2d Chicago Fire set by Tom Origer

Tom Origer, a consummate buisnessman, knew more than anyone that wasting time meant wasting money.

He becae a millionaire before 40 as the nation's leading developer of six-story apartment and office buildings and could not abide foot dragging.

Origer had wanted to get into pro football since the early 1960s, when there was talk of an American Football League franchise in Chicago. He wasn't about to let anyone ruin it for him now.

He sat nervously at a meeting of owners for the emergent World Football League last Jan. 14 and listened to the debate how profits would be divvied up. His face reddened.

"Everybody wanted a piece of the action," he recalled. "Percentage of TV rights, percentage of franchise fees. They were interested in making as much money as possible without doing the requisite organizing. And I knew damn well some of these guys wouldn't be around very long. They'd be gone; take the money and run."

Origer, who paid $440,000 to become an owner last October, could stand it no longer. "I told them if they were going to do it that way, which I felt was unreasonable, I was going to walk. The other owners backed down."

That, says Origer was a turning point in provoking the W.F.L. into acting. But, less than two months later, he confronted them again and found little accomplished.

By late February Origer had a team name, uniform designs, and office staff, training site, contract for Soldier Field, a head coach, and a quality quarterback signed. His organziation had also sold 5,000 season tickets.

"Everybody was waiting for things to jell, and I just didn't wait," said Origer. "I was more of a gambler. I felt we were either going to do it or we weren't. I wasn't going to sit on the fence.

"It was a gamble, too," he went on. "From October to March, when the W.F.L. signed Csonka, Kiick, and Warfield, no one had really committed himself. It was a paper league. Some of the owners hadn't been checked out thoroughly enough. No limits were imposed on how much backing an owner needed. Take Joe Wheeler, who had the original Washington franchise, now in Orlando.

He was kind of a big blowhard, nothing to back it up," says Origer. "No money. He turned out to be thefirst W.F.L. owner to make a profit, selling his franchise for $400,000 profit only three months after he got it."

Origer's impatience is paying off. His team, eventually named the Chicago Fire, is emerging as a rival atrraction to the entrenched Chicago Bears of the National Football League and completed the first hafl of the W.F.L's 20-game season with a 7-3 record. In the Fire's biggest game of the year, against Birmingham, more than 44,000 gathered at Soldier Field to watch the "New Game in Town."

Attendance is averaging over 30,000 for the Fire, and is due as much to a strong front-office organization as the quality of players on the field. No small measure of credit for speedil putting it all together goes to Origer, whose dream for finally owning his own football team began when he read and exclusive story by Cooper Rollow in the Oct. 4 Chicago Tribune about the formation of the new league.

Less than 24 hours later, Origer had purchased a franchise for Chicago. He didn't want a partner either. "I've never had a partner in business and I've been successful," he said. "I wouldn't want to risk anyone else's money anyway. I'd rather lose my own."

Within weeks, Origier had hired the first of his executive staff, an ambitious wheeler-dealer from the semi-pro Midwest Football League named Bill Byrne.

Players from around the country, all shapes, sizes, and skills, had been telephoning Origer at his Park Ridge office since the conception fo the new league made headlines. He couldn't get anything done and was quickly becoming frustrated.

"Byrne hit me at just the right time," noted Origer, puffing on his familiar cigar. He asked for an interview and flew out here from Columbus, Ohio, at his own expense. He had connections and knew of people who could help us. He came in willing to roll the dice with me, and I was willing to roll the dice, too.

"His enthusiasm impressed me," said Origer. "In fact, Byrne told me: 'Let me go to work for you for a couple of months ...you don't have to pay me. Let me show you what I can do.' That really impressed the hell out of me."

Quickly, Byrne had signatures on contracts and separated football's wheat from the chaff. By Jan 14, Byrne had over 100 players, most of them rookies and N.F.L. castoffs, signed and ready for pre-camp tryouts around the midwest.

Origer's team was as much nameless as faceless, and he stayed awake at nights thinking of a nickname. His wife Susan, as well as his seven children, played "name-games" around their luxurious suburban Inverness home, too.

"I used to drive people nuts at parties," recalled Origer, "asking everybody to think about possible nicknames. It was on my mind day and night. The name had to be perfect, it had to be short, and it had to have a great promotional handle.

"I didn't want animal-type names, either," he said. "That is trite and it's not today. I wanted young people to relate to this team."

Outrageous monikers poured in from everywhere; most of them linked to Chicago's reputation in the 1920's as a lawless town or its infamous breezy weather: The Windbreakers, the Bootleggers, the Mob, the Mobsters. Origer once thought if he named the team the Mob, he could obtain L.S.U. All-American Warren Capone as a middle linebacker. [Capone now stars for Birmingham.].

Eventually, the names Chicago Fires and Chicago Fireman cropped up. "They didn't sound just right," said Origer. "But I liked the idea. Then, one day, I was thumbing through one of my daughter's coloring books. It had all the old time fire pumers, white horses drawing them! Bright colors. I liked it. It was exciting, and I was running out of time. Coming up with a name was beginning to drive me mad.

"We settled on Chicago Fire, and I think it was a great decision."

Headline writers around Chicago fell for it, just as Origer predicted.

"Hot stuff on the sport's scene": "Fire chief opes flames won't go out" filled this town's newspapers, and columns dwelt on such things as: Practice being called Fire drills; headquarters is the Fire Station; defense is the Volunteers. Origer rented a Dalmatian as a sideline mascot.

That accomplished, Origer got down to serious business finding a head coach. He considered N.F.L. assistant coaches first ["every assistant wants to be a head coach"] and among those heading his list were Bill Arnsperger, the defensive genius from Miami now head coach of the Giants; Vince Costello, ex-Brown with the Dolphins; a number of younger aides, and even Zeke Bratkowski, presently quarterback coach for the Bears.

But the more he pondered his candidates, the less Origer liked the idea of selecting an N.F.L. assistant. "If you hire them, everything has to be perfect because they're used to that," he said. "They get a lot of money to work with. The Fire would be an inexperienced team. We'd be playing in subpar stadiums on occasion, and conditions would be far from perfect. There'd be problems."

With that in mind, Origer interviewed 47-year-old Jim Spavital, a likable Oklahoman fired by the Winipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadia Football League.

That didn't bother me," said Origer. "The fact he had been fired just meant he'd be hungrier."

Spavital acquired a reputation as a stern disiplinarian in Canada and of building competitive, well-conditioned teams without much talent and even less money. His Bombers had been division runnersup the season before, but a drug scandal and injuries crippled them in 1973.

Even so, the Bombers were second in total offense, and the prospect excited Origer. "I talked to everyone I could in Canada about Spavital," the 40-year-old owner said. "Everyone told me about his basic honesty and frankness. He was 24-hour a day football man, 365 days a year. That's what we would need."

They shook hands on the no-contract agreement, and Origer had a head coach. Spavital picked his staff from among colleagues in Canada and former assistancs he had worked with at the college level. His offensive line coach, Joe Spencer, had handled the world champion New York Jest in 1969. He had also been a teammate of Spavital's at Oklahoma State.

Origer still needed a promoter to help make Chicago Fire a recognizable commodity -- if not a household word -- in a city ruled by the Bears for 53 years. With unbridled pro expansion and shrinking sports dollars, this would be a difficult task, indeed.

In the first few weeks of forming his organization in November, Origer had been approached by a young advertising executive named Al Lange, who a team nickname and accompanying jingles, and projects for promoting related articles.

By now, Origer's office was hectic, he could get next to nothing accomplished and he wanted to be fully prepared to face the other owners with an organization that would be a showcase for the whole league.

"At first I wouldn't even talk to Lange," recalled Origer. "He wanted to give his presentation, so I dumped him on Bill Byrne. He had this project set up: He had nicknamed the team the Chicago Max, based on a Gay 90s character with a handlebar mustache and derby. Everything else was built around this image. Season tickets would be called Max Packs and the cheerleaders would be Maxines. He also had a song -- I told him I liked the barbershop -- and he had this real corny tune.

But the guy impressed me," said Origer, after meeting with Lange again in late December. "He was dynamic and a go-getter. I wanted someone with a lot of energy. I figured the job would demand someone who wouldn't be watching the clock all the time. He was the man, even though it took him awhile to accept the name Chicago Fire."

In early February, the 29-year-old Lange, a tall, moustachioed chap with modish hair, jumped into his job with both feet. He planned halftime spectaculars for Soldier Field --including a balloon ascension for the home opener -- and high-kicking dancing girls on the sideline. "I want our fans to be fully entertained at our games," he announced.

From there, everything started to fall in place. Origer acquired a more efficient office staff to handle the growing demand for tickets and rented Lake Forest College for training camp.

Bills began to pile up, too: $50,000 for camp expenses, $60,000 for some half milliopn brochures distributed in a special mailing list, new equipment and dummies and blocking sleds. Even a ubiquitous helmet buggy [$6,000] for home games.

Origer also obtained the Maryville Academy in Des Plaines for Fire's regular-season practice site. He has had a close personal attachment to the school, which cares for orphans and boys and girls from broken homes, and donated $250,000 for the construction of two dormitories. He plans six more. ["My real dream," he once confided, "is to build a Chicago Boys town."].

Origer, a handsome, open-faced man with a toothsome grin, had had little time to step back and admire his work. But he can appreciate what his labors and money hath wrought.

"Football has been a longtime love affair for me," said Origer, a frustrated athlete at St. Gregory and Amundsen High Schools. "I wanted to play football at Amundsen, but couldn't because of a heart murmur.

"This is a change for me to start from scratch, and I've done that before in business. I just had to try, and that is why, in part, I went at it so fast. It was such a challenge, to help build a league into something formidable.

"It's an opportunity to leave my mark," he went on. "It would be tough, but I've been through tough times before. Sometimes they are the happiest. Really, it's like watching your children grow up to what you'd like them to be."