It said a lot about Payne and his family that they were willing to take Convey in.
"That's him being a responsible leader," Johnson said.
In 1998, Olsen stayed with the Arenas for a while after he signed with United.
"We just basically did it to help them make the transition from where they were coming from and into D.C. United," Arena said. "We felt that was the best way to do it in the early going. Kevin and Pam just did it because they thought it was the right thing to do. It was a great gesture."
Convey agreed.
"It was so new that it was kind of just figuring it out because this league was so new and everything was especially being so young," Convey said. "There wasn't really anything in place. There were no academies, there was nothing. You either played for the main team or you kind of played on youth clubs, so it was great to be able to do that. And with Kevin kind of thinking ahead, they were the reigning champions. It was a great spot for a young player to come in to be able to learn from a lot of guys. I roomed with Eddie Pope [on the road].
Convey lived with the Paynes for 18 months before he was able to purchase his own place a mile and a half away.
"I’ve been extremely close to their family forever," said Convey, who lives five miles from their Charleston, S.C. residence. "I see them all the time. I just talked to Pam a couple of days ago. I played golf with Kevin here. I have a unique relationship. My children played with his grandchildren because his daughter also lived here for a while."
THE OTHER D.C. UNITED TEAM
Everyone in the U.S. soccer universe is familiar with United's team on the field.
Payne put together a pretty potent front office and he was damn proud of their performance over the years.
In 2006, United earned 10 MLS Executive Award winners. That included Senior Vice President, Stephen Zack (Executive of the Year). Dan Giffin (Top 10 Group Ticket Sales and Top 10 Ticket Sales Revenue), Mike Harloff (Ticket Sales Director of the Year), Doug Hicks (Team Public Relations Award) and Scott Miller (Account Executive of the Year, Top 10 New FSE Ticket Sales, Top 10 Group Ticket Sales Leader, Top 10 Ticket Sales Revenue Leader) all won awards in their respective categories. The D.C. United sales team also earned top honors as the 2006 Sales Team of the Year.
When Mark Washo joined D.C. United as senior director of ticket sales in 1996, he admitted he was inexperienced, but had a mentor.
"He was the leader of the organization and I certainly looked up to him as a role model, as a mentor, as somebody that just commanded respect," said Washo, who is a minority owner and vice chairman of the Flower City Union (National Independent Soccer Association). "He was just a very strong presence as a leader, and so instantly I just gravitated towards that.
"I remember him having this real strong commanding leadership presence, really setting the tone for D.C. United and MLS right out of the gate and wanted to set the standard in the league to be looked upon as like the New York Yankees and Manchester United."
After every championship, pro sports teams hand out rings to the players. United followed suit. Payne took it a step further. He made sure every club employee got one.
“In sports, you win. It's public, and your experience is shared by your teammates,” Trifari said. “Kevin expanded that concept to include everybody in D.C. United. We all got rings. We all got the same rings that the players got. Even the wives got rings. He expanded that concept of the shared experience equally to everybody who worked for D.C. United. That was a very important thing that you don't see anywhere else. Or at least I'm not familiar with it. That was all he's doing. It was central to his philosophy as the head of an organization.”
JUGGLING CHAIN SAWS
After the 2001 season, MLS was teetering on extinction with only 10 teams as it folded both Florida teams - the Miami Fusion and Tampa Bay Mutiny. There were only three primary owners - Philip Anschutz, Lamar Hunt and Robert Kraft. The Anschutz Entertainment Group wound up propping up six teams. Payne was selected as the man in charge to make sure all six clubs - LA Galaxy, Colorado Rapids, Chicago Fire, D.C. United, New York/New Jersey MetroStars and San Jose Earthquakes - ran as smooth as possible.
"I used to call him the czar of soccer because he was running six teams," Trifari said.
Johnson understood Payne's historical importance of keeping pro soccer alive in America.
"He never wavered in his time and his drive to try to make things happen," he said. "We enjoy these wonderful days now. We're tripping over expansion teams. That's not the way it was.”
Running one team is difficult enough, but six?
"Just the fact that he was in that position speaks to his credibility and his leadership and its principles," Agoos said. "He was trusted with essentially running a majority of clubs in the league. It's very similar to juggling chainsaws. There's so much danger and if one slips, the whole thing goes down."
But it didn't.
"He pulled that off magnificently," Steinbrecher said.
"He obviously did something right because the league has grown to where it's at," Sarachan said.
Added Wilt: "A lot of people like to define MLS as pre-Beckham and post Beckham and that's understandable. But you can also divide it by pre-contraction and post-contraction."
Still, old allegiances died hard. While Payne played it fair with all six teams, "he never stopped bleeding black and red," Johnson said.
"I still remember a game. We either lost or tied. It was against Chicago at North Central College," he added. "We're kind of like outside the makeshift locker room they had there, and he is just still not over the loss. I'm thinking he probably should be more neutral because just across the parking lot are the Chicago Fire guys."
SOME YOUNG IDEAS
When Payne was first approached about joining US Club Soccer as its CEO and executive director in 2015 after he was fired as Toronto FC president, he wasn't exactly jumping for joy.
"I believe his first reaction when he was approached about potentially working in youth soccer and with US Club Soccer was 'I'd rather stick a pencil in my eye,' " said US Club Soccer Chief Operating Officer Greg Hutton. "So much so that he held on to that. At his retirement, we talked about kind of getting him a pencil on the wall as a retirement present. We missed that opportunity, but we joked about it quite a bit."
Payne joined the organization and embraced the youth game during his seven years with the organization. He moved his family to its headquarters in Charleston, S.C.
"The immediate impact he made is simply bringing a level of gravitas to the organization," said Mike Cullina, who succeeded Payne as CEO. "I don't want to say legitimizing it because Bill Sage and his team did a great job of that on their own, but certainly elevating its importance to the landscape and what it meant to soccer in general. His [Payne's] previous success in sports certainly brought some highlights to US Club Soccer -- that somebody of that stature was interested in bringing some of his skill sets to the youth game was pretty important."
Payne's cornerstone achievement with US Club Soccer was establishing Players First, a philosophy and holistic club soccer experience for parents and players that has emphasized the development of each individual to his or her full potential and has helped parents make better choices about where their children should play.
"He immediately had an emphasis on player health and safety and really empowered us and staff to embrace that and move forward pretty quickly with some initiatives," Hutton said. "Things like increasing our background screening standard and being able to enhance what we've already done in that space. That really guided I think his tenure with US Club Soccer."
HIS SOCCER FAMILY TREE
Payne gave so many front office individuals their start or just helped them in their careers.
In 1991, John Guppy was a graduate student who wanted to be a part of the 1994 World Cup. He interviewed to do a research project for Soccer USA Partners.
"Everyone needs a break in life, and Kevin gave me a career defining one in New York," Guppy wrote on his Linkedin page. "Kevin became my mentor and constantly pushed me to take on new roles and responsibilities."
And up the ladder Guppy went. He was an executive vice president with the MetroStars and eventually Chicago Fire president, due to Payne's recommendation.
"I personally gleaned so many little insights from watching and listening to Kevin," Guppy also wrote. Among those insights were "Believe in the game," "Authenticity above all else," "Harbor little patience for excuses," "Success requires clear focus," and "Loyalty matters."
"These are just a few of the many guiding thoughts I have taken straight from the Kevin Payne playbook," Guppy added.
"To me, Kevin was the OG soccer marketing guy.' "
Johnson forever will be grateful to Payne, who gave him a job to be the play-by-play announcer for United games when he was doing sideline reporting for the Washington Capitals.
"He knew that I had done U.S. Youth Cup finals and I had done college soccer and this and that," Johnson said. "So he appreciated that I paid dues. He didn't want, for lack of a better way of saying it, somebody that didn't understand the game or the sport doing his team's games."
If someone ever put together a soccer family tree that Payne had hired, touched, influenced or impacted, it just might break the internet.
"The tree on and off the field has got a lot of branches," Gulati said.
"It's tremendous," Pope said. "They're still using what they learned from those early days to help them nowadays. It is insane when you think about it. And then he came up to U.S. Club Soccer. It was like now he's influencing another young generation. It's almost overwhelming to think about."
Players who became coaches?
Jesse Marsch (Leeds United), Curt Onalfo (New England Revolution assistant), Richie Williams (New York Red Bulls, Revs assistant), Olsen (Houston Dynamo) and Harkes (Greenville Triumph, USL League One)
Players in the front office?
Pat Onstad is general manager of the Houston Dynamo. Pope is the chief sporting officer of Carolina Core FC, which will make its MLS Next Pro debut in 2024.
John Guppy, another Payne disciple, the President & Founder, Gilt Edge Soccer Marketing LLC. and Washo.
Public relations and communications directors who have moved on include Michael Kammarman (U.S. Men's National Team Director of Communications), Rick Lawes (MLS media consultant) and Doug Hicks.
That is just a very short list of the Kevin Payne soccer family tree.
WEARING HIS PASSION ON HIS SLEEVE
Passion is one of the words most often used to describe him. Passion about soccer, about his family, and just about everything in his life.
"I don't think I've ever met anyone who's passionate about the sport as Kevin," Arena said.
"Kevin didn't do anything he wasn't passionate about it," Cullina said. "Whether it was getting an ice cream cone or talking about his time at D.C. United, he had the same veins often his neck and just in a good way. He didn't have anything that he wasn't passionate about."
Payne's daughter Rebecca explained his passion on Kevin's Facebook page after he passed away.
"I'd challenge you to find somebody who operated daily with the passion of KP. If any of his qualities made him somewhat polarizing, it was his passion. It drove him, and it was intense. In certain situations, it could rub people the wrong way. But he was direct, and he was focused, and he didn't speak without the full weight of his beliefs behind his words."
Wilt understood that Payne could rub people the wrong way.
"People who didn't know Kevin well, I think sometimes we'd see some of his outgoing qualities as negatives as a bit of arrogance," he said. "But the thing is, it's not bragging if you can do it, right? Kevin backed up his talk. And he was knowledgeable. He had the experience. He had good reason to be opinionated. He'd been through the battles he'd lived it, and he's a smart guy."
Hutton: "Everybody knows that Kevin's passionate," he said. "It doesn't take long to recognize that. I didn't fully realize the extent of it until I heard him describe his opinion of soy sauce in the level of detail."
Rebecca wrote about the things that her father loved in life.
"Of course, of his people, but also Sunkist, bagels, Bruce Springsteen, the New York Rangers, Giants and Mets. Of dogs, and horses, golf, skiing and cycling. Of traveling the globe only to find a classic cheeseburger to eat wherever he went."
While the driving force of D.C. United and a serious individual, Payne knew when to laugh and enjoy himself.
"It wasn't after a loss," Olsen said. "That was not a time to laugh with Kevin. He was so invested in the results and winning. And not just for not for him but for the community. He was fiery and he just did not accept losing. He hated to lose.
"He used to ask all the college kids: 'Do you hate losing or do you love winning?' And the correct answer to him every time was that they hate losing. It was a big mark against that college kid if they said they love winning. That was how he saw the game. That's how he lived his life. I think that was contagious."
Payne was a straight shooter, Guppy remembered.
"During the early years of MLS, when a reporter asked 'What’s the one thing MLS needs to do to take the game to the next level? His answer, “The one thing MLS needs to do to take the game to the next level is to stop looking for the one thing we need to do to take the game to the next level.'
"For sure, his direct style rubbed some people the wrong way, but that was Kevin – never one to sugarcoat his opinions."
That included the media.
"He was not afraid to pick up the phone and have a conversation with a media member that didn't reflect D.C. United in the right way and complain when we weren't covered in the same way that maybe the Capitals or the Redskins were being covered," Washo said. "I remember him being borderline antagonistic, very, very bold. I know he would rub some people the wrong way. But he was out there really fighting for relevance ... that we belonged on the same playing field as all the other professional teams at the time."
FAMILY MAN
Payne talked about his family a lot. He was very proud of his daughters' accomplishments.
He was the elder of another family as well - D.C. United.
When Nicole Megaloudis died in a car accident at the age of 19 in 2004, the Payne family, along with the Arena family were there to help out Rongen, who was Nicole's stepfather.
"From a personal standpoint, the Payne family and Arena family were there not for weeks but for years to come," Rongen said. "Their daughters were close to our children. His wife, Kevin, Bruce and Phyllis - they were there for us throughout whatever was needed. He always had time and he was always willing to help with emotional stress, whatever it might have been. Those are little things that you don't forget and that's why I can call him a close friend."
It shouldn't come as a surprise that Kevin and Pam Payne hosted team barbeques and parties at their northern Virginia house or at their beach house.
"That's not normal per se, especially nowadays in professional sports, to have a very family environment where everybody helped each other," Convey said. "Kevin spearheaded that with a lot of help, from Pam behind the scenes, organizing everything with the wives and the kids setting up the barbecues. We had a really good family environment there."
Added Olsen: "It really seemed like a happy moment for him to and he was doing team events for everybody. He just loved that family atmosphere to have all the players over at his house for their lake house."
BEST FRIENDS
Arena and Payne became best friends.
"There were so many really great things in our relationship and even going in 10 or 15 years in all different directions, we still had that closeness. Even when we didn't see each other on a regular basis," Arena said.
Their friendship wasn't lost on the players.
"Bruce and Kevin always had a lot of good banter back and forth. On the bus, airport, airplane," Pope said. "Those are always a lot of fun to listen to them kind of bust each other's chops, going back and forth and Kevin giving just as good as he was getting from Bruce and Bruce is no slouch at that. So I think those moments were always light and fun. And I could genuinely tell that Bruce really appreciated having a friend, although they worked together, but a real friend."
