Power Forward: From Political Heat to a Career on Ice
June 25, 2025
- Author
- Mark Johnson
Leaders in team sports pursue a collaborative enterprise by wiring together disparate pieces: players, coaches, training, money, partners. Brian Fork's career is bookended by the extremes of that world.
He graduated in 2001 from Davidson College, where he played fullback during an undefeated senior fall season for the Wildcats’ football team. In spring, the team’s running backs coach left for another job, and the other coaches asked Fork to step in as a student coach until he graduated in May. That turned into a job offer for the next year. Fork deferred law school and stayed at the college for an $11,000 salary and a team with a markedly smaller budget and staff than today.
On game weekends, he worked from Saturday morning to Sunday evening, usually without sleep. He coached through Saturday’s game, spent all night reviewing and compiling video clips in Baker Sports Complex, presented them on Sunday, then used them to plan the next week’s practices and game.
Today, Fork still works out of a stadium but from a top floor office in Raleigh’s Lenovo Center with an expansive view of a woodsy, western swath of North Carolina’s capital. He is CEO of the National Hockey League’s Carolina Hurricanes, a $150 million-a-year enterprise with a Stanley Cup in the trophy case and 218 employees among the team and arena staff.
His schedule on a game day this year included welcoming N.C. State University’s new basketball coach, Will Wade, whose team plays in the Lenovo Center, which Fork’s company operates. He also talked with government leaders in Raleigh about plans for an $800 million village of shops, restaurants, offices, apartments and a 4,300-seat music venue around the hockey arena. Then, he joined a National Hockey League Zoom call on the upcoming playoffs.
As face-off time neared, he escorted a state legislator and friends down to the tunnel to watch the ’Canes emerge from the locker room. The players gave gloved fist bumps to fans along the ropeline and skated on to the ice to the cheers of a sellout crowd and the thump of Scorpions’ “Rock You Like a Hurricane.” Upstairs later, Fork walked across a concourse dotted by team shops and an Alpaca Peruvian Chicken stand, interrupted along the way by a season ticket holder with a gentle parking gripe. As the ’Canes battled Nashville’s Predators down below, Fork dropped by the suites of major sponsors to greet executives and guests from companies such as Duke Energy and steel manufacturer NUCOR, whose logo adorns the ’Canes’ jerseys.
Fork took another visitor down to watch a few minutes of the game right outside the protective glass around the rink. The ice creates the chill of a walk-in refrigerator. Two players collided against the wall and glass with a crunching thud. Moments later, the puck smacked the wall so loud it seemed sure to come splintering through. Heading back upstairs, Fork greeted the Hurricanes’ “Ice Crew,” who were darting on to the ice in black warmups, armed with their three-footwide shovels.
In 12 hours, Fork interacted with key figures in the corporate world, local government, NCAA athletics, state politics and the NHL, as well as fans and the employees who speed skate down the rink to clear piles of ice shavings.
“I try to be the one person,” Fork says, “who knows everything that’s happening in the company.”
The Carolina Hurricanes became a North Carolina franchise in 1997. Fans, known as Caniacs, pack the stands in Raleigh’s Lenovo Center.
Piece by Piece, Play by Play
Broughton High School, near downtown Raleigh, sits less than five miles from the Lenovo Center. The castle-like Broughton, named for 19th century education advocate Needham Broughton, is the city’s oldest high school. A string of governors’ children have attended over the decades. The school was segregated until 1961, and both Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama later spoke there. The Broughton Capitals football team owns a robust history, including five state championships, the last in 1970. Fork played quarterback in 1995 and 1996 — on each play, he had to know what every teammate was doing while three to nine defensive players charged at him, determined to pummel him to the ground.
“That was an experience,” he says, “that definitely prepared me for a lot.”
His college choice, initially, was driven by football. He played briefly at Furman University, then N.C. State, before an injury took him out of the game. Looking to transfer, he knew of Davidson as a basketball school and, though a football guy, was drawn to the small and tough classes, strong community and opportunities in athletics. His first drive there wound from I-85 through rural roads: “You basically drove through farms.”
He thought the college was isolated until seeing the neighboring town of Huntersville and its big box national retailers. The more lasting surprise, and a gift, of Davidson were the close friends he developed, and “learning about where they’re from and how that shaped their lives.” His roommates across his four years included guys from Hawaii, Texas and Florida.
Fork (#10) played fullback for the Wildcats. As a co-founder of the Gridiron Club, he’s bolstered support for Davidson’s football program.
During ninth grade at Broughton, Fork took a class on economic, legal and political systems. It was the first time he focused on the differences between Republicans and Democrats, and he was drawn to the former. He followed elections and political issues, so political science was a natural fit as a major at Davidson.
My two interests are sports and politics, in that order.
CEO, Carolina Hurricanes
American politics expert Susan Roberts remains a revered professor, and Fork still visits when in town. Roberts says he was neither shy nor strident about his conservative politics. He knew where he stood and wasn’t afraid to have his views challenged. He occasionally and politely would suggest in class that a discussion include a particular, conservative element of an issue, she says.
“He didn’t just have opinions. He assembled facts and made an argument,” Roberts says, “and he always was aware that there were three sides to an issue: one side, the other and the middle.”
Another memorable class was a seminar on southern politics with visiting professor Ferrel Guillory, from UNC. Early one Friday morning, Guillory woke Fork with a phone call.
“He said, ‘I’m going to have lunch in Davidson today with Jim Holshouser and Jim Martin,’” Fork says, referring to the Davidson alums who were then the only Republicans elected Governor of North Carolina in the nearly 150 years that followed the Civil War. Fork says Guillory quickly added: “Do you want to go?”
Fork includes that meal among the extraordinary opportunities he had at Davidson. He thrived in a constitutional law class taught in a law school format. During his Davidson in Washington program, he interned in Sen. Jesse Helms’s office, surrounded by the fast pace and political electricity of Capitol Hill. And he made a quick observation.
“Everybody around me had a cool job,” he says, “and the thing they had in common was a law degree.”
Not Your Usual Client
North Carolina’s state legislature is the most powerful of the state’s three branches of government. From the end of the Civil War until the early 21st century, the Tarheel State was a one-party operation. Democrats controlled the legislature and the Governor’s office, except for the combined dozen years when Holshouser and Martin served during the 1970s and 1980s.
Republicans won a majority in the legislature in 2010 and, two years later, captured the governor’s office with former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory. While the political parties flipped, the longstanding friction between the executive and legislative branches remained. Halfway through his term, McCrory took the extraordinary step of hiring lawyers to sue the legislature. The speaker of the House and president pro tem of the Senate had made appointments to state commissions that McCrory argued were his to fill. The two legislative leaders lawyered up in response. The firm they hired turned to one of their veteran partners: Brian Fork. Months earlier, in a commercial lending case, he had crafted an argument that swayed the N.C. Supreme Court to overturn rulings by a superior court and the state Court of Appeals, and he had built relationships with the Senate president pro tem’s office.
Back at the end of his coaching year at Davidson, Fork had faced a choice.
“He wasn’t sure if he wanted to be a lawyer or a football coach,” says classmate and teammate Adam Stockstill, now a portfolio specialist at an investment firm.
Fork decided college coaching allowed too little control over where he would work. He went to law school at UNC, as planned. The governor vs. legislature case brought the exciting complexity he sought when he pursued law instead of touchdowns. He had to build an argument by sorting out the law, the evidence, the state constitution and court decisions as far back as the late 19th century, while being mindful of how it all reflected on his powerful clients.
The case’s high stakes politics would draw the spotlight, and taking sides would attract the attention of the law firm’s other clients — and could make some of them uncomfortable, says then-colleague Lee Hogewood. Fork, he says, tended to all external and internal touchpoints to ensure the firm’s reputation was well-managed and publicly enhanced.
Fork has a squared-away and slightly dimpled appearance, graying but still trim as he nears 50 — the image you might get if you googled “former athlete now coaching his kids’ baseball teams.” He wears dark suits and speaks in even tones, as if he never heard of swagger.
“He is remarkably calm under pressure, and I’m not,” says Hogewood. “So, he’s a great person to have around when things start getting wild. He would kind of modulate folks. He doesn’t say, ‘Calm down.’ It’s just his demeanor.”
The Chamber
The N.C. Supreme Court sided with McCrory in the lawsuit, but Fork’s work impressed Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger and his team. When they went looking for a new legislative counsel a few years later, they gauged Fork’s interest. He declined initially, but after another entreaty and a blessing from his firm, moved over to the Senate.
The N.C. Legislative Building brims with peculiarities. It has a distinct Asian pagoda appearance and is composed of a disorienting quartet of interior courtyards and the House and Senate chambers. The Senate floor is a rich, red carpet with gold stars beneath 50 dark wood desks for the senators. A gold, state seal, around 6-feet in diameter, hangs behind the presiding officer’s chair. During session, senators must be recognized by whoever presides as Senate president. Their remarks always begin with “Mr. President…” and are peppered with formal phrases such as “Will the Senator yield?”
“Sometimes even folks who get elected don’t understand the politics of an issue,” Berger says. “Brian got to the point with me and, I think, everybody else that, not only did we trust his legal judgment and his legislative analysis, but also his political judgment.”
Two years later, as Fork planned to return to the law firm, Berger’s chief of staff left, and Fork accepted the job — one of the most difficult in North Carolina state government. The role includes unifying approximately 30 senators from the majority party behind policy proposals over which any number of them may squabble.
“The chief of staff, at least in the senate, has to know everything that’s going on,” Berger says. “He or she has to know what’s happening with all of the bills that are out there, what’s on my mind, what’s on the minds of other members, what our strengths and weaknesses are. His job is to make things work.”
Sen. Jay Chaudhuri, of Raleigh, is the No. 2-ranking Democrat in the Senate and a fellow Davidson alum. He said Fork’s tenure as chief of staff meant managing countless interests coming at him in a volatile and polarized political environment.
“He commanded a lot of respect from the Senate Democratic caucus for being forthcoming, providing predictability with the voting schedule,” Chaudhuri says, “and, when the opportunity presented itself, being open-minded to ideas that Democrats had.”
Classmates, friends and colleagues at different points in Fork’s life remark that, as in Roberts’ class, he did not avoid expressing his political views but he didn’t push them. The self-direction he developed in that ninth-grade course played a role in placing him next to the top of political power in his home state.
“I was drawn to the historical idea that democratic government was only created to provide the outline of a society that allows people to live the lives they want,” Fork says, “to pursue their own goals and their own destiny. I enjoy thinking about the question of why government exists, which lead me to the tenants of personal responsibility and limited government, more closely associated with the Republican party.”
The strategic challenge, as much as the intellectual, intrigued Fork, and the greatest task in his time in the N.C. Senate was, despite the mundane sound to it, the budget. The state budget is the single biggest and most important thing the legislature does. Fork was the Senate’s point person with the House leadership and the Governor’s office in working out their often-competing needs and wants. The budget settles issues such as school funding, roads, Medicaid and a host of other elements that touch the daily lives of millions of people. During Fork’s time, that included carbon reduction and reopening schools after the pandemic — all of which drew their share of critics.
“It was a great challenge to cut through the rhetoric and get things done,” he says. “Those negotiations are where I learned the most.”
An Inch of Ice
Sports always surpassed politics among Fork’s interests. When he became the Hurricanes’ CEO, the deal included flexibility to continue coaching his kids’ teams. Friends say that watching Davidson or his hometown N.C. State teams are the few moments when he sheds his seemingly unshakable calm. He and Stockstill saw firsthand the Davidson football program’s need for more financial support and, as alums, founded the Gridiron Club, along with Wes Thorton ’99. They began in 2008 with a pre-game tailgate and one portable grill. In the years since, the group has raised nearly $8 million.
“What Brian and Adam did was incredible,” says Chris Clunie ’06, vice president and director of athletics, at Davidson. “They galvanized a fan base that desperately needed support. They built a foundation, and they were able to create a sense of shared ownership and investment in the football program that flourished and continues today in a major way.”
Sports passion nicely merged with career when the Hurricanes opportunity arose. The job wove together the skillsets Fork assembled from Davidson classrooms, playing football, coaching, practicing law and managing a legislative chamber. Running the Hurricanes demands the strategy and analysis to lead an enormous entertainment business paired with the political smarts and relationship skills to build corporate, civic and government partnerships.
Adrienne Cole, president of the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, got to know Fork when he worked in the Senate. Her organization leads economic development for Raleigh and surrounding Wake County and works to help solve transportation and public services challenges.
He is one of those leaders who, not only shows up, but shows up ready to engage for the Hurricanes and for the community.
President, Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce
Cole was in a corporate suite at a Hurricanes game not long ago with corporate leaders, and Fork was working the room full of current or prospective sponsors. A Raleigh Chamber executive was there with his daughter, who was on a basketball team with Fork’s daughter and that Fork coached years earlier. When he spotted her, he ditched the C-suite crowd.
“He just lit up,” Cole says. “He was so excited to see her and catch up with her. He brings 100 percent commitment to everything.”
There is a touch of nostalgia to Fork’s life now. He lives on the same street in Raleigh where he grew up, and his kids go to the schools he attended. From Davidson College football to the Hurricanes and his kids’ teams, he has gathered different people and perspectives collaborating toward a common effort. Hogewood, Fork’s former law partner and self-described political “leftie as it gets,” says he relishes that quality in his relationship with Fork — and sees it missing elsewhere.
“The ability to compromise has been lost,” he says. “Brian and I could not disagree more about political matters, and yet we’ve always been very good friends and colleagues. If more of our society’s political discussions could be like the ones Brian and I have had over the years, we’d all be in a better place.”
This article was originally published in the Spring/Summer 2025 print issue of the Davidson Journal Magazine; for more, please see the Davidson Journal section of our website.
