X.3 Buying a Team Means Buying the Affections of Millions, Even as You Screw Them
Holy shit, you’ve struck it rich! How did you amass this fortune? Was it through grit, determination, hard work, and savvy decision-making? Fuck that. That’s for chumps. Most likely it was through questionable business practices and outright white-collar criminal behavior. Or maybe you just inherited it all. That’s how it’s done in this country.
But that’s not really important. What matters is if it’s enough to purchase an NFL team. To even have a shot at that holy grail, you’ll be needing some serious fuck-you money. Enough to make the average CEO cry the tears of the most down-and-out pauper. Enough to have your face chiseled on the big Jesus statue in Rio de Janeiro. Basically, what Oprah’s got.
This is not an easy gravy train to board. In 2008, for the first time, the value of the average NFL franchise topped $1 billion, and it’s only going up, even in tough economic times. That’s even factoring in the thirteen thousand dollars the Texans are worth. Team ownership is a massive investment, but one that will pay mega dividends in the not too distant future. Indeed, once in the owner’s box, you’ll be fleecing your fans and local taxpayers in no time at all. Just make sure you get a controlling interest of the franchise. An owner with minority interest in a team is in no better position than your average Packer fan, as that franchise has been a publicly traded, nonprofit corporation since 1923. The day you find yourself no better than a Packer fan is the day you take a romantic bath with a plugged-in hairdryer. If you’re not going to be the one calling the shots, what’s the point? Sharing in the massive profits is all well and good, but it’s nothing more than obscene riches without the clout to back it up.
Billionaires don’t have as many lifestyle choices as conventional wisdom would lead you to believe. Social pressures exist for them too. As people who’ve committed their whole life to superficial pleasures, they feel it more keenly than most. They must follow in lockstep the few paths considered acceptable to someone of their outsize means, and they are as follows: owning a sports team, running for political office, or getting into philanthropy.
The first is for homespun narcissists. The second is for deluded self-righteous assholes. The last is for noble idiots. It should come as no surprise that George W. Bush is a few donations from pulling off the trifecta.
The downside to the process of bidding for a team is that it’s not merely a function of having the money, but also of having the connections that will get you considered as a candidate for ownership. First, there obviously has to be a team up for sale or an expansion franchise being proposed. And don’t think there aren’t handfuls of billionaires waiting in the wings to snatch the golden egg out from under you.
Like any collection of influential rich people, the old boys and girls club that constitutes NFL ownership likes to vet perspective buyers before they join the inner circle. They want to see if the business ties you have will reflect well on the league. They also need to make sure you’ve carried out the requisite slew of contract kills that forms initiation. They want to know that you’re one of them, that you’re not some Mark Cuban–esque gadfly who will challenge league orthodoxy and make fellow owners look out of touch. Most of all, they want to know that you’re not a minority.
So what kind of owner will you be? A benevolent champion of the fan who keeps in mind the true spirit of the league? One who doesn’t emphasize making money first and offers former players generous post-career benefits? Well, you’d be the first. Except you’d never get awarded ownership rights in the first place, so leave those magnanimous leanings at the door. Those interested in joining this elite club must conform to one of the following personality types.
IMPERIOUS NAPOLEONIC MEGALOMANIAC
The NFL loves to exercise complete, almost suffocating control over how the media covers the league. Why else would it ban even mainstream media Web sites from posting footage of league action longer than thirty seconds? That’s why any owner who wants to buy up every media property in his market and punish the ones who cover his team unfavorably is ready to belong to this politburo.
Example: Dan Snyder
OVERWEENING DISRUPTIVE CARTOONISH MEGALOMANIAC
Every ownership group needs a brash character who thinks he’s a bigger star than the players he puts on the field. Hoping to win at any cost, this owner will offer a refuge to the most troubled athlete. Volatile situations are never in short supply when he welcomes the most uncoachable superstars and pairs them with meek, unassertive head coaches.
Example: Jerry Jones
DECREPIT DELUSIONAL MEGALOMANIAC
The most dysfunctional of the megalomaniacal subset, those representing this type were usually once savvy and hard-charging renegades who fell victim to old age and their overpowering sense of paranoia. They do make for good press-conference footage, though.
Example: Al Davis
ARISTOCRATIC COLLABORATOR WITH THE RUSSIANS
These guys? Oh, they’re great. Run a tight ship, they do. They always seem to bring on the right personnel, like the ex-KGB guys whom they lavish with Super Bowl rings. Just like the one watching me type this right now. He sure glares at you with bone-chilling seriousness.
Example: Bob Kraft
LEADING REPUBLICAN DONOR
What good is a bunch of rich old white people if they’re not funneling money to the GOP? Wouldn’t want the NFL to be branded a terrorist organization, now, would we? Especially with all those bombs flying around the field of play. Examples: Alex Spanos, Woody Johnson
UPSTANDING BORING OLD GUY
The ownership group can always use some fusty old guys who know the league from its heyday. The difficulty here for newcomers is that these people come from families that have long been involved with the league. And most former players typically succumb to painful conditions sustained during their career before they have time to cobble the money together. At least they have thirty-eight-member pregame announcing teams to join.
Examples: Dan Rooney, Jerry Richardson
PENNY-PINCHING CANCEROUS FUCKWIT
If they had their druthers, these owners would just as soon pay the parking attendants to suit up on gameday than pour any money into the product on the field. They alienate their fans, yet take years to fire patently incompetent employees. A study of poor management, they test the limits of fan patience. And if they show their faces in public, the limits of a fan’s brick-throwing arm.
Examples: Mike Brown, Bill Bidwill, William Clay Ford, Sr.
MEGATYCOON WHO OWNS MULTIPLE SPORTS TEAMS
The only thing that owners respect more than money is a shitload of money. Just so long as they keep their NBA and Premier League teams far, far away from our football.
Example: Paul Allen, Malcolm Glazer
MR. HOME DEPOT MAN
Because the NFL could use the founders of more companies with atrocious customer service. Is the founder of Best Buy interested in purchasing a team? He’d fit right in.
Example: Arthur Blank
THE GUYS WHO DON’T MUCH LIKE WHERE THEIR TEAM IS LOCATED
No one said you have to love the market you inherit. This is a business, after all. Why should you look with anything other than contempt at the people who have supported your business over the years? It’s not like they’re your immediate family.
Examples: Ralph Wilson, Tom Benson, Zygi Wilf
RELATIVES OF PREVIOUS OWNERS
Yeah, remember when I said this was a tough crowd to break into? Wasn’t lying. Swearing and blaspheming, yes, but not lying. Sports franchises tend to stay family possessions for a good long while, meaning your best hope was probably to have married into one of these clans. Instead you choose to spend your life becoming a self-made success. That’s okay. Half the owners in the league didn’t grow up rooting for the team they own now. Do you really want to associate with people like that?
Examples: Clark Hunt, Jim Irsay, John Mara, Steve Tisch, Denise York, Virginia McCaskey
, Mike Brown, Dan Rooney, Chip Rosenbloom
X.4 Remain Die-hard Even When You’re About to Die
It’s a tragic eventuality that our bodies will suffer the ravages of age, leaving us as immobile and useless as Drew Bledsoe, at least until a special kind of water pill is developed that will keep us from growing old. Bill Parcells is hard at work screaming at scientists for this to happen.
For the time being, we must brave the murky fog of senility to root on for our favorite team, even if it means pissing ourselves slightly more often than in our younger days. We may not be able to throw back the booze like we used to, may not be able to toss the ball around at the tailgate anymore, and may not have gotten it up in a decade, but our passion for the game is no less strong.
How does one conquer the limitations placed upon us by bodily rot? A strict regiment of drugs, mostly. Other than that, you’ve got to remember to go easy on yourself. Conserving your strength is a must. Don’t waste energy fighting with the staff stealing your money at the nursing home when there are senior fans of other teams to scrap with.
The culture of football is a distinctly Darwinian one. No quarter is shown to the elderly fan, nor should he expect any. There will be many instances when, pulling for his favorite team, the fan of advanced age will be confronted with the threats of a younger, more able-bodied rival, who, in addition to superior coordination and strength, touts the full use of his bladder and extremities.
On paper, this looks like a mismatch. But it needn’t be an immediate cause for alarm. Indeed, the cliché that old age and treachery will always overcome the forces of youth and Dutch courage is true, especially in instances where the old guy isn’t cornered and able to bribe the kid to leave him in peace.
Generally, though, the young are malleable and can be dealt with using a few simple tricks that are also effective on household pets. It’s important to get them down pat, since more young miscreants will be on the streets with the Democrats controlling the White House again.
The key is to be well-armed. Who’s gonna suspect the elderly? Not the cocky young asshole who thinks himself invincible, that’s for sure. Of course, this strategy is best suited for altercations outside the stadium. Inside, past searches at the gate, you’ll have to hang close to ushers and medical staff.
X.5 To a Bears Fan Dying Young
Today we gather to celebrate the life of Kevin Murawski, father, patriot, amateur pornography enthusiast, pipe fitter, closet sestina writer, and most of all, Bears fan. One hell of a Bears fan at that.
If ever there was a true Monsters of the Midway fan, it was Kevin. His mark of 461 consecutive games watched is a Herculean feat that few can say they have equaled. Even when his health declined, he made sure there was nothing that got between him and his beloved team. We all remember the game against Detroit where he showed up at Soldier Field with the colostomy pouch in tow. I bet that guy in the Herman Moore jersey regrets ever talking trash to him while he was in throwing range.
Kevin loved his team and all the tradition that surrounded it. It was always a great source of pride for him that the NFC championship trophy was named after George Halas. Any year the Bears didn’t go to the Bowl, he’d remark during the trophy presentation, “That’s our trophy. We’re just lettin’ ’em borrow it for a year.” A douchey sentiment? Surely. More grating every time he did it? Absolutely. But it brought him joy during an otherwise dour moment. And he was good for that. When others thought the worst of the Bears, he played the optimist, even beyond the bounds of reason. He defended each of the pitiful quarterbacks who has come through the Bears organization in the past twenty years, logic be damned.
Rick Mirer? “Shows incredible poise, even when forcing wounded ducks into double coverage.”
Craig Krenzel? “He was very clutch in college at Ohio State. That’s bound to surface in the pros if we give him a few more seasons under center.”
Kordell Stewart? “Any quarterback fast enough to chase down the defensive backs who catch his passes is a real asset.”
Moses Moreno? “He might not be any good, but starting a Hispanic quarterback sends a positive message about the franchise being open to inept quarterbacks of all colors.”
Not Rex Grossman, however. There were limits even to Kevin’s blind homerism.
Let there be no doubt that his was a full life. Kevin’s father made a point of telling him he was conceived the evening the Bears won the NFL championship in 1941, which is still an uncomfortable fact even in death. Had he not had a bad case of whiskey dick, he might have accomplished the same feat when Chicago won Super Bowl XX. Indeed, witnessing the ’85 Bears’ prolific run was one of the great thrills of life, a fact he made sure to remind people of on a near hourly basis. Like many fans, he begrudged Mike Ditka for not allowing an aged Walter Payton to get a score in the historic reaming of the Patriots. A copy of the tearful apology letter we wrote to Sweetness the week after the game remains framed on his living room wall.
The Bears meant everything to him, which made it really easy for him to blot out the important emotional connections he made over the years. His wife Diane was his loving, and loved, companion, as fiercely loyal to him as he was to his football team. As many of you know, when she first met Kevin, she was a Packers fan. Only through kind jostling and a series of maybe-kidding-but-maybe-not threats did he bring her around to the Bears’ side. Her capacity for love was enough to overlook this bit of fan manipulation, or at least so we all thought until she turned their children into followers of the Pack. He still found it in his heart to give them his undying love, at least for thirty weeks out of the year.
We can take comfort knowing he’s gone to a better place—one where Dick Jauron is not—at least until pitchfork-wielding Buffalo fans dismember him. We shouldn’t think of his passing as an extinguishing of the torch of fandom, but as an opening of another choice seat at the stadium. I know most of you are awaiting the reading of his will, but as soon as the executor of his estate can make sense of it through all the greasy brat stains, we’ll be sure to report who gets what.
Let us pour out some Old Style and sing a round of “Bear Down, Chicago Bears” for our fallen comrade. It’s what he would want as a dying wish. That and Lambeau Field being carpet bombed into the Stone Age, but we’re still cobbling together the funds for that one. In the meantime, let’s pull a Cedric Benson and get shitfaced and make some bad decisions.
X.6 Hector Your Favorite Players into the Hall of Fame
Upon reaching an advanced age, you want to be comforted in the knowledge that your life signified a lasting, greater Something. For most, it’s a struggle to define what that legacy was. Absent an easy revelation, the average person will fall back on heavy doses of delusion, empty accolades, and a collection of grubby snot-nosed grandchildren. But if your life was comprised mainly of yelling slander about people’s moms in support of a football team, seeing the players you valued most immortalized in the Hall of Fame becomes life’s remaining goal. Even if that recognition comes in the form of an ugly, urine-colored jacket and a bust that looks nothing at all like the cherished athlete it honors.
That validation of the premier players of your era being inducted into the Hall of Fame takes on the utmost importance, not only because those players were critical fixtures for your team over an extended period of time, but because they prove to future generations that your salad days of fandom were of merit. And that they missed something special. Redskins fans shamelessly lobbied for a decade to get famously boring wide receiver Art Monk in the Hall, to the point that that’s all they talked about on sports radio shows, during dinner, in the middle of sex, or even to the dutiful postal carriers desperately looking for an out. They harangued anyone who would listen for so long that Monk was finally allowed into Canton, most likely just to appease these singularly obsessed buttholes. And, you know, once he and Darrell Green got in the same year, the ’Skins fans quieted down some. Just goes to show that being unbearable has its benefits sometimes.
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Some players are obvious shoo-ins to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. For those world-beaters, there’s little fans have to do to ply their case to the forty-four-member Pro Football Hall of Fame Board of Selectors. It’s the stars with less than megawattage, those having a résumé with stats in the upper tier but not at the top, and those not fortunate enough to be a member of a dynasty who will challenge fans to put together a compelling case. The board you have to convince is a fastidious lot, accustomed as they are to being sucked up to by fans and being dismissed out of hand by players. Just the recipe for twisting any otherwise normal individual into a sad, embittered, crotchety husk of a douche.
Bribing the selection committee that is responsible for enshrining candidates into the Hall is no easy task. Any finalist for induction must receive at least 80 percent of the vote from paunchy white guys who never played the sport. So it’s going to take more than simply prevailing upon them to acknowledge that the player in question is great. Get to know them, know their vices, know their biases. Thirty-two of them are media representatives from cities where a team is located (New York has two). If there’s anyone who can be bought off with cheap shit, it’s members of the mainstream media. For the majority of them, it doesn’t take anything more than a six-inch Subway sandwich. The less healthy the better. Nothing butters up sports writers like sugar cookies slathered in cake batter.
Of the remainders, eleven are at-large members and one is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America. The at-large guys are national NFL writers who are no less susceptible to the spoils of gift baskets and topless photos of Peyton Manning. What makes them most difficult to convince is that they are wont to retain petty grudges against any player you like, whether or not the incident that sparked the grudge occurred within the last fifteen years. Most likely, said incident happened when the player was a rookie and had to blow off the writer for an entirely justifiable reason. Being a sad, cantankerous old turdlet, the writer has held onto this enmity for long enough to get his kids in on the act. Hate to break it to you, but there’s nothing a fan can do to reverse the grudge. Once writers have antipathy set in their minds for the tiniest slight by a player, they’ll never let it go. You might as well put their induction out of your mind. Unless you get compromising photos of said writer after-hours in flagrante at the aquarium. Len Pasquarelli knows what I mean. If you can pull that, make your reservations for summer in Canton soon, while you can still only be minorly fleeced by the packages.
The Football Fan's Manifesto Page 22
