Episode I: The Fandom Empire

Titans owner Bud Adams had called this meeting, but he was paying no attention to what was being said. Thirty years ago he would have locked onto every word, but now it all just bored him. Ticket sales, concession revenue, citywide gridlock—blah, blah, blah. Just a bunch of details that people were always bothering him with. What did they pay that Bredesen guy for?

Adams’ eyes momentarily glazed over, as though he were far away from the conference room in the skybox level of Adelphia Coliseum, surrounded by members of the football team’s inner circle.

“Here’s the deal,” he said. “We’ve focused on the team and the stadium and the cheerleaders. We’ve got Faith Hill lined up to sing the National Anthem at our first preseason game. And now we’ve got to figure out one of the most important elements of our PR—a big, halftime show for our first regular-season game.”

Adams swiveled suddenly in his chair.

“Pigott—what the hell are we paying you for? Gimme some ideas.”

Mark McNeely of McNeely Pigott & Fox, the local PR firm hired by the NFL franchise to smooth its way with the media, began, almost by instinct, using the only skill truly essential to a successful flack—smoothly talking off the top of his head about something he had never given a moment’s thought to in his life.

“We need a lot of glitz and pageantry, some real showbiz,” he said, gamely forging ahead as though his words actually meant something. “And we need some kind of ceremony to give it an emotional kick. I want that Blair Witch Project feel, but with a Dixie Chicks edge. I want something that tells the audience in the stands and on TV that Nashville has arrived!”

Nobody in the room had any idea what McNeely was talking about, but it sounded impressive enough.

“I see fireworks,” said a nodding head in a suit.

“I see country music stars,” said another dissembler.

“I see Bill Purcell, the next great mayor of the great city of Nashville,” blurted McNeely’s partner Dave Cooley, looking up briefly from the want ads.

“Marching bands,” somebody added, stating the obvious.

There was an awkward pause. Adams silently looked out the huge floor-to-ceiling skybox window at the haze settling over downtown Nashville.

“Maybe high school bands would be a nice touch,” Adams mused finally. “Every snot-nosed punk with a horn has a family, and every tuba-hugger we can fit on that field means another two seats with butts in ’em. But we need more than that. McNeely, Cooley—I want you and all those other bright boys over at your place to plan the biggest halftime show this side of the Super Bowl, and I want to see the plan next week. Now everybody get moving!”

McNeely swallowed hard. The firm had a lot riding on this account. The outgoing mayor, once their star client, now spent most of his days flipping through Wine Spectactor back-issues. Worse, though, was that nothing seemed to end the public’s indifference to the Titans. Where PR was concerned, Bud Adams was the Dan Quayle of the NFL. The latest fiasco had been a billboard campaign featuring local figures like Judge Muriel Robinson Rice and attorney Rose Palermo passing a pigskin. On paper, it was a winner. But it had backfired, and McNeely was stumped.

He now had a week to deliver genius. Oh, well, he thought, if you can’t dazzle ’em with brilliance, baffle ’em...how did that go? He made a mental note to ask Lewis Levine.

Adams wasn’t the only boss worried about the Titans. Somewhere in the Oklahoma Panhandle, a Gaylord functionary picked up the phone.

Tom Atkinson, PR guru for Gaylord, had been cruising the Opryland Hotel for free food from one of the complimentary tables set up for conventioneers. He’d just located the “Odor-Eaters Walk for Jesus” seafood buffet when his beeper went off. Now the cod balls were cooling, and here he was getting an earful from one of his Oklahoma-based overlords.

“We’ve just sunk a fortune for the naming rights for that arena, but that’s not going to get us squat during football season,” squawked an angry Okie through the receiver. “This is national television—and I mean real national television, not The Nashville Network. We need to be sure the Gaylord name is linked to Nashville on this broadcast.”

“Yes, sir,” Atkinson stammered, wondering how in the world he could pull something like that off. His main expertise had been weakly defending exorbitant parking fees, or trying to convince advertisers that The Dukes of Hazzard was just Dawson’s Creek with six fingers. Pulling off a high-profile assignment on national television—well, just thinking about it made his mustache twitch.

This required some heavy brainpower, no doubt. He walked back over to the hotel, sidled up to a buffet table, and began chomping on shrimp as big as his fist.

Meanwhile, across town on Music Row, yet another corporate underling was stammering through a conversation with his corporate superior. Pat Quigley, president of Capitol Nashville, felt his armpits pucker as Garth Brooks’ voice boomed on his speakerphone.

Every time he talked to his label’s cash cow on the phone—that is, when Brooks returned his calls—Quigley expected to hear the aw-shucks drawl that so tickled the folks at Entertainment Tonight. Instead, he’d pressed the intercom button, only to be greeted by a withering, “Kiss my big white Oklahoma ass!”

Quigley winced. Although nominally Brooks worked for Quigley, the fact was lost on no one—least of all Brooks and Quigley—that nobody cared who the president of Capitol Nashville was, and everybody cared who Garth Brooks was. Brooks was understandably antsy about his current venture. He had already recorded a pop album under the assumed guise of an Australian rocker named Chris Gaines. Now he’d recorded a dozen more tracks, each under a different personality: a little French girl, a 97-year-old choral leader, a gangsta rapper named Thug Booty.

The first single, “You’re Never Alone With the Six of Me,” was shipped sextuple platinum by Capitol. Unfortunately, when actual SoundScan sales were tallied, it sold even less than the week’s only other release, Cledus T. Judd’s Faith Hill parody “Kiss This.” To save face—or faces—Brooks had hit upon “selling” a new CD for a nickel to every person who attended the Titans’ first home game.

“It’s perfect,” Brooks’ disembodied voice said over the speakerphone, as Quigley searched in vain for the volume control. “I checked with the Recording Industry Association of America, and they said these will count the same as if somebody bought 67,000 of ’em at Wal-Mart. Did The Beatles ever sell a record to everybody at a football game? Did Elvis ever do that? Hell, no!”

Quigley was dumbfounded. Pointing out that The Beatles and Elvis had sold their records at retail to people who actually wanted them was clearly not the thing to say. He was still trying to come up with a safe response when a strange voice came over the speakerphone.

“G’day, Pat? This is Chris...Chris Gaines. Garth knaws what he’s tawking about, mate. Garth always knaws what he’s tawking about.”

Garth was channeling Chris Gaines again—but why did he sound like Crocodile Dundee? Darn, Quigley thought. I’ve got my career riding on Sybil. So this is why labels have more than one artist. What was the name again of that barefoot girl?

Quigley pleaded with his star. “Chris, please let Garth come back to the surface and talk to me.”

“I can’t do that, Pat,” came the ominous reply.

That was it. There was nothing to do but prepare to start selling Garth’s album at Adelphia Coliseum on game day. At times like this, Pat Quigley wished for a normal life. Like Tony Brown’s.

A week later, the conference room at Adelphia Coliseum was packed. The collective wisdom and brainpower of McNeely Pigott & Fox had been brought to bear on the halftime show. The lights dimmed, and Mark McNeely clicked on a projector.

He began by flashing, in rapid-fire fashion, slides of magazine covers and newspaper front pages—slide after slide of Princess Diana, John F. Kennedy Jr., headlines detailing George Jones’ Lexus smashup, and Tammy Wynette’s death, funeral, and subsequent exhumation.

“Sure, this represents the dregs of the publishing industry,” he intoned in the darkened room, flipping past covers from the Star, the Globe, the Green Hills News. “Yet there’s a lesson to be learned here. Celebrity sells, especially in times of crisis or tragedy. Any one of these individuals blows the tops off the charts in terms of reader interest. Lump them all together, and who knows what can happen. We propose to weave together a whirlwind look at their lives through appropriate music. The result? Well, we think it’s going to be nothing short of spiritual rejuvenation. ”

“What’s all this going to cost,” Bud Adams injected.

“Glad ya asked, Chief,” McNeely chirped. “Our band will be made up of high school students from all over Nashville. The school board has volunteered to put the song list together. And the students all consider it a great honor to come and play for free at the opening of Adelphia Coliseum. Think of the extra parking revenues!”

All eyes in the room subtly shifted to Bud Adams to look for cues on how to react.

“I don’t know, McNeely,” he chortled. “What the hell are we going to do, dig up Tammy Wynette and parade her around the 50-yard line in her coffin while some band plays ‘D-I-V-O-R-C-E’?”

“It’s all here in our proposal,” McNeely said, not exactly saying no. He signaled two lowly paid agency interns, who began distributing glossy bound folders complete with photographs and sketchy listings of proposed events for the show.

Adams seldom took time to read any of the reams of memos, proposals, offers, and threats that daily passed over his desk. He didn’t plan to start now. Later that afternoon, he stuck his head in the door of Jeff Diamond, the Titans’ newly named president.

“What’s it say, Jeff?”

Diamond regarded his boss over his wire-rimmed glasses.

“Basically, they just want to perform a few songs in honor of each character. I gotta say, each character has such a huge international following; I don’t see how we can miss.”

Diamond then picked up several phone message slips. “Apparently, the word is already getting out. Just in the last few minutes, I’ve had calls from Opryland—they want to be involved in this—and from some guy named”—he picked up the message and squinted at it—“Pat Quigley, who I think is Garth Brooks’ secretary. Says that Garth wants to give everybody a CD for a nickel as they come in the gate. So this is really shaping up!”

Tom Atkinson checked his rearview mirror to make sure he wasn’t followed as he pulled up to an unmarked hangar in the remote back forty of the Nashville International “technically-it’s-correct-because-we-have-a-flight-to-Toronto-dammit” Airport.

Inside, a crew of workers, all sworn to secrecy, pulled aside a giant tarpaulin. Atkinson gasped at the sight. Before him stood a replica World War I-era German dirigible, recently mothballed after decades of service in the Berlin Air Show.

Atkinson stroked his mustache with excitement as he watched the workers string the lights on the outside of the massive structure. In 12-foot letters, the words blinked off and on: “Gaylord Takes Pride in Nashville.”

“They want publicity, how’s that for publicity,” he thought with satisfaction. Now to get some edgy entertainment. Only one man for the job there.

Back in his car, he dialed the office of Ray Stevens.

Atkinson had called the comedian with the idea of having Stevens perform his stage show on Gaylord’s General Jackson showboat. It would be docked in the Cumberland River adjacent to the stadium, as a way of stealing more game-day publicity for a Gaylord enterprise.

“Hey-yay-yay-yay!” Stevens greeted Atkinson, appending a laugh that sounded like the cartoon character Goofy.

“Ray-mon!” Atkinson barked back. He loved this kind of macho showbiz bonhomie. He noticed he was driving too fast and eased the pedal up on his Civic.

“Sounds like a blast!” Stevens said. “Ahab will be ready, baby!”

Episode II: Game Day

When the horn sounded, ending the first half of the first regular-season game played at Adelphia Coliseum, Bud Adams was feeling pretty good. The Titans retired to the locker room with a 10-7 lead, and the sellout crowd seemed to be having a good time—except for their unfortunate habit of flinging Garth Brooks CDs at passing vendors, or winging them off Eddie George’s helmet.

“Those damn CDs are going to double our clean-up costs,” Adams groused to Jeff Diamond, using one as a coaster for his longneck. “If we ‘sold’ 67,000 of ’em, there’s probably half that many already under the bleachers. Wish we could dump ’em on Chris Ferrell’s lawn. Damn that Garth Brooks. He’s no Henson Cargill, I’ll tell you that.”

All around Adams, the city’s media were partying in earnest. In a skybox rented by Gannett and The Tennessean for the occasion, the Freedom Forum hosted a merry symposium on “Your First Amendment Right to Nachos.” “Damn, their food looks good,” Adams thought, wondering if they did catering. It looked better than the Nashville Scene spread down by Telalink’s “Virtual Gerst Haus.” Nothing but cold cuts, Lamar Alexander, and editor Bruce Dobie pressing the flesh with a cheery, “Hey, that Pabst Blue Ribbon doesn’t grow on trees.”

At the very top, in a luxury suite, a by-invitation-only party was under way. Without feeling the need to attend, Adams threw a “Nice Going, Phil” party to recognize outgoing Mayor Phil Bredesen’s role in bringing the Titans to Nashville. Somehow the guest list had been goofed, and as a result Hank Hillin was reciting “The Miller’s Tale” to a stupefied Peaches Simpkins over the crab puffs.

At least the members of the outgoing Metro Council and the incoming Metro Council had been invited. And all the recent candidates for mayor had RSVP’d—even Richard Frank, who was busy staging the Whittsett Elementary production of The Last Hurrah.

“Man, this is sweet,” enthused Ludye Wallace, sinking a hand deep into a bowl of mixed nuts and energetically stoking them into his cavernous mouth.

“You’re not kidding,” Vic Lineweaver said, palming a strawberry the size of a softball, dunking it in chocolate, and taking a huge bite out of it.

“You’re not kidding,” Wallace seconded.

A big-screen TV was tuned to the game, with several smaller monitors set up around the room. When no one was looking, Council candidate Larry Schmittou had tuned one of the monitors to a baseball game, while Adam Dread, also contending for a Council-at-large slot, was guffawing loudly at a Comedy Central rerun of Doctor Detroit. Vic Varallo and Richard Fulton sat on opposite ends of a long sofa, and the others took care not to wake them.

By the window overlooking the field, incoming Mayor Bill Purcell stood at a microphone beside Bredesen, reading a resolution that praised Bredesen’s vision in bringing NFL football to town. Somebody awoke Fulton, and all the candidates for mayor gathered around for a photo—except one.

“Where’s Murray?” somebody asked. Murray Philip, the most vocal opponent of the stadium deal among the candidates, had left word that he would be at the game. But now, as the photographer waited, he was nowhere to be found.

The blast of the loudspeakers drew everyone’s attention to the field.

“AND NOW YOUR TENNESSEE TITANS INVITE YOU TO SIT BACK AND ENJOY OUR HALFTIME SPECTACULAR,” boomed the PA announcer. “IT HAS BEEN TWO YEARS SINCE OUR BELOVED PRINCESS DIANA WAS TRAGICALLY KILLED IN AN AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENT. IT HAS BEEN TWO MONTHS SINCE THE UNTIMELY DEATH OF OUR NATION’S FAVORITE SON, JOHN F. KENNEDY JR., AND IT HAS BEEN A YEAR SINCE THE DEATH OF NASHVILLE’S OWN QUEEN OF COUNTRY MUSIC, TAMMY WYNETTE.

“NEVER HAS THIS NATION—NAY, THIS WORLD—HONORED THE PASSING OF THESE THREE GREAT INDIVIDUALS AT ONE TIME. AND SO, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, HERE TODAY WE PAUSE TO REMEMBER THE GENIUS, BEAUTY, GRACE, AND STYLE, OF THREE OF THE MOST RECOGNIZABLE FIGURES OF THE LATE 20TH CENTURY. AS THE TITANS LOOK FORWARD TO THE FUTURE, WE PAUSE TO HONOR THE PAST.”

From his perspective in the stands, Mark McNeely silently mouthed the words he had written as the PA announcer read them in a flat, affectless style that echoed back off the concrete stands.

“SO PLEASE JOIN YOUR TENNESSEE TITANS IN THE TRIBUTE WE CALL ‘A PRINCESS, A PRINCE, AND A QUEEN.’ ”

The marching band strode onto the field to the sharp martial rhythms of the snare drums, carrying three enormous wooden boxes.

“SO LET US NOW HONOR PRINCESS DIANA.”

On cue, a couple of the trombone players slid the top back off one of the wooden boxes, and a large, yellow-haired Princess Diana balloon slowly emerged and, tethered to its base, unfurled to its full three-story height.

“We had these specially made by the same guy who did Underdog for the Macy’s parade,” McNeely explained to his seatmate, Dave Cooley, who was wondering whether to send a fruit basket and a résumé over to Ray Bell.

People in the luxury boxes, many of whom had paid scant attention to the game, now listened in bewilderment to the unfolding performance on the field, as the marching band, in apparent tribute to the dead princess, launched into an energetic medley of “Wreck on the Highway,” “Dead Man’s Curve,” “(Can You Make This Thing) Go Faster,” and concluded with a breakneck tempo “Candle in the Wind.”

McNeely couldn’t believe his ears. As the music concluded, he heard his cell phone ringing in his pocket.

“Who the hell picked these songs?” Jeff Diamond barked in his ear.

McNeely was dumbfounded. “Like we spelled out in the proposal, we let the school board do that,” he said.

“Well, did you review the song list?” Diamond raged.

McNeely paused to feel the pit gnawing at his stomach. “The last we heard from them, they were leaving that up to the band leader.”

McNeely’s eyes traveled to the field to the figure leading the band. At this distance, he was unrecognizable, but he seemed somehow familiar. His head was bouncing up and down with an evil energy, and he seemed to be talking nonstop as he waved his baton furiously. Who was he? And why did McNeely feel as if he were up to no good?

Heavy lobbying from the Titans’ front office convinced CBS that this halftime show was worth a live network feed. Their cameras scanned the disbelieving crowd, stopping for a moment to focus on Gov. Don Sundquist, who intently studied his $7 concession-stand hot dog.

“If there was a one-dollar tax on every weenie sold in the state, we could fund Tenncare,” Sundquist mused to seatmate Lamar Alexander, who was struggling to see the field from his seat behind an upper-deck support pillar.

Word began spreading under the stands, and the seats, which had been about half empty when the spectacle began, slowly started filling back up. Spectators drifted away from the locally endorsed food booths, leaving vacant counters at Fate Thomas’ Barbecue Lock-Up and Al Woods’ Ham Job. The tide was broken only by a brief disturbance when Ashley Judd called security to enforce her restraining order against Brad Schmitt.

“AND NOW, LET US REMEMBER THE LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENT OF JOHN F. KENNEDY JR., AMERICA’S PRINCE,” boomed the PA announcer. The second box was opened, and an enormous toothy JFK Jr. balloon, like some vinyl specter of Camelot, unfurled to its height as the band launched into another rapid-fire medley.

Even Bud Adams, not the most musically hip person in the stadium, recognized all these songs. The band began with “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane,” then segued into “Peggy Sue” and “La Bamba” before finishing with “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay.” The breeze off the Cumberland made Diana and JFK sway back and forth, their vinyl heads bobbing to the brass and percussion serenade of the marching band.

“What the hell did any of those songs have to do with John Kennedy?” barked Adams to Jeff Diamond, who had a sickly green pallor.

“Uh, I think they were all songs by people who died in plane crashes,” Diamond said, covering his face with his hands. He wondered if that Raiders job was still open.

“Oh,” Adams said. He may have been about to say more, but his attention was again focused on the field.

“AND NOW TO HELP US IN HONORING THE LATE QUEEN OF COUNTRY MUSIC, TAMMY WYNETTE, PLEASE WELCOME...GEORGE JONES!”

On cue, the towering Tammy Wynette balloon began to unfurl from its box as her ex-husband drove onto the field in a golf cart and headed for a microphone set up beside the balloon’s tether. Jones sped erratically down the field, waving to the crowd with one hand, his hair mysteriously not moving at all. As the television cameras zoomed in for a close up of the country music legend, he appeared to lose control of the speeding golf cart, veering into the band, which had spelled out “R.I.P.” on the field and was preparing to launch into a medley of “Stand by Your Man” and “White Lightning.”

Trumpet players and snare drummers ran for their lives from the speeding Opry star. As French horn players dived from the front of the cart, Jones jerked the wheel to the right and rammed the wooden box that served as the anchor for the Tammy Wynette balloon’s tether. A three-story helmet of blonde hair broke free and began to slowly rise.

Television viewers coast to coast could read Jones’ lips as he stepped out of the wrecked cart. “What happened?” he asked the bandleader, whom he had nearly sideswiped.

Suddenly, up in the mayor’s suite, there was an audible gasp as the Buckingham Palace-style bandleader’s hat fell to the field. The bandleader was none other than former mayoral candidate, school board member, and Bredesen nemesis Murray Philip.

Sensing his opportunity at more exposure than he had received in all his televised school board appearances on WDCN-Channel 8, Philip shoved Jones back in the golf cart and began shouting directly into the camera. The camera, for its part, zoomed in even closer, until Philip’s large head filled the entire TV screen. “The Titans are a bad deal for the city of Nashville,” Philip yelled, at the top of his lungs. “Based on my calculations, the bonds are a failure! This is corporate welfare of the worst kind! This is not democracy! This is the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer! King Bredesen has rushed to the aid of King Adams, and the common man is getting the shaft!”

As he looked at the big-screen TV in his luxury suite, Bredesen just shook his head. At the salsa tub, where several Metro Council members had been eating like they were going to the chair, only Lawrence Hart was still stuffing his pockets with chips. The rest had their jaws on the floor.

“Man, that Murray won’t give up,” the outgoing mayor said. He turned to Purcell and added with a smile, “But he’s your problem now.”

Outside the stadium, er, coliseum, Opryland’s Tom Atkinson had stationed himself on the deck of the General Jackson, which was docked adjacent to the stadium on the Cumberland River. The sounds of laughter drifted up from the on-board theater, where Ray Stevens was winding up an extended dance-mix version of the “Mississippi Squirrel Revival.”

Atkinson had been waiting for just the right moment to deploy the Gaylord Takes Pride in Nashville blimp.

“OK, Richard, let’s go!” he said into a walkie-talkie to WSM traffic reporter Richard Thomas, who had been pressed into service as a blimp pilot.

Slowly, from an open field at the Cornelia Fort Airport, Thomas lifted off and nosed the zeppelin toward the stadium.

Adams couldn’t believe his eyes. The formation of the marching band had dissolved into chaos as majorettes ran for their lives from the speeding golf cart, and now the Tammy Wynette balloon was lazily floating free, rising on the air current over the field.

“Fire the fireworks! Fire the damn fireworks!” he exhorted, attempting to restore control. As Titans aides scrambled to carry out the boss’s orders, the crowd in the stadium drew in a collective breath as the light from the sun was suddenly blotted out.

“I am now over the stadium...sorry, coliseum,” intoned Richard Thomas into his walkie-talkie to Tom Atkinson, who was having trouble hearing, partially due to the fireworks display, partially due to the showboat crowd’s reaction to “Ahab the Arab.” As Atkinson fiddled with the device, smoke trails and colorful explosions filled the stadium, accompanied by teeth-rattling BOOMs.

Suddenly, all eyes in the stadium looked upward. The television cameras panned upward. The sight that filled everyone’s field of vision was a restored German dirigible with an odd message emblazoned on its side, a message consisting of two words: “Gay Pride.”

Atkinson couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Richard, pull out!” he shouted into his walkie talkie. “The fireworks have knocked out some bulbs, and it ain’t saying ‘Gaylord Takes Pride in Nashville’!”

The television cameras caught the puzzled expressions of 67,000 fans, who wondered why Goodyear had chosen this instant to come out. As for Bud Adams, he motioned to a waiter. “Bring me a Texas Tequila Twister. And don’t bring me any fruits and nuts. I got enough right here in Nashville.”

As all eyes were directed to the blimp, attention was drawn away from the free-floating Tammy Wynette balloon. Nobody noticed, then, when a stray Screaming Moon Whistler popped the gas-filled likeness of the late country-music queen in the rear end. With a gaseous brrrr-r-r-ap, the balloon began to spew air, erratically flying around and around the stadium until it shot straight up in a fateful arc.

Thomas, unfamiliar with dirigible controls, was doing his best to guide the blimp away from the stadium when, out of the corner of his eye, he sighted what looked like a gigantic Tammy Wynette whizzing by. Thomas wondered if someone had dosed the Gatorade, then watched in horror as the Tammy balloon reached its apex. For a moment, it seemed to halt slowly in midair. Then it plummeted back toward the zeppelin, landing with a sick plop directly over the windshield.

From their vantage point in the press box, the television announcers had a perfect view of the blimp with the blinded pilot heading directly for the General Jackson.

“Oh, my. Oh, my! The humanity!” one of the announcers shouted.

Atkinson’s eyes grew wide as he stood on the deck and watched the German airship draw within spitting distance of the showboat. The nose of the zeppelin cracked through the foredeck, severing the riverboat in two, just as Ray Stevens was leading the audience in a singalong of “Everything Is Beautiful.” As the deck of the showboat sank beneath the murky Cumberland, Stevens smoothly segued to a singalong of “Nearer My God to Thee.”

At some point during the festivities, Mark McNeely had stumbled into Bud Adams’ suite. Now he stood beside the owner and Jeff Diamond, looking at the pictures on a bank of television monitors on the wall. Not only CBS, but CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC had picked up the feed of the halftime show. Currently they were showing members of the fire department dragging soaked tourists out of the river, amid the showboat and deflated zeppelin wreckage.

Adams looked at the bank of televisions, all broadcasting live from his stadium—his coliseum—and then looked over the rim of the stands to the bedraggled showboat customers wrapped in blankets by the river. He thought of Murray Philip leading the band in all those songs. He thought of George Jones careening about in the cart. He thought of Tammy Wynette floating somewhere over the stadium. And he even thought of Gay Pride—just the sign, of course.

And then, Bud Adams did something that nobody could remember him doing for years at a football game.

He laughed.

He threw his head back and laughed. He laughed until tears ran down his face. He laughed until the medics appeared at the suite’s doors.

“Damn, McNeely,” he said, happily wheezing for breath. “I hate glitches as much as the next boy, but that ain’t what’s important. This was BIG, son. B—I—G. Mighty BIG! Lights-camera-action BIG! I thought we only did things BIG down in Texas. Hellfire, we ain’t got nuthin’ on you boys from Tennessee!”

Adams hugged McNeely, drawing him off the floor. And then, his mood hardening a bit, he grabbed the PR executive by the lapels, drawing him closer. “Send me a bill, son. I’m gonna have to dock you 50 percent for all the screw-ups. Keep up the good work—I like your style.”