Gene Frenette: 30 years after Jaguars' birth, Shad Khan lieutenants see things differently
Thirty years after the birth of the Jacksonville Jaguars, two of the most important figures in owner Shad Khan’s football empire still marvel at the irony of now being connected to a franchise that broke their hearts in 1993.
Mark Lamping, the Jaguars’ team president since 2012, and Jim Woodcock, the chief communications officer for Khan, are St. Louis natives. They have deep personal and career ties to the Midwest city that Jacksonville beat out for an NFL expansion franchise, which the league awarded at an owners meeting on Nov. 30, 1993, at the O’Hare Hyatt Regency hotel in Chicago.
As the Jaguars celebrate the 30th anniversary of the team’s birth Thursday, it’s not lost on Lamping or Woodcock how their career paths took them from the disappointment of St. Louis then failing to land an NFL expansion team, to the joy of being part of a franchise that beat out St. Louis and now finds itself positioned as a Super Bowl contender.
Lamping was employed as group director of sports marketing for the beer company Anheuser-Busch — which owned the baseball St. Louis Cardinals and had sponsorships with most NFL teams — when Jacksonville was awarded the franchise. He would later serve as the Cardinals’ team president from 1994-2008, then spearheaded the project to build a new stadium at the Meadowlands for the New York Giants/Jets from 2008-12 before joining the Jaguars.
As professionally invested as Lamping is with the Jaguars, who are now trying to persuade the city of Jacksonville to renovate EverBank Stadium and its surrounding area in a joint venture for a $2 billion price tag, it doesn’t change history. He can’t forget the personal sting he felt for St. Louis on the day small-market Jacksonville staged a big upset by landing an NFL team over his hometown city.
“When you’re sitting in St. Louis as an observer, it was self-inflicted wounds by St. Louis that weakened their opportunity to get an NFL expansion franchise, “ Lamping said. “By all other objective measures, on paper, St. Louis was the best expansion candidate.
“I think many people said that was St. Louis’ expansion slot to lose and they lost it.”
Woodcock, who still lives in St. Louis and works for FleishmanHillard as a communications officer representing multiple sports entities besides Khan, vividly remembers the gut punch of Jacksonville being awarded the franchise.
“In 1993, when word came down that Jacksonville got the team, I was in my office and you could just hear the murmurs in the hallways,” said Woodcock. “It just sounded bad. Something was wrong. The vibe was sullen.
“I heard our president just say the word ‘Jacksonville’ and he closed his door. We were all scrambling to turn on the television. It was surreal because we were considered to be the chosen market. It was stunning.”
Jacksonville-St. Louis irrevocably tied
It’s impossible to rehash the history of the Jaguars, especially the lead-up to their birth, or Khan’s determination to purchase an NFL franchise without bringing St. Louis into the picture.
As hard as Jacksonville chased an NFL team for 14 years without success before landing the Jaguars, the emotional pain ran deeper for St. Louis. Its history with the NFL is, in Woodcock’s words, more of a “star-crossed legacy.”
The city first lost the football Cardinals to Phoenix in 1988, triggered by city and county officials not being on the same page about the location of a new stadium.
Five years later, it was seemingly the favorite to get one of two expansion franchises, only to have the NFL initially award one to Charlotte (Carolina Panthers) and delaying the other selection for another month. That decision was presumably to give St. Louis more time to properly mobilize its conflicting ownership groups.
When that didn’t happen, Jacksonville and then owner Wayne Weaver — a shoe salesman magnate who once worked in St. Louis for the clothing company Brown Group, Inc. — took advantage of the disarray. The NFL owners chose Jacksonville over St. Louis, Baltimore and Memphis for the league’s 30th franchise, which Weaver owned for 18 seasons.
St. Louis got back in the NFL game over a year later when the Los Angeles Rams relocated there, only to have future owner Stan Kroenke move them back to L.A. after the 2015 season.
Ironically, Kroenke also had a direct hand in Khan’s purchase of the Jaguars. In Feb. 2010, Khan was named the presumptive owner of the St. Louis Rams, but minority owner Kroenke nixed that plan when he exercised his right to buy 60 percent of the team from Chip and Lucia Rosenbloom at the end of his 60-day deadline window.
So without Kroenke’s last-minute maneuvering to purchase the Rams, it would have been Khan owning the team in St. Louis, leaving Weaver to find another buyer for the Jaguars when he was ready to sell.
Who knows if another owner wouldn’t moved the Jaguars, then a constant source of speculation about relocating to London, Los Angeles or elsewhere.
“It’s crazy all the St. Louis connections with Jacksonville and the Jaguars,” said Woodcock. “Just crazy.”
As it turned out, Kroenke’s surreptitious move to buy the Rams at the last minute and eliminate Khan was the best thing to happen to the Jaguars.
Despite a decade of misery on the field under Khan’s ownership, which has been eradicated since the hiring of head coach Doug Pederson last year, the Jaguars got an owner who never wavered on his initial promise to keep the team in Jacksonville.
Khan’s words on the day his purchase of the Jaguars was made official in Jan. 2012, proved to be accurate: “Time is going to show that I am committed to Jacksonville.”
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Treasuring ride with Jaguars
Among the Jaguars’ 350-plus employees, none quite have the kind of history and connection to each other, and Khan, as Lamping and Woodcock.
Their working relationship and friendship goes back to the early 1990s when the St. Louis natives ran in similar social circles, often commiserating at various hometown marketing/sporting events.
For most of Lamping’s time as St. Louis Cardinals president, Woodcock served as senior vice president of marketing and communications for the NHL St. Louis Blues.
Though neither was directly involved in the St. Louis effort to acquire an NFL team in 1993, fate took their careers in a direction that eventually connected them to Khan as each became one of his most trusted confidantes.
When Khan needed a public relations person with St. Louis connections to help him in his effort to purchase the Rams, it was Lamping who recommended Woodcock to one of Khan’s attorneys in Feb. 2010.
For a few months, Woodcock served as a communications point man for the future Jaguars' owner, until Kroenke took control of the Rams and thus took Khan out of the running.
In Aug. 2010, Woodcock made the drive from St. Louis to Khan’s office in Champaign, Ill., expressing his appreciation for their time together without knowing if they’d ever see each other again.
Fourteen months later, word began filtering out about Weaver selling the Jaguars to Khan. Once it became apparent Khan would finally realize his dream of NFL ownership, he hired Woodcock as his communications officer and they’ve remained together for 13 years.
On Nov. 29, 2011, the Jaguars fired head coach Jack Del Rio and a news release written by Woodcock went out later that Weaver had found his successor in Khan.
“That day will be in my head forever,” said Woodcock, also a former sports writer for several St. Louis suburban papers. “It’s been a wonderful experience to be part of Shad’s universe. I’ve met so many good friends and people in Jacksonville. I’ve also helped create a micro fan base of Jags fans among family and friends in St. Louis.”
Waiting on Jaguars’ golden anniversary
Less than two years after Lamping advised Khan’s attorney to pursue Woodcock as his PR man, his St. Louis friend returned the favor.
Though several people reached out to Woodcock to try to get meetings with Khan about the team president position, he recommended only one — Lamping.
While accompanying the Jaguars’ owner to an NFL Finance Committee meeting in New York in Dec. 2011, he casually suggested to Khan that Lamping had the necessary experience to run the Jaguars’ business operations.
Fast forward a dozen years, Khan and his two St. Louis-connected employees have forged a relationship as strong as any outside the Jaguars’ locker room.
Ironically, though St. Louis no longer has an NFL franchise, Khan, Lamping and Woodcock have sort of formed their own team, a bond between them that figures to last as long as the 73-year-old owner sits in that chair.
Part of Lamping’s heart will always be in St. Louis, especially with his son and two granddaughters living there. He hates to see his hometown without an NFL team, but Lamping got out of his contract with the Meadowlands in 2012 to fulfill his dream of being an NFL executive.
St. Louis and Jacksonville, two cities whose NFL histories will forever be intertwined, both represent home for Lamping. As much as he appreciates the Jaguars being around for 30 years, he looks forward to different milestones.
“Forget about the 30-year anniversary of the Jaguars, the one I’m most interested in is celebrating the 40th and 50th anniversary,” said Lamping. “That means we will have had a stadium solution [in Jacksonville] for a long time.”
And just maybe, a Super Bowl parade or two.
Gfrenette@jacksonville.com: (904) 359-4540; Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, at @genefrenette
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Spirit of St. Louis: Shad Khan lieutenants grateful for ride with Jaguars' owner
