Crew fan here. I was waiting to board my flight from Baltimore to Chicago on Saturday when my attention was jerked to my left when I heard someone say, "Hi, XXXX? This is Denis Hamlett, head coach of the Chicago Fire... I don't know him by sight, but I see now that it was indeed him. *He spent the entire time waiting on the phone. He seemed to be calling Fire draft picks. It was a lot of "Has anyone from the Fire contacted you yet?" "Where are you at with your schooling?" "We look forward to seeing you in training camp, welcome to the team!" It was clearly the first time he was talking to these guys. For one guy, he also asked about his green card/work permit status. *The other call he made was to someone in the organization or an assistant, and it was to get more numbers for draft pics and camp invitees. A lot of "Did you get XXXX's" number yet? What about this guy? What about this guy?" Then he resumed making calls. He did say more to the internal/assistant guy, but I couldn't understand the context. He did say one intriguing thing (hopefully I remember this exactly right, it's been a few days now). "Yeah, Frank says, it looks like it might be France." *We boarded the plane and I ended up directly behind him. He was in the emergency row seat over the wing. You know how people in emergency rows have extra responsibilities if there is...an emergency? He seemed to take that pretty seriously, staring at the flight attendant while she gave her safety shpiel and actually enunciating "No," when they asked if anyone had any questions about the emergency row seat procedure. I appreciated that. *Once the pilot gave the all-clear, he fired up his laptop. I only sort of skimmed at what he was looking at without really staring, because I felt skeevy reading stuff over his shoulder. *From what I did see, he was poring over lists of draft picks, and prospects, organized on Excel spreadsheets countless different ways. He appeared to be pretty Excel savvy. He also pulled up a roster sheet with salaries, and so I looked away. He also pulled up a hard copy of draft picks, on top of which he had scribbled what appeared to be a 4-4-2 depth chart, about 4 deep with names. *He then (I was less shy about looking at this) watched a short, heavily produced highlight reel of Evansville's Cory Elenio, and then shut off his computer. He seemed like a hard worker, and confident (dressed smartly too IMO). Just thought you might want the peek into the life. You also might be glad to know that the Fire is being financially prudent where possible: This was a Southwest flight.
Denis would like to thank you for the nice things you said, but will be exacting vengance upon you for your feeble attempts at snooping. Be warned, you can run from Denis, but you cannot hide. Denis will find you and feed you to his Guppy.