SEAN JONES TODAY
What becomes a Northeastern legend most?
Being one successful bunch of guys.
By Bill Kirtz
Sean Jones played football. He didn't let football play him.
Twenty years ago, he entered Northeastern a skinny offensive lineman
with no scholarship. Today, after a National Football League career as
distinguished as it was unexpected, the financial planneragentphilanthropist
still has his eye on the ball-his ball.
Since he graduated from Northeastern as a dean's list marketing major
in 1985, Dwight Andre Sean-O'Neil Jones has followed his own path to athletic
and business success. The thirteen-year defensive end has called his owner
an idiot, taken a financial hit for a Green Bay Packers franchise that
later deemed him expendable a nanosecond after he helped anchor their Super
Bowl win over the New England Patriots-and always had a life outside sports.
He had picked Northeastern over Cornell. "Ivy League football didn't
impress me," recalls the Kingston, Jamaica, native whose mother earned
a PhD and father holds a master's degree, "and the academics were
too much like private school," meaning New Jersey's Montclair-Kimberly
Academy, where he won all-state honors in lacrosse and football.
With elder brothers excelling on and off Holy Cross and University of
MassachusettsAmherst athletic fields, his college decision "just
kept coming back to New England and North-eastern. I wanted to go to a
big school with a lot of diversity.
"The co-op program was just a godsend," he
remembers, with tax-assistant and management-trainee stints at the New
York City headquarters of F. W. Woolworth. "There were no joke jobs."
He worked in the College of Business Administra-tion and the provost's
office. "I wasn't captivated by football. I had no intention of going
pro. I wanted to be a lawyer or on Wall Street. At Northeastern, they don't
spoil you, and that's good-because you never forget why you came to school."
Beverly Hills pop
Or what he learned there. Now, sitting in his spare fifth-floor Beverly
Hills office suite, a minute's Bentley cruise from Wilshire Boulevard,
his conversation ranges from Dylan Thomas and Sinclair Lewis (he named
his five-year-old son Dylan Sinclair), to the Northeastern "infrastructure"
that reinforced strong family values, to the art of the deal.
Just after 8:30 on a muggy weekday morning, Jones relaxes in flip-flops,
gray Izod polo shirt pulled outside his khakis, and an L.A. Kings ("I
hate the Lakers") baseball cap. Carrying slightly more than the 8
percent body fat he sported when he closed out his pro career in 1997,
cell phone glued to his ear, he asks his secretary for the latest three-
and six-month CD and mortgage rates while he checks his pager.
His main office, dominated by a plain wooden desk, teems with sports
and financial article reprints; toys; stuffed animals; a photo of his two-and-a-half-year-old
daughter, Daryl, with Mickey Mouse; and autographed 1997 Super Bowl and
1998 Northeastern team balls.
The Northeastern memorabilia is deliberate. He says the older he gets,
the more he appreciates the help he got in college. "I had foundations
at home, and at Northeastern I got the same kind of support. The NU infrastructure
helped solidify those values."
Keith Motley, the former Husky basketball star, who then headed Northeastern's
African-American Insti-
tute, "made me understand the need to be responsible as an athlete.
He told me, 'You're a strong, healthy, brilliant black man. There's no
reason why you can't have success in this life.'"
Bo Lyons, head football coach during Jones's freshman year, "was
always supportive. I came in a little skinny kid, and he gave me an opportunity
to play right away."
Jones says veteran sports information director Jack Grinold "was
tremendous at promoting, at helping people stumble onto this scrawny kid."
And Paul Pawlak, Lyons's successor, "made me realize that there's
a professional way to carry yourself as an athlete. He gave you a cockiness
that you didn't know you weren't supposed to have."
Nailing his classes
Logging occasional eighteen-hour days at NU, he completed almost all
his coursework in four years. "In my fifth, I took piano, the "Meaning
of Death," and a directed study in sport and society. I was naive
when I first went to the NFL. I just didn't understand why everyone hadn't
graduated. I didn't realize how many athletes hadn't.
"I didn't want to be involved in any stigma that athletes didn't
graduate. So I fought Richard Lapchick when he started his program"-Northeastern's
Center for the Study of Sport in Society, which helps pros earn degrees.
Now, Jones has come to respect the program. "It's so powerful. Lapchick
doesn't get enough credit."
Speaking of credit, Jones's Northeastern mentors return his compliments.
Motley, now dean of student services, recalls a "tall, skinny guy,
mature beyond his years. He was so easy to talk to because it was football
second and dedication number one. No one could hold him hostage through
sports, which is for some their only ego gratification, their Achilles
heel. He used football as a business, as opposed to a passion."
Lyons, who retired earlier this year from NU's business
office, notes the initial paradox between Jones's physical ability and
interest in pursuing an NFL career. "I thought Sean could be a pro
if he wanted to be. He told me that God gave him the physical attributes
to be a football player, that he was not totally committed, but that he
would take advantage of what he had been given physically. I saw tremendous
potential-a rare combination of size and agility, and his intelligence
and analytical ability. He understood the politics of the sport."
Grinold deflects Jones's praise. "He was his own best salesman.
Reporters got to know what a bright, delightful young man he was. He was
very young when he started as an offensive center. He was moved after two
years, and it took him a whole year to get used to defense. Then, his senior
year, in the opener against Lehigh, he got a real vicious ankle sprain
and was a hundred percent for only his last four games."
The Raiders come to call
Nevertheless, some scouts had done their homework. Grinold recalls one
with the Denver Broncos ready to walk from the Sheraton-Boston Hotel up
Huntington Avenue to Jones's YMCA room-ten crisp $1,000 bills in hand-to
sign him as a free agent. But the Oakland Raiders pounced first, with a
$1 million, four-year offer.
Pawlak, now a personnel scout for the New England Patriots, explains
how. Jones was "one of the people who bought into my program. He wasn't
a captain, but a real, real good leader. In a couple of instances I can't
discuss in detail, he helped control the team."
Impressed both by Jones's maturity and his work in the weight room,
which helped him fill out his 6-foot-7-inch frame to 270 pounds, Pawlak
thought he deserved a "good, hard look" from the pros. The day
before Draft Sunday in 1984, he helped the Raiders arrange a workout in
Cabot Cage. Jones's 4.8 speed in the 40 and high intelligence convinced
Raiders owner Al Davis to make Jones the defending Super Bowl champs' first
available pick.
Twenty-one years old, with no all-star credentials, fresh from a generally
losing program in a generally weak league, the rookie defensive end initially
struck Raiders coach Tom Flores as not knowing much. But the coach found
he seemed to get better with every play.
Jones saw action about half the time in the final six games of that
first season. After that, his career took off. He was the AFC sack champion
in 1986, spent six years with the Houston Oilers, and joined the Green
Bay Packers in 1994 for a three-year stint that culminated in a Super Bowl
win. One of the game's most consistent pass rushers, he ranks eighth on
the all-time quarterback-sack list, with 113.
He retired in 1997, after rupturing a disk lifting weights. His retirement
followed the Packers lauding his achievements while telling reporters they
probably wouldn't re-sign him because he just didn't fit into their future
plans. Nothing personal. Just business.
Go-to guy
Over the years, Jones himself mixed business with pleasure. He's admitted
he did his share of partying in his early NFL years, until a roommate's
accidental death served a wake-up call.
After that, he woke people up on and off the field. Teammates called
him a virtual coach. One said Jones was the most knowledgeable person he'd
ever met in his ability to figure out opposing offenses. He'd sometimes
yell what play was coming before the snap.
Chosen to act as the Raiders' player-representative at age twenty-three
("Partly respect," he says, "and partly because nobody else
wanted to do it"), he developed negotiating skills during the lengthy
players' strike. As vice president of the players' union, he created a
finance committee that regularly convened with owners and general managers.
That complemented eight years of off-season work as a Dean Witter stockbroker.
All the while, he bled Husky black and red. To honor Reggie Lewis after
the Celtics captain's 1993 death, Jones rushed from the practice field
through four airports to get to the memorial service in Matthews Arena.
Why? Because of the pair's mutual Huntington Avenue roots and pride in
each other's achievements.
But success never swelled his head about his college years. After the
Packers' 1997 Super Bowl victory, Northeastern retired his number 77 jersey,
making him just the third Husky, along with Lewis and retired Cincinnati
Bengals' star Dan Ross, to be so honored. His comment at the time: "I
wasn't the best athlete here, and everyone knows that."
Well, everyone knows what he's done for his alma mater. He paid for
sister Desiree, a 1997 communications graduate, to attend Northeastern.
He's been a member of the university's Corporation and National Council.
And Motley says Jones has "the check in the mail" every time
he's asked for something special for the African-American Institute.
That's consistent with his other charitable commitments over the years.
He's worked for the United Way, the National Kidney Foundation, and his
own Foundation for Youth. He helped start the Front Four Foundation, to
motivate and teach goal setting to young people.
Staying on the ball
His own goal-to grow his Amaroq Financial Services by hiring more people
like himself: "People who know what they're doing and get the joke
without me having to tickle them."
Jones says he "can't focus on just one thing. I'm a better multitasker."
He manages a hedge fund ("It's putzing along. It's had its trials
and tribulations"), does asset management, and helps represent a growing
stable of pro athletes.
But Jerry him no Maguires. In negotiations, he likes to think of himself
as a soother, not a shouter. If you can't show his client all the money
up-front, deferred compensation may suffice.
"Being an agent is all financial management," he says. "Negotiating
a contract is just part of the business. I try to do my homework and not
play 'agent.' I don't go in trying to be an antagonist. That's the most
foolish thing agents do-[foster] a really horrible relationship in a place
your client is going to be working for the next ten years. I try to use
creative thinking, and work toward the same goal. I like to solve the problem;
I ain't going to be part of the problem."
"I don't b.s.," he says of his relationships with those he
represents. Just ask Chester McGlockton. During a stint as a Turner Network
football analyst, Jones criticized the hulking lineman's play, even though
he was a client. "Chester said, 'You ripped me.' I told him, 'That
was because you played like [expletive deleted].'"
Harsh? Perhaps, but Jones insists that "you have to be honest,
be blunt" with clients. "We don't coddle them. They've cussed
me out, and I've cussed them out. It's an honest relationship. I want good
family people who work hard, who love the game-the kind of guys I want
to represent outside football."
Ignore your own clippings
Outside football. Jones keeps stressing that point. "Because the
masses have created a persona of what I am, can I step over the line?"
Jones asks rhetorically. "We're idiots for buying into that. We buy
into this [star] mentality, and then we start believing it. If you're a
top player or performer, someone is always getting something for you. What
you do becomes who you are, and then you're in danger. When it ends, where
are you?"
So he pushes clients to carve out a career on the sidelines.
"Pro football doesn't take much time; people just make it seem
like it does." Jones tells rookies, "'Your first off-season is
yours. The second, get involved in some business, some charity work.' I
have them carve out one afternoon a week during the season, and three days
off during the off-season. This helps if people ask you for something;
you don't have all those bozos coming at you at different times,"
with requests to endorse this or that. Because those bozos won't help you
when you turn in your helmet.
"When you play sports, you do something that's really special for
other people," he says, "but you do absolutely nothing for yourself
in terms of your professional growth. You should always know who you are
at the end of the day."
From his first day on Huntington Avenue, Sean Jones knew who he was.
"Sean took the opportunity that Northeastern presented," says
Will McDonough, the Boston Globe sports columnist and pro football television
commentator, who as a loyal NU grad emceed the ceremony retiring Jones's
Husky jersey. "He's the kind of guy [Northeastern] should hold up
and say, 'See what we can do for you?' He took care of himself, and did
a marvelous job."
Although his constant outspokenness led one writer to call him an equal
opportunity agitator, Jones claims he's "not a malcontent. I'm a very
fair and loyal person." McDonough agrees. "Sean says what he
thinks, but not in a negative or an in-your-face way. He stands up for
himself. You can't put anything by him."
These qualities, McDonough adds, would make him a worthy successor to
the National Football League Players' Association executive director.
Maybe tomorrow. Not today.
As Bo Lyons puts it, "He's focused on today, not yesterday. He
used yesterday for today."
Bill Kirtz is an associate professor in the School of Journalism.
Return to top of page