Jaguars Final Four: Abbott, Bishko, Perkins, Sexton have been lifers with NFL franchise

When Dan Edwards, the Jaguars’ longtime Senior Vice-President of Communications, decided to retire after the 2021 season, that meant an exclusive club connected to the NFL franchise was down to four members.

The Final Four — Alisa Abbott, Tim Bishko, Mike Perkins and Brian Sexton — are all that remain among Jaguars employees who have been with the team since its inception.

Being with the Jaguars every step of the way, Abbott, Bishko, Perkins and Sexton have been along for a ride that included an expansion franchise working out of trailers, a four-year playoff streak and two AFC Championship appearances within the first five years under Tom Coughlin, six subsequent head coaches, four general managers, two owners and enduring 10 losing seasons in the past 11 years.

“Those people are so important there because they know the history and perspective of the franchise,” said Edwards. “Their institutional knowledge of the organization and its history comes from living it, and no one else has that.”

From inside the building at TIAA Bank Field, the four Jaguars’ lifers — all in their 50s — have seen a little bit of everything from far different vantage points. Here are their stories:

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ALISA ABBOTT

Executive assistant to owner/president

Three months after the Jaguars came into existence, Abbott had grown weary of her previous job and quit as a sales associate with Mutual of New York. It piqued her interest when she was informed by her best friend, Melissa Scott-Gann, that the NFL expansion team was hiring people.

Abbott, a Bishop Kenny High graduate, worked part-time with the Jaguars for three months, wearing several hats. She was a marketing assistant for a little while, but also worked in public relations, ticketing and sponsorship.

Then, when trailer No. 3 opened and the Jaguars hired Edwards from the Pittsburgh Steelers to lead their communications department, Abbott settled in as his executive assistant for the next 18 years.

Once Shad Khan bought the team and hired Mark Lamping as team president in 2012, Abbott went from working directly under Edwards to being the daily planner and executive assistant for the two major bosses in the Jaguars’ organization.

“The joke was Mark and Shad stole Alisa from me and moved to a different end of the hall,” said Edwards.

Unlike many of her colleagues, Abbott didn’t have any background in sports. Though she enjoyed college football, especially the Florida-Georgia game, the appeal for her to stick around for 28 years was more about the environment than simply being part of an NFL team.

“It was just a fun job, I knew nothing about football,” said Abbott, a Jones College graduate. “I knew what a touchdown was, but that was about it. It took me three seasons to figure it all out.

“Being in public relations felt like a family environment with all the other guys. I miss that part of it, but I don’t miss the transcribing [from press conferences].”

Going from the football side of the Jaguars’ operation to the business side with Lamping and Khan over the last decade has been an eye-opener.

“The change was good because every year I learn something new,” said Abbott. “Whether it’s Daily’s Place, the scoreboards, and now the new construction [for Sports Performance Center], we’re doing something different.”

While Abbott hasn’t had the benefit of working in an office with windows since being in the First Union building in 1994, that will change when the business operations eventually move into an office building next to Khan’s unbuilt Four Seasons hotel.

She treasures her time as a Jaguars’ insider, which now includes game-day duties managing the owner’s suite at home games. Abbott, who attends no road games except the annual trip to London, wants to retire with the Jaguars, but isn’t sure yet on a timeline.

“I’d like to see all the stadium renovations be done with the stadium of the future,” Abbott said. “That’s been such a hard job, I want to see it through with Mark [Lamping] and be in an office with windows.”

BRIAN SEXTON

Senior correspondent

During the Jaguars’ existence, few people in the organization made a more meteoric rise into a dream job than Sexton.

Though he always wanted to be a broadcaster — growing up in Kansas City and listening to Jack Buck, the St. Louis Cardinals’ legendary radio play-by-play announcer — Sexton’s mindset was simply to get into the radio industry and see where that career might take him.

No thought crossed his mind that when he left KNSS-AM radio in Wichita to become sports director at WOKV in Jacksonville, it would lead to him getting the Jaguars’ play-by-play job at age 25.

At the time, he was just happy to get into a bigger market and working with Coughlin on a weekly radio show during the fall of 1994. But when the late Peter Scheurmier, the team’s vice-president of broadcasting, asked him to submit a tape as an audition for the team’s play-by-play job, Sexton was floored.

The only tape he had was of him broadcasting an eight-man high school football game in Chanute, Kansas, between the Erie Red Devils and Oswego Indians, which was played in a park next to a water tower with no press box.

Sexton had to climb a ladder about 65 feet up the tower, duct tape an antenna to the tower and go into a crow’s nest to announce the game.

“I never knew as I was climbing the tower that it would get me an NFL job,” said Sexton. “It’s preposterous to imagine. I was scared to give the Jaguars the tape. I thought they’d laugh at me.

“It was a seminal moment in my life. I just didn’t know it at the time.”

But three days after that tape submission, former Jaguars’ owner Wayne Weaver and Scheurmier decided to make Sexton one of the youngest NFL play-by-play announcers in history.

For the next 19 seasons, until the Jaguars changed their official radio station affiliate to 1010-XL in 2014 and gave his job to Frank Frangie, a grateful Sexton cherished every memory behind the microphone.

Sexton’s good fortune during those early years went beyond his broadcast career. On his first day at WOKV, the first person he met was sales person Jennifer Schuman. They got married four years later, now have three sons and will celebrate their 24th anniversary next month.

For the University of Kansas graduate, coming to Jacksonville just three years out of college paid huge dividends.

“To step on the ground floor of an NFL franchise, every day was a scramble of to-do lists,” said Sexton. “I literally saw a franchise built brick by brick. I consider it a treasure to see all those things and get to know Tom Coughlin at the beginning of what I think is a Hall of Fame career.

“My head was on a swivel during those early years. Tom was more than just a football coach, he was a franchise coach. I learned a lot from him.”

Now a senior correspondent for the Jaguars’ website the past eight years, Sexton is still the team’s broadcaster for preseason games on television. He continues to make public appearances and speaking engagements as a quasi-ambassador. Despite the disappointment of no longer doing radio play-by-play, he remains enthusiastic about his new role and staying connected with the team.

“I found a different place in the organization because I wasn’t ready to leave to do something else,” said Sexton. “My role has been evolving and changing. The community part of this job has been a lot bigger than people expect.

“You’re not just the voice of the Jaguars, you’re a voice for the Jaguars, and I took that seriously.”

TIM BISHKO

Director of Ticket Operations

From the time he was 4 years old and served as a bat boy for the University of Massachusetts baseball team, Bishko knew it was in his DNA to serve in athletics in some capacity.

“It doesn’t shock me I’ve been here this long because I grew up around sports,” Bishko said.

Tom Bishko, his father, was the UMass equipment manager in multiple sports for more than 50 years. His wife, Alice, served as the office manager for several non-athletic departments and accompanied her youngest son on the bus for all those UMass baseball road trips.

Before Tim got his UMass degree in sports management, he needed an internship to complete his requirements. He got one working in the Jacksonville University athletic department, serving as administrative assistant for the late Dennis Violett’s soccer team, working in compliance, marketing and planned team travel for men’s basketball.

“It got me exposed to everything,” said Bishko. “I painted the lines on the field and changed the oil in the [team] vans. It was definitely a good experience to get to do a little bit of everything.”

Since Jacksonville had acquired its expansion team six months before his graduation, he put in an application and got a nothing-available letter from then president David Seldin. But over the summer, a part-time position opened up in the ticket office and manager Steve Greenfield gave Bishko the job.

“I remember working out of the trailers, answering customer calls through phones inside the old Jaguars’ helmets,” said Bishko.

Since then, he has climbed the company ladder. Bishko has gone from ticket specialist, to ticketing accountant, to customer service manager and then into his current job as Director of Ticket Operations since 2001.

He views his career not much differently than what he saw in his father’s working life: being at a place where he enjoys the relationships with fellow employees, likes the job security and the daily routine of being in customer service for an NFL team.

“I worked ticket events as a college student, basketball games, whatever it was and I liked seeing what the ticket manager did,” said Bishko. “It seems like operations people in the league stay pretty constant. You don’t see a lot of turnover. There’s a good core of people in the ticket department and technology department that have been here 10, 12, 15 years.

“Going back to the launch of mobile tickets and away from paper tickets, there was a lot of apprehension, but it went off beautifully. We continue to advance that with Ticketmaster. It’s those kind of successes that keep you going.”

Bishko works closely with longtime employee Jim Scott, senior manager of ticket operations, adding the camaraderie within the department makes coming to work each day not feel like a grind. While the team’s consistent losing the past decade can make ticket sales more difficult, Bishko says the job of trying to accommodate customers who love the NFL remains a driving force.

“It doesn’t seem like 28 years because it’s gone by so quick,” said Bishko. “I don’t look at this as a job. It’s fun.”

MIKE PERKINS

Senior Director of Football Technologies and Special Projects

You want stories about the NFL? Perkins has more of them than a lot of coaches in the league because he’s been at it, well, practically since the day he was born.

Outside of the players and coaches, Perkins takes the Jaguars losing as hard as anybody because he’s seen first-hand how it impacts families.

“You have to be able to handle it,” said Perkins. “This is the only business I know. This business is all about relationships. Period. I cannot preach that enough. Always do right by the organization.

“I’m not the guy who’s great to talk to when there’s something wrong. I care a lot about it.”

As son of the late Ray Perkins, who served consecutive four-year stints as the head coach of the New York Giants, University of Alabama and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Jaguars’ lead man in the video department spent a good portion of his entire adolescence and early adulthood in locker rooms and watching his Dad come under severe criticism.

He had a front-row seat for some of the coolest and most bizarre NFL experiences — like fielding punts from former New York Giant Dave Jennings, to routinely bringing an ashtray to a Giants’ linemen at halftime so he could smoke — but has also seen the downside of being the head coach’s kid.

Perkins, born in 1967 when his father was a wide receiver for the Baltimore Colts, watched on television five miles away from Memorial Stadium when Dad caught a 68-yard TD pass from Johnny Unitas to seal the Colts’ 27-17 win over the Oakland Raiders in the 1970 AFC title game.

From age 7-15, he was a fixture at training camps with the New England Patriots, San Diego Chargers and the Giants, hobnobbing with the likes of Chuck Muncie, Charlie Joiner, Dan Fouts, John Hannah, Jim Plunkett, Sam Cunningham, Lawrence Taylor and Phil Simms. He was Bill Belichick’s ball boy with New York, and cultivated a lifelong friendship with Bill Parcells, two NFL legends who were hired as assistants by Perkins' father.

Nobody in the Jaguars’ building has seen the double-edged sword of the NFL quite like Perkins. While he hasn’t endured the physical pain of playing, he’s well acquainted with the emotional scars it leaves.

“I don’t know if it ever made me uncomfortable. I laugh about it now,” Perkins said. “Probably at the end in New York and with Alabama, I recognized these guys get paid a lot of money and there is a tradeoff. We’re in a tough business.

“My Dad had his life threatened and had to wear a bullet-proof vest during a Giants game. We had Secret Service along the sideline. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been lucky to live the life I’ve lived. I’m very fortunate, but there’s a tradeoff. There’s a lot of forgotten kids out there.”

Perkins still remembers after his father took a job at Mississippi State, then going to his new home and placing his hands in the undried cement of the driveway, but never living in the house. That’s because the Patriots soon hired his father and they moved again, doing it four times in a six-year span.

In fact, one of the reasons Perkins got into being a “video guy” in the NFL was he didn’t want the long hours of being a coach or scout, a field that former Jets GM Dick Steinberg tried to entice him to enter when he was still in college at Alabama.

“I didn’t want to do the scouting thing or coaching thing,” said Perkins, who is married with two sons. “I didn’t want to go that route. I didn’t want to put my eventual family what I went through.”

When Perkins left Syracuse to take the Jaguars’ job as video director, he interviewed with Coughlin and had a clear advantage. He called Parcells, who prepared him for the interview by advising Perkins on the right things to say to Coughlin.

After 45 years in the NFL life, from infancy to well into middle age, Perkins accepts every part of the wild ride. He relishes telling stories about the old players who paved the way for the modern game, as well as that first year with the Jaguars before the expansion team kicked off.

“The great stories are what happened in the trailers,” said Perkins. “We had an office manager who used to walk around and collect money for candy.

"Our mail room guy got arrested and the only phone call they gave him, he called me.”

Gene Frenette Sports columnist at Florida Times-Union, follow him on Twitter @genefrenette

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: These four Jaguars employees have been with the franchise since its start