Natrona Heights native makes name in sports entertainment
It took Terry O'Neil all of one day to realize he wasn't cut out to be a house painter.
It took him one week to land the job at ABC Sports that eventually made him a network sports icon for almost 30 years.
And it took O'Neil but one month before he had played enough golf to retire from retirement.
It's no wonder O'Neil, a 1967 St. Joseph High School graduate and Natrona Heights native, said he was not sure how long his latest venture - RealTeam Inc. and the realnfl.com Web site - could keep his interest. For now, he's content.
O'Neil, who lives in New Orleans, said his company signed a deal this week with L-90, an advertising agency based in New York and California, to market his 5-month-old Web site. And he said RealTeam Inc. is nearing a three-year deal with America Online that would expose realnfl.com to as many as 28 million people per day.
'What they give us is exposure and increased traffic,' said O'Neil, a former executive producer at ABC, CBS and NBC, and former New Orleans Saints salary cap guru. 'We will give them, perhaps as many as three times a week, an original column that will appear on the AOL premium sports page.
'AOL will lay a tease and a link to the story. If you want to read it, click on the link, and that will drive you back to (our Web site).'
The deal, contingent on the approved hiring of two correspondents for the Web site, only figures to enhance what many around the NFL consider to be one of the best content-based NFL sites around. It has drawn so much attention, in fact, that outlets such as Sports Illustrated, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times also have taken notice.
'After the SI story came out,' said Irv Brodsky, RealTeam's media representative, 'we ended up having a million and a half hits that week.'
Not bad for the 51-year-old O'Neil, who had one year remaining on his contract with the Saints. That allowed him to learn the cyberspace business as he has went. All the while, the Saints paid the bills. To this day, O'Neil has shouldered the finances of RealTeam Inc. and the Web site.
The AOL deal could cure many ills.
O'Neil's Web site offers insightful, colorful commentary from NFL insiders who are no longer inside the action. Former St. Louis Rams coach Dick Vermeil - who recently was hired by the Kansas City Chiefs - and former Saints assistants Bobby April and Zaven Yaralian have contributed columns.
'The people I've talked to really enjoyed it,' said April, who served as the Steelers' special teams coach from 1994-95 and held the same position with the Saints from 1996-99. 'They think it's really outstanding. Terry, he's one of the best writers. The guy is a fantastic writer and has a tremendous insight to the league.
'I'm (assuming) the assessments were about his writing. I know how mine compares to his.'
O'Neil the trailblazer
Unlike Vermeil and April, who both left RealTeam Inc. after the Super Bowl, O'Neil is staying put.
He hasn't always been that way.
O'Neil began his professional career, coincidentally, at the Valley News Dispatch, working as a part-time employee in the sports department during high school. After graduating from St. Joseph, O'Neil attended Notre Dame and earned an English degree before graduating in 1971. Three years later, he graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism with a master's degree in journalism.
It was during those three years when O'Neil caught his break.
ABC Sports was looking for a researcher for the upcoming 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. O'Neil had built solid relations with Notre Dame's sports information department. A sports information director at Notre Dame contacted ABC Sports and recommended O'Neil.
One week removed from graduation, and one day suffered through house painting, O'Neil was on his way to New York.
'I had one day as a house painter in Natrona Heights after college,' O'Neil said. 'The paint was on my underwear.'
Living in New York City wasn't much easier.
O'Neil earned $150 per week and found himself bunking in producers' dining rooms to make ends meet.
Soon enough, O'Neil was the one producing.
He did so for ABC's 'Monday Night Football' during Howard Cosell's tenure and on more than one occasion engaged in heated conversations with Cosell in off-air meetings.
By 1980, after almost 10 years, O'Neil had seen enough of Cosell and ABC. The following year, he joined CBS as an executive supervisor. There, he teamed broadcasters Pat Summerall and John Madden and invented the active telestrator - or Madden's television chalkboard.
He maintained interest in the Olympics and produced the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona, Spain, for NBC. It would be his last.
'Television never had the same appeal after that,' O'Neil said. 'I very quickly got focused on finding some way to get into the (NFL).'
He received his opportunity when Mike Ditka, whom O'Neil had hired while at NBC, was named Saints coach in 1997.
Ditka offered O'Neil a job as a salary cap consultant in 1997, and O'Neil accepted. Before his firing, O'Neil was elevated to senior vice president.
Among his most notable moments: trying to convince Ditka and the Saints brass not to trade their entire draft to move up and select running back Ricky Williams. O'Neil was outvoted.
'I was the only guy who opposed it,' O'Neil said. 'There were five of us in the room when we made the decision: the owner, general manager, personnel director, Ditka and me.
'I still think it was really a bad mistake.'
When O'Neil joined the Saints, they had $11,000 to spend under the salary cap. When he left, they had $17 million.
Despite his firing, he said he holds no grudges. He still has an avenue to voice his opinion on the Saints. It's just on the Internet instead of in a board room.
'This is a little bit of the payback,' O'Neil said with a slight laugh. 'The league is such that there's going to be new leadership. The new general manager has a right to choose his own people.'
O'Neil's people
It's three o'clock in the afternoon. O'Neil is sitting pool side. He is watching his 6-year-old son, Liam, during swim practice.
'You really have to be grateful for that,' O'Neil said.
He is quite sincere.
He realizes he lost precious time with his wife, Tuly, and Liam while working in television and with the Saints. He realizes how quickly things can change in the world of Internet business.
Unsure of what lies ahead, O'Neil enjoys spending as much time with his family as he can. That's not always easy, considering he spends much of the afternoon managing his company and part of the evening writing his columns.
'I really don't know how this one is going to turn out,' O'Neil said. 'With NBC, ABC-TV behind you, you're pretty sure you're going to produce a pretty good Olympics or football game. When I got the hang of contract negotiations, I knew I could do pretty well for the Saints.
'I have those nights where (my wife) is like, ÔWhat are you thinking?' '
More times than not, O'Neil's mind wanders back to Natrona Heights. Through his travels, through his success, O'Neil has not forgotten his roots.
An aerial photo given to him as a gift of the Allegheny River, New Kensington Bridge and Tarentum Bridge hangs in his office.
'It's a picture I've had everywhere I've been,' said O'Neil, born in Allegheny Valley Hospital, one of five O'Neil children. 'It's a gorgeous picture. People think it's some tropical paradise.'
O'Neil figures his family's paradise came from his mother. His father died when he was 9. His mother, forced to leave high school because she had rheumatic fever, completed her education through correspondence courses and went on to become one of the top insurance salespersons in the Valley.
She had what O'Neil called 'an unbeatable spirit' before passing away in 1988.
'She was a great inspiration to all of us,' O'Neil said. 'I still think of (Natrona Heights) as home.'
Now he has a home on the Internet. And a virtual office, with a dozen correspondents scattered across the country from California to Louisiana to New York to even Pittsburgh.
Like in every other one of his endeavors, O'Neil is proving to be a natural. In typical fashion, it hasn't taken him very long to do so.
