Sullivan

GLENDALE, Ariz. — It’s been 20 years since the New England Patriots were the Sullivan family business, but former general manager Patrick Sullivan was as happy yesterday to be back at the Super Bowl as he would have been if Billy Sullivan, his late father and franchise founder, still owned the team.

“There is absolutely no sadness, whatsoever,” Patrick said. “The opportunity I had to be part of the Patriots was a great experience. To come to this event in two completely different lives is pretty exciting.”

Pat Sullivan has been in business for himself since 1993, when he started Game Creek Video, which provides television production trucks at sporting events around the country, from Big East basketball games in Providence, to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, to Super Bowl XLII.

He has nine trucks in the Phoenix area this week, six working with the Fox Network, and three with ESPN.

“Everything will be fed around the world through our units,” Sullivan said.

In 1959, Billy Sullivan, who died 10 years ago next month, at the age of 82, used money his wife Mary had hoped would be the down payment on a summer house on Cape Cod to obtain a franchise in the fledging American Football League.

“The Giants were so big in New England when my Dad started out with the Patriots in Boston,” Sullivan said yesterday along the sidelines at University of Phoenix Stadium, where the modern-day Patriots were enjoying Media Day.

“They didn’t think of us as a threat, if they even thought of us at all. Now, to think that Sunday’s Super Bowl game between the Patriots and Giants will be seen by hundreds and millions of people is amazing.

“This,” said Sullivan, gesturing toward the throngs of media surrounding the players, “is what my father envisioned the Super Bowl was going to be.

“He was a visionary. He was on the merger committee, when the NFL and AFL combined (in 1970.) He was on the league’s television committee. He was the first president of NFL Properties, when Pete Rozelle got that business started. He was president of NFL Films.”

Most importantly, Billy Sullivan was the man who kept the Patriots in New England, when he was besieged with better offers from cities offering to build him a stadium and make him a rich man.

The Patriots went to one Super Bowl under Sullivan — they won the AFC championship in 1985 — before he sold the team in the summer of 1988 to Remington razor magnate Victor Kiam, who in turn sold it to James Busch Orthwein in May, 1992.

It was feared that, because the Cardinals had recently moved to Arizona, Orthwein might shift the Patriots to his native St. Louis.

That was forestalled when Robert Kraft bought the team in January, 1994. The Patriots made the playoffs that year, went to the Super Bowl two years later, then won three championships in four years from 2001 through 2004.

Now New England is back in the Super Bowl, seeking a fourth title in seven years.

“What they’ve done has been incredible,” Sullivan said.

“I remember,” he continued, “what Robert Kraft said to my three boys when he gave us a tour of Gillette Stadium just before it opened (in 2002).

“He told them: ‘Whenever you come here, remember that, if it wasn’t for your grandfather, the Patriots wouldn’t be here.’ “

jdonalds@projo.com