Brooky: Marketing man Coskey recalls ex-bosses: Croce, Snider - and Trump

Dave Coskey has spent his life working with heavyweights, and that does not even include the brief span in the 1990s when he marketed boxing and other pay-per-view events for HBO Sports, rising to the point at which Ring Magazine named him one of the most influential people in boxing.

It was some of his other jobs in sports and entertainment during Coskey's 35-year journey, since his 1981 graduation from Villanova University, that make his life story so enthralling. Listen to this roll call of bosses: Harold Katz, Pat Croce, Ed Snider, Lewis Katz, and Donald Trump.

Yes, that Donald Trump.

Let's start there.

In the spring of 1989, Coskey was ready to leave his job as the 76ers' director of public relations and assistant director of marketing. The Haddon Township native was 30 years old, and he had spent his summers along the Jersey Shore, where he met his wife, Monica. They wanted a life back at the Shore.

The plan was to work for a casino because nothing simulated game night in the world of college and professional sports better than every night in Atlantic City. At least that's the way it was in the 1980s and '90s. Coskey interviewed with Caesars president Peter Boynton and left convinced that he would be offered a public relations job at the casino by the end of the following month.

That weekend, during a birthday party for one of his sons, Coskey received a phone call from a casino. Karen Tuso, the director of advertising and public relations for Trump Plaza, wanted to know if he could interview immediately for a job as the public relations director.

"Today?" he asked her. "I can't today. How about Monday?"

The date was agreed upon.

"We'll send a limo for you," Tuso told Coskey.

"Yeah, right," Coskey said, believing the entire conversation to be some sort of joke.

The next day, Monica Coskey asked her husband if he was going to drive from his home in Gloucester Township to the interview with the Trump empire in Atlantic City.

"If the limo comes on Monday, I'll go," Coskey said.

The couple chuckled.

What Coskey described as "a gigantic stretch limo" arrived Monday morning.

"I guess I'm going to Trump Plaza," he told his wife.

Two days later, he was hired.

Dave Coskey's first encounter with The Donald became a lesson in marketing. Coskey was the point man for the opening of a new restaurant - Oysters Trump - on the Atlantic City boardwalk. Beat writers covering the A.C. scene had gathered inside.

"It was a nice place," Coskey recalled. "Typical Trump Plaza. Marble floors, high-top tables, but it was kind of small. I was handing out media kits when all of a sudden I saw the wall coming. A line of black suits all around Donald. He walks in, and everybody starts going crazy."

Trump made an immediate declaration.

"Boy," he said, "this is the most magnificent place I've ever seen."

Trump shook some hands, hugged a few people, and departed.

Coskey thought his boss had greatly exaggerated the magnificence of Oysters Trump.

"I'm thinking we are dead meat," he said. "I was taught at Villanova to always play things close to the vest. But dealing with Donald I learned that a really important part of marketing is making sure people hear what you want them to hear. If you say it, they'll hear it."

Apparently they'll also write it. Coskey said the reviews were all magnificent.

Another lesson in marketing followed a short time later. Trump was big into boxing in the '80s and '90s, and Coskey remembers standing next to CNN's Nick Charles and Fred Hickman when Trump stopped in front of them and pointed at his public relations director.

"He's very good, but I pay him way too much," Trump told Charles and Hickman. "But he's very good."

The message to the national media: Trump pays for and gets the best.

One of Coskey's most memorable interactions with Trump came in December 1989. A controversy emerged because the Rolling Stones, on the last leg of their Steel Wheels tour, did not want to do a joint news conference with Trump, who was sponsoring their final shows. When Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and the boys showed up at the Atlantic City Convention Center for an impromptu news conference without Trump, Coskey informed his boss about it.

"They didn't want anything to do with us except they had no problem taking a $3.5 million check," Coskey said. "When I caught wind they were talking at Boardwalk Hall, yeah, it was my job to tell him they're doing this. So we go over there, and there was a partition wall with an air door . . . and I remember us getting the door open and Donald busting through it. Everybody turned and walked away from the Stones."

Coskey got a phone call from tour promoter Michael Cohl demanding a meeting outside on the Boardwalk. Coskey agreed.

"I remember him telling me he was going to make me famous because the Rolling Stones were going to cancel, and he was going to tell the world that I was the reason why," Coskey said.

Nerves shaken, Coskey informed Trump Plaza president Jack O'Donnell about his conversation with Cohl. After O'Donnell discussed the situation with Trump, the casino president assured Coskey everything would be OK.

"You work for us," O'Donnell told Coskey. "Don't worry about them. Wait and see if they want to give us $3.5 million back. They don't want to give that back. They're not canceling anything."

The shows went on.

So did Coskey's career with Trump until he decided to leave and become part-owner of MediaWorks Communications, a Linwood-based public relations firm that helped TVKO promote pay-per-view events.

A call to return to the 76ers ended that gig.

Early in the spring of 1996, a guy who taped the ankles of professional athletes, ran a physical therapy business, opened pirate-themed miniature golf courses at the Shore, and always felt great became part-owner and president of the 76ers. It was Pat Croce's reward for being the frontman in persuading former owner Harold Katz to sell the team to Comcast, the corporate giant of Philadelphia business then and now.

Croce's first hire was Coskey. His title was vice president of marketing. Friends and relatives thought he was insane.

"I remember my brother-in-law saying, 'Are you crazy? Do you know how bad they are?' " Coskey said. "Yeah, I kind of did."

They weren't Sam Hinkie-era bad, but they had just finished with the league's second-worst record (18-64) and had the league's second-worst attendance. Marketing this bunch was not going to be easy.

"We were about four years into a business down the Shore, and we were promoting boxing - undisputed heavyweight championships - all over the world," Coskey said. "I had just been named one of the most influential people in boxing by Ring Magazine, so why would I risk all that and walk away from it and go with a team that was losing?"

Croce was the answer.

"You can't turn down Pat Croce," Coskey said. "I wouldn't have wanted to, but he's too persuasive. I believed him when he said he had these great ideas, and he was going to turn the franchise around."

The Sixers' turnaround started with some good fortune when the ping-pong balls fell their way on NBA draft lottery night in 1996. They got the first overall pick and used it on Allen Iverson. Even with Iverson, however, it took some time for the basketball to get better.

Croce, with Coskey as his right-hand man, wanted the basketball experience to get better immediately. Attendance improved each of the five seasons Croce and Coskey were together.

"When we got there, we'd offer tickets as donations, and nobody wanted them," Coskey said. "We had to find a way to jump-start things, and that's what Pat did. He was great to work for because he is great at encouraging people to pursue new and different things."

Few, if any, team presidents were more different than Croce, who once scaled the Walt Whitman Bridge to hang a team banner.

Coskey remembers a Friday afternoon in the middle of Market Street when Croce placed caps on cabbies because he thought it was a profession that had great influence over the city. Coskey was concerned that no cab drivers would show up for the event.

"Pat used to say it was my job to be nervous," Coskey said. "I just didn't think these guys were going to show up. But I parked in a garage, and I came downstairs and as I walked outside I could see there were cabs coming from every direction. Pat's high-fiving people, putting caps on cab drivers. It was crazy. By the end of the same day, he was on the Atlantic City Expressway handing Sixers caps to drivers at the toll booth.

"He always believed, and that's why I would always defer to his ideas. My mind-set was always, 'OK, let's find a way to make this work.' I believed he could accomplish anything, and I honestly believe the turnaround of the Sixers would not have been as expedited without Pat."

Coskey said he still gets requests from friends and Sixers fans to put the old band back together.

"That time in 1996 with Pat and Comcast backing everything, we were in the right place at the right time," Coskey said. "I think you have to let the Sixers see if their plan now works. I think the one signal the current ownership group has sent is that they are going to be a little Ed Sniderish when it comes to spending money to achieve what they want to achieve. Will their plan work? Nobody knows, including them. But they decided to blow the whole thing up and start over again."

Croce's plan came crumbling to a halt shortly after the 76ers lost in the 2001 NBA Finals to the Los Angeles Lakers. The abridged version of what happened: Croce felt he was ready to take control of the 76ers and Flyers from Ed Snider, and he wanted the man who introduced the NHL to Philadelphia to pass the torch. Snider was not ready to let go, and he was not going to lose a power struggle being mediated by Comcast.

Coskey was stuck in the middle.

"I fought to keep Pat because I thought he was extremely important to the organization," Coskey said. "I'd say to him, 'Why don't you do this?' But Pat's not a halfway kind of guy. He did everything all the way."

Croce left, and Snider assumed control of the 76ers as well as the Flyers.

"I kind of thought I was Pat's first hire, so I was assuming that I would be the first out," Coskey said. "First in, first out."

Instead, Snider offered Coskey a promotion, and he remained as an executive vice president.

"I was told I came upon a kinder, gentler Ed Snider later on in his life, but he was still very serious," Coskey said.

And competitive.

"I still remember a game when we were playing the New Jersey Nets, and he and Lewis Katz were great friends," Coskey said.

Katz, the former owner of the Inquirer, Daily News, and philly.com, owned the Nets and New Jersey Devils at the time.

"They were sitting in Ed's courtside seats, and the Nets were winning," Coskey said. "Lewis told Ed, 'Hey, if you want, I'll go in at halftime and talk to your team for you.' That made Ed crazy. He got up, walked away, and stood in the tunnel."

Billy King, the team's general manager at the time, had a seat above the tunnel, and when Coskey went home after the game he watched the local news.

"They're saying, 'Look how mad Ed Snider is at Billy King,' " Coskey recalled. "He wasn't mad at Billy King. He was ticked off that the Sixers were losing to his friend's team, and his friend was jabbing him."

Coskey did not know Lewis Katz when he was promoted by Snider, but the two men became quickly and contentiously acquainted.

"We didn't meet on the best of terms," Coskey said. "The NBA has marketing territories, and it doesn't really matter for anybody except the Knicks, the Sixers, and the Nets. Everybody else is spread out, so there's no overlapping.

"Lewis lived in Cherry Hill, and he grew up in Camden, and he had a house in Longport, so he would push [the Nets] marketing guys to do stuff around [the southern Jersey Shore]. I would get Nets marketing material in Avalon. Well, that's a violation, and I was on the NBA marketing advisory board, so I would turn him in."

This infuriated Katz.

"Ed Snider thought it was funny because Lewis would go berserk," Coskey said. "So I get a call one day from Ed's secretary telling me he wants to see me. I walk in, and Lewis is there. Ed looks at him and points at me and says, 'That's him.' "

Katz cursed Coskey and asked him why he turned him in to the league.

"I turned you in because you did what you weren't supposed to do," Coskey told Katz.

Katz screamed at Snider. Coskey left the office.

A few weeks later, Coskey received another call from Snider's secretary. This time, it was a request for Coskey to attend a March of Dimes banquet honoring Lewis Katz.

"The guy who hates me?" Coskey asked the secretary. "I'm going to honor him? Are you kidding me?"

Coskey learned a lot about Katz that night, including the fact that he grew up in Camden. It made him think about his maternal grandmother, who lived next to a store that was owned by a woman named Mrs. Katz.

"Everybody at the dinner talked about what a great person he was and how much he gave back," Coskey said.

On the ride home, Coskey called his mother to see if she knew a Lewis Katz.

"Of course we know Lewis," his mother said. "He grew up next door to us. You should call your Uncle Jack. They were good friends."

Coskey called his uncle.

"Of course I know him," his uncle said. "You see him, you tell him he's not the best damn Jewish basketball player to ever come out of Camden."

Coskey did not think he'd ever relay that message to Katz, but later that summer the two men had another encounter in Snider's office, and it went pretty much the same as all the others. Katz screamed, Coskey squirmed, and Snider chuckled. Coskey decided he had nothing to lose.

"By the way," he told Katz, "I have a message for you."

"Oh, yeah, what's the message?" Katz responded.

Coskey relayed his uncle's message about the rankings of Jewish basketball players from Camden.

"You know Jackie?" Katz said. "How do you know Jackie?"

"He's my uncle," Coskey said.

"If he's your uncle, then that means Mrs. Keenan must be your grandmother," Katz said. "That can't be because you're a bastard, and she is an angel."

A friendship was cemented.

"I really got to know what an incredible person he was," Coskey said.

When Coskey left the 76ers in 2003, he became a consultant for Snider and Katz as they joined forces in a bid to build a Philadelphia casino. That effort never came to fruition. But after a five-year stint as vice president of marketing at the Borgata in Atlantic City, Coskey found himself again working for Katz in 2011. This time it was as the president of Longport Media, a group of five Shore-based radio stations Katz purchased for $4.2 million after they fell into bankruptcy.

At 57, Coskey is still the president at Longport Media.

"We're really small, so I do a lot of things," he said.

A couple of his bosses are gone now. Katz died in a plane crash in 2014, and Snider died in April after a long battle with cancer. Croce, meanwhile, has faded from the limelight.

Trump, of course, is a different story. He is the Republican candidate for president, and Coskey, a lifelong registered Republican, thinks he'd make a good one.

"I would vote for him simply because I saw the person that is different than the marketing Donald," Coskey said. "The marketing Donald is the one that got more people to come out and vote than ever before. The business Donald, I've seen him, too.

"Every time I dealt with him, he always tried to get the best people for a position and let them do their jobs. I can't imagine over time he has changed his method of operation. So I guess the answer is yes, I would vote for him."

And should Trump win, Coskey would have two unique mementos in his home.

"I have two letters from Donald on my wall," Coskey said. "One was from when I left Trump Plaza. His secretary would write the letters, but he'd use a quill pen and write notes in the margin. There would be stuff crossed out, and he was just very complimentary. I also got a letter from him when Ed Snider promoted me to executive vice president of the Sixers. He told me how proud he was.

"I look at those letters now and I say, 'If this guy goes on to become president, that's pretty cool.' I'm so thankful my wife saved them."

Regardless of the outcome in the presidential race, Coskey will still have a lifetime of memories of working with and for a lot of heavyweights.

bbrookover@phillynews.com

@brookob