A few weeks ago, Chris Polian fired the Colts director of player personnel, Clyde Powers. Powers had been with the club for 31 years. Initial reports were that Powers had retired, but when those reports hit the airways, so to speak, Powers made it very clear that his departure from the West 56th Street complex was certainly not voluntary.
"I'm not retiring. I was fired,"
Powers was a Jim Irsay guy, a holdover from the days when Jim himself was the team's general manager. When Bill Tobin and later Bill Polian took over the football operations, Powers was still retained. But, with Chris Polian now taking over, the 31-year-veteran of the Colts front office was sent packing, and, in his place, it seems Chris has pulled a page out of his father's playbook and has gone the old nepotism route.
A third Polian has been added to the Indianapolis Colts management team.
Owner Jim Irsay confirmed Monday that Dennis Polian has been hired as the club's director of football administration.
Now, the 'director of football administration' does not sound too far off from what Powers' old job was.
Dennis Polian, 34, will be the club's expert on rules deriving from the collective bargaining agreement currently being negotiated between owners and players, budgeting, contract proposals and reporting transactions and all daily communications with the NFL office.
"It's a job we pieced through a couple different offices, but it's something we're going to have a dedicated person for moving forward," Chris Polian said.
Obviously, Dennis Polian is not totally replacing Clyde Powers. But, it seems clear to me that in order to have Dennis hired in the capacity he was hired in, Powers had to go. There's nothing necessarily 'bad' about that, but what does look pretty sketchy is all the people named 'Polian' working for the Colts now.
Regardless of whether this is fair or not, appearances matter. The fact that Bill's two sons are now big time executives in the team front office suggests that they didn't get there because they 'paid their dues.'
They got there because their friggin last name is 'Polian.'
This isn't something that plays well with fans and media who follow this kind of stuff. I've never met Dennis Polian. So, I won't comment on his character because that would not be fair. But, I'm reasonably certain that Dennis would not have been offered a job by another franchise similar to the one the Colts hired him to do. The reason for that is on 31 other franchises, there isn't a guy with the last name 'Polian' running the show.
I sincerely hope I'm wrong, and that Dennis Polian does a good job in the new capacity he's been hired in. But, it does look bad when the team's general manager hires his little brother as an important executive within the team's front office three weeks after firing a 31-year veteran of the organization. No way around that.