Sports owners need to take a chill pill. Pop a Paxil. Recite the alphabet backwards. Because their hot-headed, ill-informed moves are ruining sports.
For awhile, seeing sports owners wreck formerly reputable franchises was amusing. The story would go something like this. Big-shot billionaire buys sports franchise amidst much fanfare. New boss promises championship and brings in high-priced management team to get results. Boss spends oodles of money on overrated players. Season starts and team collapses. Boss goes nuts and fires the entire front office, from the GM to the head coach to the secretary in media relations. Boss becomes GM. Boss goes bald. Team perpetually bad. Boss continues to meddle.
Everyone loved George Steinbrenner screwing up the Yankees: the hiring then firing then hiring of managers (sometimes all in the same day), and the exorbitant contracts gone awry. It was a hilarious soap opera more absurd than anything even Hollywood could dream up.
People relished Jerry Jones plunging the Dallas Cowboys from Super Bowl champions to laughingstocks of the NFL. Although in Jerry’s case, he was smart enough to hire Bill Parcells to turn things around. Maybe Jerry will even let Parcells shop for the “groceries.”
But I’m sorry, this story is not funny anymore. Owners need to stop being the center of attention. They need to stop prancing on the sidelines a la Jerry Jones or screaming like maniacs from the front row a la Mark Cuban. They need to stop making headlines off the field and start making headlines with their team’s performance.
They can’t dunk a basketball, hit a home run, throw a touchdown, or score a goal. They can’t spot talent. All they can do is run their mouths and run their coaches. And that is old.
I don’t want to hear how many millions this billionaire owner lost last year because he was fiscally irresponsible. I don’t want to hear about that owner’s expectations for winning. I don’t want to see the owner raising ticket prices to compensate for the bad contracts the owner handed out.
Take Daniel Snyder, the 30-something wunderkind billionaire owner of the Washington Redskins. First he fired head coach Norv Turner mid-season. Then he named Terry Robiskie as the interim head coach. Then he hired Marty Schottenheimer. Then he fired Marty Schottenheimer after an 8-8 season. See a pattern? Then he hired Steve Spurrier, an egotistical nutcase in his own right. Now after one and a half years of lackluster performance, Spurrier is on the hot seat.
This is ridiculous! Sure GMs, coaches, and players need to be held accountable for their performance. Yet, sports teams cannot be micromanaged by owners and succeed. That works about as much as a Hail Mary pass in football or the third to first pick off move in baseball.
New professional sports owners should be required to take a class on how to be sports owners. I know it sounds crazy, but leagues need to take steps to keep owners out of day to day operations. One would think that billionaires, who make fortunes in business, could grasp the simple principles of sports owning: smoke a stogie and raise the trophy. Yet, as recent experience has shown, owners are just egotistical maniacs who think that they run the world.
New owners need to understand the dynamics of professional sports in the 21st century and the dangers of super-sized contracts. They need to stay off TV and let their teams play.
Owners need to listen to the fans and not to the headsets on the sidelines. They need to act more like Arturo Moreno, the new owner of the Anaheim Angels. Moreno’s first act as owner was not cutting the coach, but slashing beer prices at Edison International Field. That is an owner who gets it.
They need to emulate Dan Rooney of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Jerry Buss of the Los Angeles Lakers. These are owners who get it. Rooney and Buss stay out of the locker room. They sign the checks, but not the lineups. They own.