Earl Jones didn’t know he was a good football player until he was a college senior.
“I’d gone to Norfolk State on a basketball scholarship, intending to be a doctor,” said Jones, who earned the nickname “Cardiac” after initially being benched because of an ultimately benign “click” in his heart heard during a stress test.
“Cardiac” played three sports in college: basketball, football and track. He excelled in track, running the 100-meter dash in 10.5 seconds and the 200 in 22 seconds flat, while majoring in a demanding discipline, chemistry.
“In small colleges, staff usually have several jobs,” Jones said. “My basketball coach, Charles Christian, also was academic counselor for athletes. He told me if I decided not to go to med school, with a chemistry degree I could still earn good money. With biology, he was afraid I’d be limited to teaching.”
During Jones’ senior football season in 1979, a number of pro football scouts were in the stands.
“They’d come to see Larue Harrington, a running back,” said Jones. “On the field, No. 8 kept flashing by them. When they asked coach about me, he said, `That’s Cardiac.’
“That’s how I ended up as the third-round draft pick for the Atlanta Falcons. Harrington was the sixth-round pick for the San Diego Chargers.”
In the off-seasons, Jones worked as a chemical company sales representative.
Midway through his fifth year as a cornerback for the Falcons, Jones injured his knee. That ended his playing career.
“I was going to sell chemicals full time, when my girlfriend, now my wife, Dolores, suggested I try her business,” he said. “She was national sales manager for an Atlanta radio station and was making almost six figures. Because I’d negotiated my football contracts, she said I’d acquired the skills to do what she did.”
Jones didn’t find a job in radio but was hired as advertising account executive by an Atlanta television station.
Twenty-one years later, Jones, 48, is Chicago regional vice president of Clear Channel Radio. He’s responsible for 24 radio stations in and around Chicago, Milwaukee and Eau Claire and Madison, Wis.
Q. Did your parents or your childhood experiences affect your career?
A. I was raised in Tuscaloosa, Ala., by my grandmother, a midwife. My childhood was spent sitting in “the other room” while she delivered babies, reading biographies, watching PBS–I was a PBS junkie–and playing in our front yard. She wouldn’t let me play in the park with the other kids until I was 12.
She instilled a lot of values in me. She encouraged me to be a doctor, based on her experiences as a midwife.
Q. You’ve had some unusual jobs, including psychiatric attendant in two mental hospitals, while attending college. What did you learn?
A. Prior to working there I’d always thought that people were either crazy or sane. I never realized that there could be something in-between. A lot of people are somewhere in-between.
I also learned to look at people’s strengths, not their handicaps. If they have handicaps, try to help them overcome them.
Q. Do you use anything in your current job that you learned as a Falcon?
A. There are different levels of achievement. When you get to the NFL, everyone’s fast, everyone’s quick, everyone’s big. The difference is in preparation. It all comes down to who’s prepared the best, who has the best plan.
Q. How tough was transitioning from pro football to TV advertising?
A. When I first started at WATL-TV in Atlanta, I did a lot of cold calling. Because Dolores sold radio advertising, she helped me with leads, showed me what to do and what not to do. I already knew how to sell. She taught me how to prospect. When I left there, I was billing close to $1 million annually.
It wasn’t that tough because I’d always worked several jobs from the time I was a kid. I’d never let myself believe my press clippings. So I didn’t think I was a celebrity becoming a common guy.
Q. Did anyone mentor you?
A. In addition to Dolores, John Hogan, now Clear Channel Radio’s CEO, mentored me. John and I worked together in Atlanta, when he was a radio station general manager.
He’s always encouraged me, by example, to be decisive and perform, just like on the football field. He taught me bottom-line management.
Q. Have any college classes been particularly helpful to your career?
A. With analytical chemistry I had to look at numbers, figure out what they meant, figure out the trends.
That’s what I do today. I spot the trend, see what I have to do to keep the trend going if it’s good, or change it. I’m in the business of selling futures. Right now, I’m selling radio advertising for August and September.
Q. How has your family life fared as you’ve climbed the career ladder?
A. Dolores and I have three children: Darell, 25, who works in cable; Alex, 14, and Malin, 12.
She’s my partner, but because she’s more outgoing, she picks up different things. I bounce ideas off of her all of the time. When they hired me, they hired her.
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Step by step
2005-present: Regional vice president, Clear Channel Radio, Chicago
2003-05: Regional vice president, Clear Channel Radio, Kentucky and Indiana
2002-03: General manager, Clear Channel Radio, Detroit
1997-2002: General sales manager, Clear Channel, Atlanta
1994-97: National sales manager, WATL-TV, Atlanta
1989-94: Regional account executive, WDCA-TV, Washington, D.C.
1985-89: Account executive, WATL-TV, Atlanta
1980-84: Cornerback, Atlanta Falcons
1979-84: Account executive/sales trainee, Virginia Chemical, Portsmouth, Va.
1979: Cooperative-education student, Virginia Chemical
1977-78: Psychiatric attendant, St. Mary’s Hospital, Norfolk, Va.
1977: Summer psychiatric attendant, Ft. Wayne, Ind.
1970-71: Beverage seller, University of Alabama football stadium
1970-71: Bowling-pin setter
