Sidebar: The Alignment
Test
As CFO of a public com-
pany, Caroline Dorsa puts
great stock in team align-
ment, which she says starts
with agreement around a
common purpose. “If you
know that your mission is
safe, reliable, economic, and
greener energy, and you
know that your principles
are about operational excel-
lence, financial strength,
and disciplined investment,
you start there. Then you
can take different business
proposals and hold them up
to examination and ask, Do
they meet our principles?”
she says.
“You’d be surprised how
easy it is to have a good
conversation when you
evaluate everything through
that lens.”
She credits PSEG’s
Chairman and CEO Ralph
Izzo for consistently articu-
lating a vision that employ-
ees have enthusiastically
rallied around while con-
tinuously driving toward
higher and higher levels of
performance. Of course,
such common principles
must serve employees, cus-
tomers, and shareholders,
1st QUARTER 2014
11
carry sponsor branding, jerseys, and other gear,”
he says. “Also, there are a significant number of
fans outside of our home market that we work to
engage with every day whether that is via social
media, our website, or in-person.”
When Friedman was in Charlotte last fall for
the Jets’ game against the Panthers, there was
a highly organized group of Jets fans that he
spent time with before kickoff. The CFO says
there are dozens and dozens of groups that wel-
come any and all team interactions throughout
the country and abroad.
Passion for the Pigskin
Friedman’s area of oversight takes in financial
planning and daily accounting, financial supervi-
sion of the Jets’ interest in MetLife Stadium,
all internal and external reporting to the NFL,
and oversight of IT and the practice facility
operations.
“An edge on the business side can generate
cash to further fuel the organization’s overall
competitive advantage,” he says. “And I am ex-
tremely fortunate to work with a talented team
of people as we tackle our missions.”
He calls the accounting piece the backbone,
“the non-debatable truth of what’s occurred or
hasn’t occurred.” Finance, on the other hand,
looks to the future and presents the blueprint
for how the organization will get where it wants
to go and “how are we going to make the New
York Jets the best organization it can be.”
With degrees from Cornell University in
Economics and Business Management and an
MBA from Columbia University, Friedman
got his first job as an accountant at PriceWa-
terhouse. That’s also where he met his wife,
Diane. They live in Marlboro, NJ, with three
children, Alexa, 12; Matthew, 10; and Jenna,
7. He held finance roles at Polo Ralph Lauren,
then at Columbia House Company. It was at
Blissworld, LLC—which owns and operates
spas and sells skin-care products to its female
clientele — that Friedman learned how to be a
CFO. When he was there, he had no identifica-
tion with the customer buying face cream, so
he had to develop and promote his ideas based
on quantifiable proof.
Four years ago, he finally got the chance to
make what he quips is “a common transition—
fromwomen’s skin care to professional football.”
Now with a solid understanding of the Jets
customer, he says, he focuses his time on making
sure “we think through the risks, the rewards,
and the potential impact of all decisions.”
The big difference with sports, in his analy-
sis, is fan zeal.
“People love Polo products more than you
know,” says Friedman. “I mean they love it a lot,
but if they didn’t like Ralph’s lines for two or
three years in a row, they’d switch and go down
the block.”
That doesn’t happen in sports. You don’t get
people switching their loyalties from the Jets to go
“BE SURE YOU ARE INVESTING TIME, RESOURCES,
AND MONEY INTO ALL THE THINGS THAT ARE
HAVING THAT FAN IMPACT RIGHT NOW.”
Sports Is a
Business
Brian Friedman teaches a Sports Ac-
counting and Finance course in Columbia
University’s master’s program in Sports
Management. The irony is that he believes
there are not significant diff rences be-
tween accounting and finance at a sports
organization and those same fun tio s at
any other type of company.
“Sports operates like any other business,”
he says. “You start with, ‘What am I going
to do to generate cash?’ and then, ‘How
are we going to control spending the
cash?’ Sports is a big business now and it
has to be treated as such.”
His past business experience is highly
germane, but he no longer studies ales
per square foot of retail departments as he
did at Polo, or revenue per catalog, which
was a key metric at Columbia House, or,
his favorite, profitability of waxes and
massages at Bliss. He says the similarities
— the power of a strong brand at Polo,
operational efficiency at Columbia House,
and the need for tireless focus on the con-
sumer and investments toward that goal at
Bliss — have combine to serve him well
in his role at the Jets.
Gesturing tow rd Jets players and coaches
at the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center,
he laughs and says, “But ultimately that’s
our widget.” Making sure that “widget”
provides a good return means using the
same controls and the same fundamentals
that each of those companies he’s worked
for — and thousands more — rely upon.
