Arkansas insurance man and sports media guru Andrew Meadors can transition between the subjects of insurance and sports like one of his idols, Muhammed Ali, used to float around and then through opponents in the ring.
Seamlessly weaving, say, the challenges imposed by COVID and his journey to a belt with Jermain Taylor, Meadors is at home with either subject. These days, he’s at home as the CEO of the Arkansas and Tennessee markets for the Sunstar Insurance Group, an opportunity that found him not long after he sold his interest in Little Rock’s venerable Meadors, Adams & Lee firm to partner Roberts Lee.
Insurance aside, Meadors is something of an Arkansas sports avatar, if not our own Forrest Gump — among other noteworthy exploits, he served as the business manager for Taylor, the former undisputed middleweight champ from Little Rock; as president of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame (ASHOF) and Little Rock’s Major Sports Association (MSA); for a decade as statistician for beloved Voice of the Razorbacks, Paul Eells; and he held the ladder in Charlotte as Nolan Richardson cut the net after the Hogs beat Duke for the ’94 title.
Through his work in sports media and connections in the insurance business, Meadors has been to 10 Super Bowls and 14 Finals Fours. Plus, he saw the Michael Jordan-led Dream Team play twice, in person, at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, and watched — from the front of the gallery, no less — as Tiger Woods chipped in on the first playoff hole to win his fourth Masters in 2005.
Not a bad run.
***
But it’s insurance that pays the bills, and Sunstar has been in growth mode since Meadors joined its executive team in 2017. Founded in 2012 by Memphis insurance executive Casey Bowlin, who had previously led the insurance group for Regions Bank, Sunstar has built a portfolio of firms across the region. Its current, four-state footprint resembles an inverted trapezium with Little Rock, Memphis, St. Louis and Wichita as the corners.
Its growth strategy entails majority stake in willing, successful independent agencies with at least $1 million in commission revenue. Sunstar is ranked by Insurance Journal as the 44th largest independent insurance agency in the country with roughly $500 million in annual premiums; it’s been a member of the top 100 for five consecutive years.
Once a local agency is acquired, its principals and key personnel stay on as Sunstar employees, of which there currently are roughly 400. Some acquired firms maintain their local identity; others become Sunstar hub offices. Sunstar is backed by global giant Brown Brothers Harriman Capital Partners, but several top employees including Meadors and Bowlin have ownership stakes. Management of the group is provided by an overall executive committee on which Meadors sits.
Arkansas was a part of this growth strategy early on; its second acquisition (of 20 overall so far) came in 2012 with the First Delta agency in West Helena, known throughout the Delta for its expertise in agriculture.
Other Arkansas acquisitions include the former Town and Country agency in Jonesboro, a staple of the northeast Arkansas community that was a part of Stephens Inc.’s insurance division prior to the Sunstar deal, and the Matson agency in Little Rock, in 2018; the Todd agency in Little Rock in 2019; and this year, the Farris agency in Springdale, one of Northwest Arkansas’ largest.
Sunstar’s entrepreneurial DNA suits Meadors just fine, and he promises more Arkansas deals in 2021 including a big one in NEA. When he sold his interest in Meadors, Adams & Lee in 2016, Meadors walked away from a firm founded in 1909 that his father, Allan Meadors, had built into one of the state’s most prominent. But while he was ready for a change, he wasn’t ready simply to cash out.
“I had the confidence in myself to know that the next adventure would come,” Meadors told Arkansas Money & Politics. “I took five months, gathered myself, looked at all the different options and cast a wide net for opportunities. I didn’t see retirement for myself at age 53. I wasn’t ready for that.”
Five months after the deal with Lee, Bowlin came calling. Meadors thinks the time is right for the Sunstar model. The pandemic, potential tax law changes to capital gains… “There are a lot of different factors at work that could be motivating folks to look at finding new partners,” Meadors said. Insurance is built on risk, of course, but the Sunstar model was built to serve as something like insurance for local agency owners, he noted.
The pandemic has impacted all lines of business, and insurers aren’t collecting premiums from many businesses wiped out by COVID. Following the 2002 SARS outbreak, the industry adopted exclusions releasing insurers from responsibility for losses resulting from virus or bacteria.
Meadors believes the industry should adopt something similar to the federal Terrorism Risk Insurance Program in which restaurant owners, for example, could check a box for virus pandemic coverage. It would result in higher premiums, of course, but also would guarantee coverage for their businesses in the event something like COVID-19 were to happen again.
“In the world of insurance, we deal with services evolving in an inelastic demand curve. People still have to have their insurance.”
***
Like many boys growing up in Arkansas, Meadors gravitated to sports at an early age. He followed the Hogs and even played varsity basketball at Little Rock’s Catholic High School. (Meadors credits Catholic High and Father George Tribou, its longtime former principal, as an “absolute foundation.”)
Meadors followed his older siblings to Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where he studied business. He was connected to the sports media industry by a fraternity brother, who arranged for Meadors to meet a CBS Sports executive in town for an upcoming game between Pony Express-era SMU and Texas A&M. (In the mid- to late ‘80s, the old Southwest Conference remained a major player and SMU-A&M a bigger deal than it would be today.) Meadors got to work the game as a production assistant, and “things just took off from there.” He’d work other big sporting events in Texas and following graduation, went to work for what was then the CBS affiliate in Dallas, KDFW, selling commercial spots.
In 1987, “Dad called me home,” and Meadors joined the family firm. (His brother, Dr. Fred Meadors, is a cardiovascular surgeon at CHI St. Vincent in Little Rock, and his sister, Chase Meadors Stover, lives in West Virginia.) Utilizing connections he’d made in Dallas, Meadors moonlighted as an independent contractor for CBS and ABC while building his insurance business.
He’d serve as a jack-of-all-trades, working stats or providing in-game research. Meadors said it was pretty special to come up with a nugget of research related to a specific play in a game and then see it included on the broadcast. He’d also hold the sound dish on the field or fill in as the driver for the broadcast teams working the game. His stages included NCAA tournament games, college bowl games, Monday Night Football, Dallas Mavericks playoff games, PGA golf tournaments and NASCAR.
While still a student at SMU, Meadors worked the 1984 Daytona Firecracker 400, which was won by Richard Petty and included President Ronald Reagan in attendance. Meadors and a pair of trusty binoculars had one job that day.
“My entire job for ABC on race day was to tap Jim Lampley on the shoulder when I saw Air Force One landing,” Meadors said. “When I did, he didn’t even look over. He just said, ‘And now, to my right, I see Air Force One carrying President Ronald Reagan; he will be here shortly.’
“That was it. So cool. I saw Reagan and Petty together later. Heady stuff for a 20-year-old.”
But before the commander-in-chief arrived in Florida, Meadors had an encounter with the Secret Service. Hungover, he had crashed on a suite couch the night before the race, only to be roused by a growling, Secret Service-employed German Shepherd. His couch just happened to be a planned landing spot for the president later that day.
“I talked my way out of it, and they let me go,” Meadors assured.
The road’s been filled with iconic moments. One special memory is of working the UNLV-Duke national championship basketball game in 1990. In the tunnel leading to the court before the game started, Meadors was nearby as legendary CBS broadcaster James Brown put his arm around UNLV star Larry Johnson and convinced him not to retaliate against Duke fans who were being verbally abusive.
Brown talked him down, and Johnson and his Runnin’ Rebel teammates would go on to crush the Blue Devils by 30, the largest margin of defeat ever in an NCAA championship game.
In 1993, Meadors was in the owner’s box in Dallas to witness Leon Lett’s infamous Thanksgiving Day miscue that enabled the Dolphins to kick a last second field goal to beat the Cowboys. Meadors was in Jerry Jones’ box because his best friend growing up in Little Rock was none other than Shy Anderson, who married Jones’ daughter, Charlotte. Meadors got to see all three Dallas 1990s Super Bowl wins as part of the Jones entourage.
Earlier in 1993, Meadors was one row behind the Michigan team bench in New Orleans for one of college basketball’s most iconic moments as the Wolverines faced North Carolina for the national championship. He watched as Chris Webber, one of the college game’s all-time greats, called a late timeout that Michigan didn’t have, resulting in a technical foul and enabling the Tar Heels to escape with a win.
“Back in the locker room area, it was amazing to watch the sheer horror, shock and anger…”
And in contrast to that agony of defeat, Meadors experienced the thrill of victory the following April at the Final Four in Charlotte that crowned the Hogs national champs. In addition to holding the ladder as the nets were cut, Meadors called the Hogs with players, coaches and fans post-game in the team hotel lobby.
Back in Arkansas, Meadors worked for a decade as a statistician in the booth for Razorback football, and he served as president of the ASHOF and MSA. He still serves on the board of the Hall. He also was a regular contributor in the ‘90s to Drivetime Sports on the The Buzz in Central Arkansas, just as sports radio was establishing itself as a strong media presence in the state.
And through the MSA, Meadors helped raise funds to get Ozell Nelson, Taylor’s longtime trainer, to the Sydney Olympics in 2002. After Taylor won gold and prepared to embark on a pro career, Taylor and his team remembered Meadors for his support and invited him to sign on as the future champ’s business manager. (Stephens Sports Management, Meadors noted, had opted not to add “the unseamly” sport of boxing to its portfolio.)
Meadors remembers wining and dining in Atlantic City, almost as if it were a dream, with giants of the boxing game such as Bob Arum and Don King. Of Taylor, Meadors said, “I knew he had the ‘it’ factor. He could be the next Sugar Ray Leonard.” And in 2005, Taylor became the undisputed world middleweight champ.
Through Taylor, Meadors and his wife, Susan, got to know iconic rocker Gene Simmons of Kiss, also a big boxing fan. Simmons thought Taylor possessed the ‘it’ factor as well. And turns out, Kiss had stayed at a hotel owned by Susan’s mom when the band played the Pine Bluff Convention Center in the early ‘80s. Simmons invited a thrilled young Susan to join him for breakfast the morning after the show. During the meal, he corrected her by explaining that, “Y’all is not a word in the English language.”
Meadors explained, “He was an English teacher in Detroit before Kiss.” When Susan reminded Simmons of the story once they reconnected through Taylor, the musician/promoter/salesman laughed and said, “That sounds exactly like something I would have said.”
Taylor’s ascent to the top of the boxing world and getting to witness Tiger’s most iconic moment at Augusta, made 2005 Meadors’ favorite sports year. Forrest Gump, indeed.
***
For Meadors, insurance boils down to “sifting through the suspects and the prospects,” and at Sunstar, quite simply, to matchmaking — deciphering the actual needs of a community and bringing the right people together at the right time. “That’s the fun part of our job.”
His proudest professional moment came in 1999 when Meadors got to marry his passions — he was awarded the insurance business for what was then the brand-new Alltel Arena (Simmons Bank Arena, these days). At $65 million, it represented the largest-ever builders risk policy in the state at the time.
“I just went crazy to research the markets, get the best price, get the best premium,” Meadors said. “Even though I was a young guy back then, I learned quickly that I could kind of bind my passion for sports and insurance and entertainment all together. And that really helped me in my career.
One sports-related bucket list item remains unchecked, however. Meadors wants to attend a British Open.
Don’t bet against him doing so.
Arkansas insurance man and sports media guru Andrew Meadors can transition between the subjects of insurance and sports like one of his idols, Muhammed Ali, used to float around and then through opponents in the ring.
Seamlessly weaving, say, the challenges imposed by COVID-19 and his journey to a belt with Jermain Taylor, Meadors is at home with either subject. These days, he’s at home as the CEO of the Arkansas and Tennessee markets for the Sunstar Insurance Group, an opportunity that found him not long after he sold his interest in Little Rock’s venerable Meadors, Adams & Lee firm to partner Roberts Lee.
1987 — Meadors, 24 and just called “home,” with firm partners Jimmy Adams and Allan Meadors, his dad.
Insurance aside, Meadors is something of an Arkansas sports avatar, if not our own Forrest Gump. Among other noteworthy exploits, he served as the business manager for Taylor, the former undisputed middleweight champ from Little Rock; as president of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame (ASHOF) and Little Rock’s Major Sports Association (MSA); for a decade as statistician for beloved Voice of the Razorbacks Basketball Coach, Paul Eells; and he held the ladder in Charlotte as Nolan Richardson cut the net after the Hogs beat Duke for the ’94 title.
Through his work in sports media and connections in the insurance business, Meadors has been to 10 Super Bowls and 14 Finals Fours. Plus, he saw the Michael Jordan-led Dream Team play twice, in person, at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, and watched — from the front of the gallery, no less — as Tiger Woods chipped in on the first playoff hole to win his fourth Masters in 2005.
Not a bad run.
* * * * * * * * *
But it’s insurance that pays the bills, and Sunstar has been in growth mode since Meadors joined its executive team in 2017. Founded in 2012 by Memphis insurance executive Casey Bowlin, who had previously led the insurance group for Regions Bank, Sunstar has built a portfolio of firms across the region. Its current, four-state footprint resembles an inverted trapezium with Little Rock, Memphis, St. Louis and Wichita as the corners.
Its growth strategy entails majority stake in willing, successful independent agencies with at least $1 million in commission revenue. Sunstar is ranked by Insurance Journal as the 44th largest independent insurance agency in the country with roughly $500 million in annual premiums; it’s been a member of the top 100 for five consecutive years.
Once a local agency is acquired, its principals and key personnel stay on as Sunstar employees, of which there currently are roughly 400. Some acquired firms maintain their local identity; others become Sunstar hub offices. Sunstar is backed by global giant Brown Brothers Harriman Capital Partners, but several top employees, including Meadors and Bowlin, have ownership stakes. Management of the group is provided by an overall executive committee on which Meadors sits.
Meadors thinks the time is right for the Sunstar model. (Photo by Jamison Mosley)
Arkansas was a part of this growth strategy early on; Sunstar’s second acquisition (of 20 overall so far) came in 2012 with the First Delta agency in West Helena, known throughout the Delta for its expertise in agriculture.
Other Arkansas acquisitions include the former Town and Country agency in Jonesboro, a staple of the northeast Arkansas community that was a part of Stephens Inc.’s insurance division prior to the Sunstar deal, and the Matson agency in Little Rock, in 2018; the Todd agency in Little Rock in 2019; and this year, the Farris agency in Springdale, one of Northwest Arkansas’ largest.
Sunstar’s entrepreneurial DNA suits Meadors just fine, and he promises more Arkansas deals in 2021, including a big one in NEA. When he sold his interest in Meadors, Adams & Lee in 2016, Meadors walked away from a firm founded in 1909 that his father, Allan Meadors, had built into one of the state’s most prominent. But while he was ready for a change, he wasn’t ready simply to cash out.
“I had the confidence in myself to know that the next adventure would come,” Meadors told Arkansas Money & Politics. “I took five months, gathered myself, looked at all the different options and cast a wide net for opportunities. I didn’t see retirement for myself at age 53. I wasn’t ready for that.”
Five months after the deal with Lee, Bowlin came calling.
With uncertainty surrounding the pandemic and potential tax law changes on the horizon, Meadors thinks the time is right for the Sunstar model. “There are a lot of different factors at work that could be motivating folks to look at finding new partners,” Meadors said. Insurance is built on risk, of course, but the Sunstar model was built to serve as something like insurance for local agency owners, he noted.
The Meadors family: Dr. Fred, Allan, Joanne (d. 2012), Andrew and Chase.
The pandemic has impacted all lines of business, and insurers aren’t collecting premiums from many businesses wiped out by COVID-19. Following the 2002 SARS outbreak, the industry adopted exclusions releasing insurers from responsibility for losses resulting from virus or bacteria.
Meadors believes the industry should adopt something similar to the federal Terrorism Risk Insurance Program, in which restaurant owners, for example, could check a box for virus pandemic coverage. It would result in higher premiums, of course, but also would guarantee coverage for their businesses in the event something like COVID-19 were to happen again.
He said, “In the world of insurance, we deal with services evolving in an inelastic demand curve. People still have to have their insurance.”
* * * * * * * * *
Like many boys growing up in Arkansas, Meadors gravitated to sports at an early age. He followed the Hogs and even played varsity basketball at Little Rock’s Catholic High School. (Meadors credits Catholic High and Father George Tribou, its longtime former principal, as an “absolute foundation.”)
Meadors followed his older siblings to Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where he studied business. He was connected to the sports media industry by a fraternity brother, who arranged for Meadors to meet a CBS Sports executive in town for an upcoming game between Pony Express-era SMU and Texas A&M. (In the mid to late ‘80s, the old Southwest Conference remained a major player, and SMU-A&M a bigger deal than it would be today.) Meadors got to work the game as a production assistant, and “things just took off from there.” He’d work other big sporting events in Texas and following graduation, went to work for what was then the CBS affiliate in Dallas, KDFW, selling commercial spots.
Andrew Meadors and wife, Susan, at Keeneland for the 2015 Breeders’ Cup.
In 1987, “Dad called me home,” and Meadors joined the family firm. (His brother, Dr. Fred Meadors, is a cardiovascular surgeon at CHI St. Vincent in Little Rock, and his sister, Chase Meadors Stover, lives in West Virginia.) Utilizing connections he’d made in Dallas, Meadors moonlighted as an independent contractor for CBS and ABC while building his insurance business.
He’d serve as a jack-of-all-trades, working stats or providing in-game research. Meadors said it was pretty special to come up with a nugget of research related to a specific play in a game and then see it included on the broadcast. He’d also hold the sound dish on the field or fill in as the driver for the broadcast teams working the game. His stages included NCAA tournament games, college bowl games, Monday Night Football, Dallas Mavericks playoff games, PGA golf tournaments and NASCAR.
While still a student at SMU, Meadors worked the 1984 Daytona Firecracker 400, which was won by Richard Petty and included President Ronald Reagan in attendance. Meadors and a pair of trusty binoculars had one job that day.
“My entire job for ABC on race day was to tap Jim Lampley on the shoulder when I saw Air Force One landing,” Meadors said. “When I did, he didn’t even look over. He just said, ‘And now, to my right, I see Air Force One carrying President Ronald Reagan; he will be here shortly.’
“That was it. So cool. I saw Reagan and Petty together later. Heady stuff for a 20-year-old.”
Yankee Stadium, 2006.
But before the commander in chief arrived in Florida, Meadors had an encounter with the Secret Service. Hungover, he had crashed on a suite couch the night before the race, only to be roused by a growling, Secret Service-employed German shepherd. His couch just happened to be a planned landing spot for the president later that day.
“I talked my way out of it, and they let me go,” Meadors assured.
The road’s been filled with iconic moments. One special memory is of working the UNLV-Duke national championship basketball game in 1990. In the tunnel leading to the court before the game started, Meadors was nearby as legendary CBS broadcaster James Brown put his arm around UNLV star Larry Johnson and convinced him not to retaliate against Duke fans who were being verbally abusive.
Brown talked him down, and Johnson and his Runnin’ Rebel teammates would go on to crush the Blue Devils by 30, the largest margin of defeat ever in an NCAA championship game.
In 1993, Meadors was in the owner’s box in Dallas to witness Leon Lett’s infamous Thanksgiving Day miscue that enabled the Dolphins to kick a last second field goal to beat the Cowboys. Meadors was in Jerry Jones’ box because his best friend growing up in Little Rock was none other than Shy Anderson, who married Jones’ daughter, Charlotte. Meadors got to see all three Dallas 1990s Super Bowl wins as part of the Jones entourage.
In New Orleans for Super Bowl 47. (The Ravens beat the 49ers in the battle of Harbaugh brothers.)
Earlier in 1993, Meadors was one row behind the Michigan team bench in New Orleans for one of college basketball’s most iconic moments as the Wolverines faced North Carolina for the national championship. He watched as Chris Webber, one of the college game’s all-time greats, called a late timeout that Michigan didn’t have, resulting in a technical foul and enabling the Tar Heels to escape with a win.
He said, “Back in the locker room area, it was amazing to watch the sheer horror, shock and anger…”
And in contrast to that agony of defeat, Meadors experienced the thrill of victory the following April at the Final Four in Charlotte that crowned the Hogs national champs. In addition to holding the ladder as the nets were cut, Meadors called the Hogs with players, coaches and fans post-game in the team hotel lobby.
Back in Arkansas, Meadors worked for a decade as a statistician in the booth for Razorback football, and he served as president of the ASHOF and MSA. He still serves on the board of the Hall. He also was a regular contributor in the ‘90s to Drivetime Sports on 103.7 KABZ-FM The Buzz in Central Arkansas, just as sports radio was establishing itself as a strong media presence in the state.
Barcelona, 1992.
And through the MSA, Meadors helped raise funds to get Ozell Nelson, Taylor’s longtime trainer, to the Sydney Olympics in 2002. After Taylor won gold and prepared to embark on a pro career, Taylor and his team remembered Meadors for his support and invited him to sign on as the future champ’s business manager. (Stephens Sports Management, Meadors noted, had opted not to add “the unseamly” sport of boxing to its portfolio.)
Meadors remembers wining and dining in Atlantic City, almost as if it were a dream, with giants of the boxing game such as Bob Arum and Don King. Of Taylor, Meadors said, “I knew he had the ‘it’ factor. He could be the next Sugar Ray Leonard.” And in 2005, Taylor became the undisputed world middleweight champ.
Through Taylor, Meadors and his wife, Susan, got to know iconic rocker Gene Simmons of Kiss, also a big boxing fan. Simmons thought Taylor possessed the ‘it’ factor as well. And turns out, Kiss had stayed at a hotel owned by Susan’s mom when the band played the Pine Bluff Convention Center in the early ’80s. Simmons invited a thrilled young Susan to join him for breakfast the morning after the show. During the meal, he corrected her by explaining that, “Y’all is not a word in the English language.”
Meadors explained, “He was an English teacher in Detroit before Kiss.” When Susan reminded Simmons of the story once they reconnected through Taylor, the musician/promoter/salesman laughed and said, “That sounds exactly like something I would have said.”
Taylor’s ascent to the top of the boxing world and getting to witness Tiger’s most iconic moment at Augusta, made 2005 Meadors’ favorite sports year. Forrest Gump, indeed.
* * * * * * * * *
For Meadors, insurance boils down to “sifting through the suspects and the prospects,” and at Sunstar, quite simply, to matchmaking — deciphering the actual needs of a community and bringing the right people together at the right time. “That’s the fun part of our job.”
His proudest professional moment came in 1999 when Meadors got to marry his passions — he was awarded the insurance business for what was then the brand-new Alltel Arena (Simmons Bank Arena, these days). At $65 million, it represented the largest-ever builders risk policy in the state at the time.
“I just went crazy to research the markets, get the best price, get the best premium,” Meadors said. “Even though I was a young guy back then, I learned quickly that I could kind of bind my passion for sports and insurance and entertainment all together. And that really helped me in my career.”
One sports-related bucket list item remains unchecked, however. Meadors wants to attend a British Open. Don’t bet against him popping up at St Andrews one day.
