Rumors were swirling early in 2014 that the Tennessee Titans were for sale.
Owner Bud Adams had died less than a year earlier, and as Mike Mularkey, then the Titans’ tight ends coach, walked off the field, he overheard a couple players joke that his young assistant tight ends coach, Arthur Smith, should have his father buy the team.
Mularkey, six or seven months into his job at the time, was perplexed.
“Finally, I just said, just in passing, ‘Who’s your dad?’” Mularkey recalled.
Smith, now the Titans offensive coordinator and soon to be one of the hottest head coaching candidates on the market, is the son of FedEx founder and CEO Frederick Smith.