and having a franchise here in Jacksonville. If you could ever write out a dream job, I think there would be a lot of people — people who may have had a lot more success than I have — I envy that guy for the job he’s got now in his golden years.
