fred klein on sports

               That life is unfair is a sad truth, easily confirmed if one’s favorite sports teams have seemed doomed for long periods. The saving grace is that just about every fan group has had the experience at one time or another. About the only exception has been backers of the baseball New York Yankees, but even that team has had occasional bad patches, and those among them who also root for the basketball Knicks or football Jets know prolonged misery. Losing is democratic, one might conclude.  

               But if sports’ normal vicissitudes can be rough, another factor can make them rougher. That would be the presence of a bad owner, one whose actions, or lack thereof, exacerbate the on-field failures. Most of us form our sports allegiances in youth and are pretty much stuck with them for life. The owner is the person in best position to make a team’s fans happy, and when he or she persistently falls short fan enmity can run high. And unlike bad politicians, who can be voted out, the bad owner is there for as long as he or she wishes to stay. Democratic, it ain’t.

               Team owners in big-time American sports come mostly from two sources-- success in another business or a happy accident of birth. People who have made a bundle oft times believe that anything they touch will turn to gold. Beneficiaries of inherited wealth and position tend to be like it was said of George W. Bush, a baseball team owner (the Texas Rangers) before becoming the capital “P” President-- born on third base thinking they’d hit triples. Neither path is any guarantee of sports success.

             The list of bad ownership situations in American sports is a long one, too long to be treated in a brief essay such as this, but football season is starting so I’ll deal here only with the National Football League. When the criterion is the performance of a team on the field, the best example is the Detroit Lions, whose ongoing record of ineptitude stands alone in any game.

               Interestingly, the Lions’ ownership combines both of the two origin paths laid out above. Since 1961 they’ve been the property of the Ford family, which made its fortune in… well, you know what… but whose present top officer meets any silver-spoon definition. Ironically, the family’s signal role in the last century’s industrial revolution belies its on-field failure in the football biz.

 The Lions have been NFL members since 1930 but have won only four league titles, the last in 1957. Since then—a span of 65 years-- they’ve won just one playoff game, in 1991. They are one of four teams never to have been in the Super Bowl, the others being the Cleveland Browns, Jacksonville Jaguars and Houston Texans. In this century they’ve had but five plus-.500 years and three post-season appearances. With a 2021 won-lost record of 3-14, that isn’t expected to change much this season.   

               Ford ownership began with William Clay Ford Sr., grandson of Henry and son of Edsel. William was in the family business for a spell, mostly as a designer; his claim to fame there was his role in fashioning the 1956 Lincoln Continental Mark II. By all accounts he was a nice man who let others handle the Lions’ day-to-day doings. As an executive he was “too patient, too forgiving,” according to one associate quoted in the Los Angeles Times’ obituary following his death at age 89 in 2014.

               William’s patience seemingly waned in the later years of his 53-year reign because the team has run through 12 different head coaches and six general managers since 2000. In 2014 the team’s chairmanship passed to his widow, Martha Firestone Ford. Six years later, at age 93, she passed it to her daughter, Sheila Hamp Ford. Now 71 years old, Mrs. Hamp’s academic degree is in early-childhood education. Her husband, Steve Hamp, is a former Ford exec, keeping everything in the family, as it were.

 The Lions’ gridiron travails haven’t hurt the Fords’ net worth; thanks mostly to the nation’s thirst for media content the team is valued at about $3 billion now, quite a bump from the $4.5 million William paid for it. The Fords may be crying all the way to the bank but Lions’ fans are just crying.

Just as the Lions’ ownership was an easy worst in the performance department, the worst-behaving-owner category also has a clear winner. He’s Daniel Snyder, boss of the Washington Commanders. Snyder made his money in what’s called “mass marketing,” a category that includes the all-ads TV screens that hang in doctors’ offices and office-building lobbies. He bought the team in 1999. He’s since been accused by team cheerleaders and other female employees of tolerating rampant sexual harassment in the work place, and reportedly has settled a $1.6 million lawsuit for that against him personally.

 He clung to the team’s odious “Redskins” nickname for 21 years before giving way and changing it (to the innocuous “Commanders”). He’s been accused of short-changing other NFL teams of visitors’ gate revenues and keeping two sets of books to hide it, allowing the team’s Fedex Field home to run down, attempting to intimidate witnesses in league proceedings against him and stiffing a Congressional inquiry by fleeing to the Mediterranean Sea in his yacht.  On the field his teams have had a sub-.500 won-lost record during his tenure and have had five straight losing seasons. He’s said to be the least-popular man in the nation’s capital, no small distinction.

One easily can conclude that Snyder also is less than beloved by his fellow owners. He could be ordered to sell the team by a three-fourths vote of those 31, but they have been loath to move against him except for a $10 million fine. That’s probably because they know he could do what they might in his situation, which is invoke the Donald Trump Defense by claiming victimhood and suing everyone in sight, tying up the matter for years.  Thus they, like the folks in D.C., are stuck with him. As my mother would have said, they should have been more careful.

               One of the reasons we follow sports is that they provide respite from the depressing stuff that comprises most of the rest of the news, but sometimes—and, it seems, increasingly—the “real” world intrudes even there. Such has been the case of late as two stories—the imprisonment in Russia on drug charges of the basketball star Brittney Griner and the penalty handed football quarterback Deshaun Watson for sexual predations—dominate the sports pages.

               In neither case is there much dispute over guilt; Griner fessed up that the two vape-pipe vials of hashish found in her luggage when she entered Moscow on February 17 were hers, and Watson’s reported settlements of 23 lawsuits against him by masseuses who said he tried to force himself on them during their ministrations amounted to the same thing, no matter what he’s asserted elsewhere. It’s the punishment side of the equation that has stirred debate.

Well OK, that’s not quite it, especially with Griner. Her sentence of nine years in prison for doing something that’s legal in much of the world, and petty in much of the rest, is ludicrous, the product of a legal system that exists to serve the country’s political ends. Really, she’s a hostage, opportunistically snatched to secure a ransom. The issue really is whether getting her release is worth the price it’s sure to command (and has already commanded), and her responsibility for it.

To say that the 31-year-old was careless is an understatement. She was no naïve tourist but someone quite familiar with Russia and its ways, having played basketball there for months annually since 2015. Foreign travel is a staple for American woman basketball pros, whose short summer season (May through August) in the domestic Woman’s National Basketball Association, and relatively low pay there ($228,000 a season tops), makes additional income attractive.

The Russian league long has been a favored landing spot for U.S. stars, especially the team in the city of Ekaterinburg, on which Griner played. Owned as a vanity project by Iskander Makhmudov, a mining magnate, it has paid seven-figure annual salaries to the likes of her and, previously, her Phoenix Mercury teammate Diana Taurasi. It also has thrown in luxury hotel accommodations, charter-flight game travel and personal cars with drivers. Unmindful of the international uproar over Russia’s threatened invasion of Ukraine, which would start a week after her arrest, Griner was returning from a season break when she was grabbed.

For regimes such as those in Russia, Iran and North Korea, which don’t care about the world’s good opinion and already labor under heavy economic sanctions, kidnapping a citizen of a democracy is the perfect crime, all take and no give.  Any American who visits those lands should have his or her head examined. Whatever political pressures the acts generate fall entirely on leaders of the victimized countries. Refusing to do business with kidnappers might make a good political applause line, but to the hostage’s dear ones—and their supporters— giving up Nebraska to get the person back seems justified.

 In Griner’s case Russia’s reported main demand is the release of Viktor Bout, a genuine bad guy serving a 25-year U.S. prison sentence for arms smuggling. Ransom settlements aren’t made public, so other things (like cash) may be involved. A swap should happen soon because Russia has milked the situation for about all its worth, but whatever the deal the U.S. should insist Griner give up her passport as soon as she returns. 

Watson’s misdeeds were egregious but, apparently, not criminal; a Texas grand jury refused to indict him after police investigated the charges. They did, however, meet the criterion of “offensive contact” needed to support claims of civil assault; hence, the lawsuits against him. He sat out the entire 2021 season (at full pay of $10.4 million, by the way) while the charges percolated. In the off-season he was traded by the Houston Texans to the Cleveland Browns for three first-round draft choices and a couple of other picks, and given a five-year contract worth an eyepopping $230 million, fully guaranteed. That was despite his facing further discipline.

One might reasonably ask where the National Football League gets off wielding court-like powers over its employees. It does so under the “personal conduct” clause of its contract with its union, made necessary by the fact that big-time footballers (like other top team-sport pros) are too valuable to be fired for offenses short of felonies, so public outrage must be satisfied otherwise. In July an arbitrator ordered Watson to serve a six-game suspension this season, but this was deemed too lenient in the court of public opinion so the league threatened to appeal, asking for 16 games, or a full regular season. Rather than drag the matter through a real court, the league and union agreed, Solomonlike, on an 11-game term, plus a $5 million fine.

The most-remarkable thing about the episode was how little it will cost Watson financially. His Browns’ contract works out to $46 m a year, but in the first year about $45 m of that is being treated as a signing bonus with just $1m as salary, and he’ll be docked 11/16^th of the latter figure. That’s about $690,000, hardly a tip for someone in his income bracket. The $5 million fine was a sop to possible critics of that arrangement.

The next most-remarkable thing was the 26-year-old’s fixation with massages as possible sexual outlets; by one published account he contracted for those with 66 different women over a 17-month period ended last year.  His penalty includes submission to counseling. That should be interesting, at least to the counselor.

 Did his punishment fit his crimes?  I don’t know. I do know it’s good to be a young, talented and very (very) rich athlete in present-day America. He’ll be booed for a while in road stadiums when he plays again, but a touchdown pass or two should make him golden in Cleveland. And after work he’ll have a nice ride home and place to live. And maybe a nice massage.