The Wall Street Journal-20080117-Goldman-s Ex-Linebacker to Tackle NFL- League Drafts Noto As a Top Executive- He Played for Army
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Goldman's Ex-Linebacker to Tackle NFL; League Drafts Noto As a Top Executive; He Played for Army
Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s alumni reach has extended from the White House to the New York Stock Exchange -- and now, to the end zone as well.
The company announced yesterday that partner Anthony Noto would become the National Football League's new executive vice president and chief financial officer.
Aside from his business experience at Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Kraft Foods Inc., the 39-year-old Mr. Noto also brings with him time on the gridiron. He was a second-team Academic All-America inside linebacker on Army's football team. He was the top- ranked mechanical engineer in his U.S. Military Academy class.
Bob Sutton, who served as Mr. Noto's defensive coordinator at the time, recalls a smart, passionate player who tore ligaments in both knees during a spring practice but returned in time to play that fall.
"I'm not sure how much of his [anterior cruciate ligaments] he had left," says Mr. Sutton, now the New York Jets' defensive coordinator.
Mr. Noto served as Goldman's top media and entertainment stock analyst at a time when the NFL became increasingly relevant to his area of coverage. While the league has major relationships with a number of big media companies, it is simultaneously trying to launch its own network.
The league remains in a protracted fight with major cable companies over carriage of the NFL Network.
"I had to be a student of the NFL just to cover my companies," including Walt Disney Co., Time Warner Inc. and News Corp., Mr. Noto said yesterday. Before his work at Goldman, he covered the retail sector as an analyst at Lehman and was a brand manager at Kraft.
He will now be responsible for helping to oversee the league's financial analysis and reporting, including the impact of its expanding media interests, stadium-finance program and collective bargaining agreements.
League executives first got to know Mr. Noto three years ago when Eric Grubman, the NFL's executive vice president and president of business ventures -- and a former Goldman executive himself -- invited him for a series of informal sessions on the state of the industries he covered.
Mr. Noto, who also served as a graduate-assistant coach at West Point's prep-school team, says he dreamed of reaching the NFL when he first strapped pads on as a 10-year-old in his Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Pop Warner youth league.
The NFL has gone without a chief financial officer since the 2003 departure of Barbara Kaczynski. Mr. Grubman had been taking on many of the responsibilities Mr. Noto will now oversee, but was also helping to fulfill the duties vacated by Roger Goodell once the league promoted him to commissioner in 2006.
Mr. Noto begins his new job Feb. 24.
