IF SPRINGFIELD IS SMART IT WON’T LET THIS MAN GET AWAY!

By Frederick A. Hurst

Marc Williams has carved out an impressive national reputation for himself in the sports and entertainment industry. He could easily omit Springfield from his resume with no apparent effect. Yet, he is determined to make his mark on Springfield through an emerging association with the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame that can only be described as national in scope and as exciting as it gets. If Springfield is smart, it won’t let him get away!

I met Marc last year at the 2007 Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremonies. He was promoting his client, Dominique Wilkins, a former basketball great and past Hall of Fame Enshrinee, who kept busy taking photographs and dishing out autographs to an admiring crowd while Marc and I talked business. We parted company with Marc’s promise to contact me in the near future.

Marc contacted me a year later, again, while attending a Hall of Fame induction ceremony. He was supporting his friend, current Hall of Fame Enshrinee Dick Vitale (see related article by Marc in Point of View, October 15, 2008 Hall of Fame Special Edition, p. 6) and promoting his newest client, Taryne Mowatt, two-time ESPY female athlete of the year award winner whose basketball exploits at the University of Arizona netted the school two national championships. I couldn’t meet with Marc at the time but, again, he agreed to call me and schedule a meeting. Marc wanted to talk about an intriguing idea for expanding community involvement in future Hall of Fame induction ceremonies and he wanted Point of View to be involved at the beginning.

Within two weeks, Marc called and suggested a meeting time. He was headquartered in Virginia, so I suggested that we talk about his plans by telephone and conclude our discussion with a telephone interview for publication in Point of View. But Marc would have none of that. He insisted upon a face-to-face meeting. He was flying into Springfield to finalize discussions with Hall of Fame officials and he scheduled a half-day with me.

Of course by the time Marc arrived, I had developed my own agenda. I didn’t really know Marc but my instincts told me he had a story to tell. When a thirty-nine year-old Black man in America shows up representing former basketball great and Hall of Famer, Dominique Wilkins, promoting and befriending the still popular one-time coach and current Hall of Fame Enshrinee, Dick Vitale, and boasting the likes of Taryne Mowatt, one of the most outstanding (and also voted prettiest) female athletes in the country as his first client in his newest sports management business, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to suspect there is a lot more to his story. What most intrigued me, however, was that Marc was modest. And, yet, he conveyed an aura of confidence that is common among the powerful. So, I was quite pleased when Marc committed to be interviewed for a revealing cover article in Point of View.

Marc was born in Livingston, New Jersey and raised in Florham Park, a predominantly white suburban community where he was one of two Black students in a high school of 2,000 students. His mother worked in marketing but had to give it up because of illness. His father taught African studies in Newark, New Jersey for years. In fact, he developed the Black History curriculum for the entire state and, in 1979, was voted teacher of the year. He was a very public figure in Black community affairs, a graduate of Central State College who hung out with some of the Civil Rights greats of the times. For Marc and his sister and two brothers, life in a predominantly white suburb was balanced out by his father’s urban influence and this unique combination prepared them for life in a diverse world.

Marc’s parents believed in being parents first and friends afterwards. They set high standards for their kids with expectations to match and none of them disappointed, although Marc admits to getting off to a shaky start in college. He graduated from Roxbury High School after a stellar career in track (one of the top 400 meter runners in the state). He enrolled in Tuskegee Institute but soon transferred to North Carolina A & T. His track career and his education were soon completely derailed by his lack of focus. Marc returned home without a degree and worked for two years until he grew up and returned to college.

This time Marc was dead serious. “I turned my life around,” he said. And, indeed, he did! Marc earned a sociology degree from William Patterson University where he rose to become one of its premier students. He served as student member of their Board of Trustees. The National Science Foundation honored him as one of America’s most progressive students and awarded him funds to research championship football teams, and his research was published in two professional journals. And he graduated in 1997 as one of William Patterson’s most popular students with his name engraved on three buildings.

Marc was accepted for graduate work in some of the most prestigious universities in the country, including the University of Chicago, and chose to attend the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where he eventually earned degrees in sociology and sports management. Among his special memories are a video project on the history of UMass basketball that coach Bruiser Flint allowed him to produce, a marketing internship with the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame under former chief operating officer Don Gibson, and an internship under Tony Pettaway with the Springfield Slam women’s basketball team. These connections to Springfield helped open the doors for a postgraduate career for Marc that few could have gained and explain Marc’s insistence upon giving something back to the region.

There is something to say about being in the right place at the right time. While attending UMass, Marc met Pete Roby, who was the director of marketing at Reebok. In 1997, when Marc graduated, Roby, who by then was vice president, hired Marc as an intern and became his personal mentor, allowing him to get involved in projects that covered every aspect of marketing involving some of the biggest names in the business, including Michael Jordan. Marc was the assistant to Thaxter Trafton, former general manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers who, in 1998, became the first CEO of the new International Basketball League.

In July of 2000, Marc was hired by Shawn Neville, CEO of Foot Action, and worked as senior manager of marketing until 2002. Marc left Foot Action to become one of the top Black managers in marketing at Champ Sports, the second largest sports retailer in the world, which is also a subsidiary of Footlocker, Incorporated, which is the largest sports retailer in the world. Marc was responsible for the development and execution of national and international marketing plans and managed the company’s corporate sponsorships with the NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL. Marc met many of sports’ greatest all over the world and many who were only indirectly related to sports, such as entertainer Jay-Z, and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. As Marc puts it, “I can call anybody in the industry because I’ve maintained relationships with people in high places all over the place.”

In 2006, Marc left the corporate world. He was “burned out” and took some time off and started his own sports marketing company. Dominique Wilkins, whom he met while at Footlocker, was among his first clients. Somewhere along the way he befriended Dick Vitale, who allowed Marc to do a video of his life and the two became close friends.

But, even while working for himself, Marc continued to operate on full throttle until fate intervened. He was on his way to a speaking engagement at Howard University, which had also offered him a full-time job. He was also working as an adjunct professor at George Mason University. On the way to Howard, he ran a traffic light. Another car hit him, knocked him 300 feet, broke eight of his ribs and left him hospitalized for eight weeks. The accident gave Marc a chance to rethink his priorities and to refocus his career and in September of 2008, he began a new career at George Mason University as its chief marketing officer for the Center for Sport Management and chief marketing officer for the College of Education and Human Development (CEHD).

Marc’s problem is that he never does one thing at a time…or two things or three things or four things at a time. Not only is he working with the two campus organizations but he is also teaching classes, maintaining his own campus television show, and operating his own independent sports management business, William’s Communications, L.L.C., which, alone, is expanding his workload geometrically and which is the vehicle by which Marc is returning to Springfield and hooking up with the Hall of Fame.

The best way to explain what Marc Williams plans to do for the Hall of Fame is to compare it to what George Mason’s Jeff Gorrell said he has already done for CEHD: “In the short time that he has been here, Marc has already connected CEHD and the Center for Sports Management to high profile events.” Marc plans to work with Hall of Fame President John Doleva and a range of folks from the community to develop ways in which he can use his industry connections to enhance community involvement in Hall of Fame events. He envisions bringing a cross section of talent into the city each year during enshrinement week that will provide the community, visitors, the inductees and their families and friends with reasons to stay around for a while. Needless to say, if Marc is successful, the reputation of the Hall of Fame will be enhanced and the impact on the local economy will be tremendous.

When asked to explain his extraordinary success, Marc said, “My folks weren’t wealthy but they were wealthy with knowledge. Everything I have today is because of my mom and dad.”

His parents recently celebrated their 43rd anniversary. Marc gives them a lot to celebrate as does his brother, Sanford, who earned a B.A. and Masters from Cornell and a law degree from the University of Virginia, and his brother, Benji, who earned an Arts and Communications degree from Central State university and who just returned from China after several months on a promotional project, and his sister, Kori, who earned a B.A. in math from Spellman College and an engineering degree from Georgia Tech.

Marc’s exposure extends well beyond sports. Through his promotional and marketing activities, he has also developed relationships with many top entertainers and made countless government and corporate contacts. In fact, his current “number one” is Jeanette Harris, a rising young jazz musician and singer whose unique sound can be heard on her four CDs, “Here and There,” “Jeanette Harris Live at Platinum Live,” “Down Route 99,” and her newest, “Reflections.” Jeanette is a Berkelee School of Music graduate who plays the saxophone like she invented it and sings like some of music history’s greatest. She is a real down-to-earth person who committed by telephone from California to be the subject of a future Point of View article. More significantly, if Springfield is lucky, Marc might include her among the many celebrities that he introduces to Springfield. Jeanette calls Marc “my baby” short for “my baby is so handsome.” I might have been less willing to reveal such private details except that they are posted with Marc’s photograph on Jeanette’s very public website.

My grandfather always told me that the best way to know a man is through the company he keeps. And Marc travels in good company. ESPN and Hall of Famer Dick Vitale said of Marc: “Marc and I go back a long way. (He has) lots of pride in himself, lots of passion, lots of beliefs that I believe in. (George Mason University) really, really got themselves a gem in getting him…”

And, if Springfield is smart, it won’t let Marc get away. He wants to bring his vast pool of resources to bear on improving our city and we should do everything in our power to assist and encourage him. n