CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Jerry Richardson is a regular on the Jumbo-Tron at Bank of America Stadium. If he’s in the owner’s suite, he’s also on the scoreboard at least twice a game.
Nobody expected to see him there Sunday. Richardson had missed Carolina’s victory against Tampa Bay six nights earlier. Two days after the Tampa Bay game the Panthers announced as quietly as they could that Richardson, who owns the team, was a candidate for a heart transplant.
He’s had heart trouble before. He underwent quadruple bypass surgery in 2002 and had a pacemaker installed last month.
Richardson checked into Carolinas Medical Center more than a week ago and did not check out until Friday or Saturday. Who goes from the hospital to the game?
A man who, despite the wait for a heart, wants to live his life the way he always has. This is his team, and when his team plays he sits in the front row of his suite behind the west end zone, face impassive, windows open, wife Rosalind at his side.
In the third quarter of Carolina’s 30-10 victory against the Broncos on Sunday, several of the Panthers looked at the Jumbo-Tron and saw Rosalind gently put a Panther blanket over her husband’s shoulders.
“It was sweet,” says running back DeAngelo Williams.
The owner undoubtedly would say the same about Williams’ 56-yard touchdown run.
“Hopefully, it’s the gift that keeps on giving,” says Williams. “He (Richardson) is a friend, and he’s family.”
The Panthers had no idea he was coming. Nobody at the stadium did.
“It hasn’t seemed right, him not being up there,” says tackle Jordan Gross. “So I was all smiles. He looked good.”
Writing about Richardson is awkward because he doesn’t want to be written about. The appeal of a team for some millionaires is the attention and adulation ownership confers. I see owners of visiting teams walk into Bank of America Stadium with so many security guards that they look as if they’re the lead float in a parade. Can you see me now?
Richardson travels with the lone security guard on which the league insists. He doesn’t own a cellphone.
What Richardson does, when his health permits, is get into a golf cart and on game days cruise around the stadium, sometimes picking up fans and giving them a ride up the ramps to their seats.
Richardson could reach thousands of fans if he chose to stand in front of the cameras and tape recorders. But his style is more personal and less noisy. Rather than be a face on the screen or voice in the newspaper or on the radio, he works one-on-one shaking hands and listening. The idea is not to tell fans what he thinks. The idea is to hear what fans think.
Tom Sorensen is a sports columnist for The Charlotte Observer. Contact: tsorensen@ charlotteobserver.com
