SPARTANBURG, S.C. (AP) -Danny Morrison was in his office a 7 a.m. Thursday, hustled off to speak at a Charlotte luncheon, drove 90 minutes here to Carolina’s training camp and ran the steps in the football stadium in near 100-degree heat before heading to Panthers practice.
The new team president was in near constant motion during the afternoon workout on the campus of his alma mater. He shook hands with fans lined up along the fence, handed water bottles to guests of sponsors, asked questions of staff and was seemingly oblivious to the heat.
Coming up on a year since Morrison took a tough job – working for demanding owner Jerry Richardson – in a tough spot – replacing Richardson’s son, Mark, whom his father fired – Morrison is becoming one of the most visible faces of the franchise.
support staff.”
And the slim, sliver-haired 56-year-old somehow seems to never sweat or get ruffled juggling his hectic schedule. It’s no surprise to the man who gave Morrison his first big job – athletic director at Wofford – at age 31.
“Once I said, ‘Danny, we could walk across campus, you could put on a suit and it’s going to be raining like the dickens. By the time we get to the other end, he’ll have no raindrops on you,”’ said Joe Lesesne, the school’s retired president. “It drives me crazy.”
Lesesne started laughing, proud that Morrison is back on campus, where he taught him history as a freshman and watched him play basketball for the Terriers. It was then that Morrison met Richardson, a Wofford alum and then a successful businessman in Spartanburg.
Morrison later helped lure the Panthers here for training camp by raising enough money to build the facilities, then even worked himself to fix problems with the fields himself before Carolina arrived for its first camp in 1995.
After leading Wofford’s move from NAIA to NCAA Division II and then Division I, Morrison served as Southern Conference commissioner and AD at Texas Christian University before returning to his native North Carolina to run the Panthers’ business operations and Bank of America Stadium.
coach Mike Ayers’ staff. “He’s smart and acts dumb. Smart as a whip and tries to act dumb so he’ll learn more from you.”
Since taking over in late September, Morrison has quickly learned the NFL while also smoothing over difficulties the franchise had with Richardson’s feuding sons. Seventh months after getting a heart transplant, Richardson fired Mark and Jon, who ran the stadium operations.
A day later, Richardson lured Morrison away from TCU.
“It was a blessing for me to come into an organization that was already well run and I could learn on the job, so to speak, in a lot of areas,” Morrison said.
But Morrison is slowly putting his stamp on the franchise using a management style different from the introverted Mark Richardson, who rarely attended training camp. There are more fan-friendly events at camp. He vows to show more replays on the big screens at Bank of America Stadium and highlights from other games.
He’s also dealing with long-term issues like possible future renovations to Carolina’s 14-year-old stadium and a possible owner lockout next season. And while Richardson makes the final call on the football side, there is potential upheaval there with coach John Fox entering the final year of his contract.
“I think both John Fox and (general manager) Marty Hurney have done a good job,” Morrison said. “We’ll see how all that plays out this year.”
r went into administration. He was an assistant basketball coach at Elon, near his hometown of Burlington, N.C., when he first got interested in returning to Wofford for the open head basketball job. Lesesne, though, had another idea.
“I said, ‘Danny, are you interested in getting into administration or are you interested in coaching basketball?”’ he said. “I didn’t offer him the job, but I asked him what if he wanted to do. He couldn’t answer at first, but he said, ‘Long range, I should think administration.’
“I thought, he’s a bright young guy that will know the situation – and we can afford him. I never thought he was a risk.”
Morrison, who said the decision to leave coaching was “probably the hardest decision of all,” then hired Richard Johnson, now the school’s AD, as basketball coach. A couple years later he used his people skills to score his first big coup, luring Ayers from higher profile East Tennessee State to coach then-Division II Wofford’s football team.
“I didn’t know Danny Morrison from Adam’s house cat,” Ayers said of their first meeting. “He chose one of those swanky places, the Biltmore Dairy Bar. He bought me a $1.50 milkshake.”
ay they used the wrong sand under the grass and numerous rocks came to the surface.
“He says, ‘I know! We can have a rock picking party. Invite all of our friends!”’ Ayers recalled Morrison saying. “But believe me, he was sweating.”
There it is, proof that Morrison sweats after all – even though he rarely slows down.
“He is all business,” Lesesne said. “He’s going to get it done because he’s relentless, just relentless.”
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