Former Chiefs Head Coach Todd Haley Suspected Phone, Office Were Bugged

One of the more stunning items in Kent Babb's article in today's Kansas City Star about the level of secrecy and paranoia at Kansas City Chiefs headquarters is that former head coach Todd Haley suspected that his office was bugged and that his personal cell phone device had been tampered with. "Looking up toward the ceiling, he darted into a back hallway before hesitating," Babb writes. "Then he turned around, going back through a door and stopping again. Haley suspected that many rooms at the team facility were bugged so that team administrators could monitor employees’ conversations. Stopping finally in a conference room, Haley said he believed his personal cellphone, a line he used before being hired by the Chiefs in 2009, had been tampered with." Haley ultimately stopped using that phone and would repeatedly check his office for listening devices, Babb adds. According the report, the organization's change from a friendly, family-owned operation to something out of John Grisham's "The Firm" began with the 2009 hiring general manager Scott Pioli, who ushered in an environment that "centered on secrecy, extreme attention to detail and putting an end to the way things had been under longtime general manager Carl Peterson". That included reviewing phone logs, restricting employees access to certain floors and stairwells, discouraging the fraternization between employees in different departments, and pulling down the window shades for business-side employees whose office faced the practice field. Another bizarre item was Pioli discovering a candy wrapper in a back stairwell and waiting to see how long it would take for it to be picked up and when it wasn't picked up in a timely manner, Pioli put the wrapper in an envelope and, in a meeting of department heads, presented it as evidence that the organization lacked attention to detail. "A great coaching moment," Chiefs president Mark Donovan said of the candy wrapper issue.

Source: Mac's Football Blog
Attached Thumbnails